Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
■
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
■
Hello Friends —
Happy Bard Day! April 23 is celebrated as the birthday of William Shakespeare. The Bard was supposedly born on this day in 1564 and also supposedly died on the exact same day 52 years later, April 23, 1616. The monologue above is from Act V, scene 5 of Macbeth, when Macbeth learns of Lady Macbeth’s death.
Ever wonder how Shakespeare was able to stay in perfect iambic pentameter so much of the time? Well, it certainly didn’t hurt that he made up over 1,700 of the words he used — often taking known words and twisting them into new parts of speech; noun into verb, verb into adjective, etc. — so that they fit into his syllabic structure. In addition to individual words, Shakespeare also coined many phrases we still use today.
Other literary works that derive their titles from just this one Shakespeare passage include “Out, Out —” by Robert Frost and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.
Whether it’s today’s selection or “Jabberwocky” (those of you who have been on this list a few years!) or another piece that speaks to you, I strongly encourage you to pick a poem to read out loud to someone else, at least once a year, and consider learning it by heart. When you’ve memorized a poem, no one can ever take it away from you. Even locked in a dark cell. Or stranded on a deserted island. Or in the last syllable of recorded time.
Memorization is why we invented rhyme and meter and poetry itself in the first place! So an orator could travel from place to place and recite a piece, or one generation could pass on a story to the text. The first poems were never written down; they were all oral and committed to memory, aided by patterns in rhythm and sound we now call poetry. That memorization skill is a bit of a lost art — but I still think one of the most poetic things you can do is to memorize a poem.
Shakespeare indicates in many places he understands the power of words to outlive their authors. While his character Macbeth says in this passage “and then is heard no more,” it’s possible or even likely Shakespeare dreamed and aspired toward a world in which these very words were heard over and over again, even after his own death. You could argue Shakespeare believed the opposite of what this, one of his most famous passages, actually says. This passage may be more about conveying thoughts and feelings that many people have experienced, about how existence feels sometimes — rather than making fundamental claims about the nature of existence. Did Shakespeare in his wildest dreams ever imagine his words would last 450 years, or that they would be performed every single day, not only in England but around the world? Probably not. But here we are.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this poem-a-day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like poem-a-day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen