DE Weekly: Macbeth, Shakespeare, & Nihilism
Below is an archived email originally sent on June 9, 2025.
Macbeth, Shakespeare, & Nihilism
“Life’s . . . a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” These words come from the speech “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” from William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedie of Macbeth.
Reading this quote back, these words could have just as well been written by any of the existentialist authors of the twentieth century. It certainly espouses some of the attitudes toward life that those authors held themselves.
But they weren’t; they were written at the beginning of the seventeenth century. How (and why) did Shakespeare write lines so full of existential despair centuries before it became popular to do so?
The Bard isn’t considered the greatest writer in the English language for nothing. Shakespeare understood human nature more so than any writer of his time and, arguably, more so than any writer since.
So, what does Macbeth have to say about human nature? Let’s dive into the story and find out.
The protagonist, Macbeth, a Scottish general, is prophesied to be King of Scotland by three witches. His wife Lady Macbeth shares this ambition and encourages Macbeth every step of the way to seeing that vision become reality.
Eventually, Macbeth kills the king and becomes king himself. However, this doesn’t go over well with everybody. A civil war erupts to overthrow Macbeth, and lots of killing and death ensue from here.
Macbeth may be the villain in the story, but he is not detached from reality. He comes to understand what he’s done is a grave, irreversible sin, and suffers great internal strife because of it.
Already midway through the play, Macbeth is “supped full with horrors.” He proclaims he suffers from “torture of the mind,” and says he envies the dead, as they are free from his “restless ecstasy” and have peace in death.
Fast forward to Act V, and Macbeth’s world is falling apart.
Malcolm, eldest son of King Duncan (who Macbeth killed to seize the throne) is leading an army toward his castle to defeat him.
Amid the chaos, Lady Macbeth’s conscience begins to become overwrought; ultimately, she commits suicide.
After learning of her death is when Macbeth recites his soliloquy “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.” At this point, he essentially resigns himself to his fate, giving in to whatever happens.
The play ends with Macbeth defeated and Malcolm crowned king.
Once his wife dies, Macbeth is immediately undone. He no longer sees the point of his power, or the point of his life. He sees no way out of his situation, no happy ending. He gives in completely to pessimism and despair––to nihilism.
He insists that there is no meaning and no purpose to life at all, but that life “is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.”
A question that might arise when reading the character of Macbeth is, “Why did Shakespeare write him?” Is it because Shakespeare himself was a nihilist?
No!
Shakespeare was not a nihilist. Macbeth was.
The beauty of Shakespeare is in his understanding of human nature, which I explained earlier. He creates each character and lets them live out their lives without his input. He lets them succumb to their own nature and do whatever it is they are going to do. Their nature is for us to see.
The lesson of Macbeth is that he only succumbed to nihilism when he attempted to create his own moral order, where he was at the top and everyone below him. Regicide and murder were justified in this moral order separated from the real moral order: nature and the world itself.
In his soliloquy, Macbeth was correct in saying that life was meaningless. But life was not meaningless when he started out. He made it meaningless through the choices he made, and that became his reality.
Shakespeare’s lesson is that life does have meaning––inherent meaning––and the meaning is in life itself, in the world we inhabit.
Separating yourself from the moral order of creation, from nature and from the world, makes life meaningless. Macbeth lived in a moral world, in the moral world, but denied it. And it led him to pessimism, despair, and the empty pit of nihilism.
Shakespeare’s view of existence was drastically different from most of the existentialists. He understood human nature to a different degree than many of them did.
That’s not to say there is no value or truth in the existentialists’ view. Not at all.
It’s just to say that if you accept an omnipotent meaninglessness of life, well… you just might lead one.
“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.”
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
It is always, always worth reading the great texts of history.
For more content, follow @TheDailyExist on X. For other social links, click here.
I write this newsletter for free–I love sharing my thoughts with you all, and I’ll continue to do so for free. But if you like what I write and want to show your support, you can always click here to share a tip. Thanks for keeping me going–it’s much appreciated.