DE Weekly: 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.