Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

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"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" is the third sentence of one of the most famous soliloquies in Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. It is the response of the protagonist, Macbeth, to the news of his wife's death. The speech can be divided into two parts, with the line "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" marking the beginning of the second part. The full soliloquy reads:

"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
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." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-27)

1 Interpretation
2 References to the passage
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Interpretation

The first sentence has caused much debate. Whether Macbeth was more concerned with the timing of his wife's death than the fact of her passing remains open to interpretation. The rest of the speech is a rush of despair. Macbeth is seeing life as a story, and death as a natural occurrence that is to be welcomed. He has seen so much death, and caused so much pain to others, that he has become numb to it. He no longer cares about anything, and wishes to die himself.

[edit] References to the passage

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is also the name of an essay by Aldous Huxley. It was collected along with other works as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and other essays, originally published in 1956.
the soliloquy is the source of the title of William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury, Robert Frost's poem “Out, Out—”, and others, for example, used the line "All Our Yesterdays".
the line "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" is referenced to in the Dresden Dolls song "Sex changes".
"Tomorrow and Tomorrow," the title of the third movement of the King Crimson song "Epitaph," is most likely a reference to this soliloquy.
"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" is paraphrased in the Alexisonfire song "No Transitory".
"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," is also the title of the last short story in Kurt Vonnegut's collection of short stories titled Welcome to the Monkey House.