Despairing Macbeth: A Speech Out of Place

The famous "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" speech in Macbeth works on its own; the play works without the speech; and, in fact, including the speech in the play causes problems for interpretation. This paper argues that the speech was not written for the play in which it appears, but likely was written independently of the play and inserted because Shakespeare was eager to use it. For all that, though, the speech is not a flaw. Far from it, the speech is a profound meditation on the human condition, echoing Ecclesiastes and anticipating existentialism.