![]() Life is really very short and in the context of that great darkness around it, it is inconsequential. ![]() Macbeth calls it a brief candle, meaning a short candle that only burns briefly. That character, with all his or her ambition, desire, obsessions, lies dead as the actor just goes home and has supper. It’s like actors in the theatre, artificially living out the lives of human beings on the stage, with all their passion and then, when the curtain comes down, they just go home and think nothing about their character’s anguish. We become very passionate in the pursuit of the things we want out of life and then we die. He sees, almost for the first time, that life is very short, like a candle, and that all the passion we may feel for anything, including a burning compulsion to occupy the throne, is just a lot of meaningless noise. After the ardent pursuit of his ambition to become king he arrives at a conclusion – life has become a burden, tedious and heading for only one destination: death. In this soliloquy Macbeth articulates his disappointment. There are several scenes in which the characters are in total darkness, and just step into a spot of half-light to speak one of the many soliloquies that there are in the play. Macbeth is a dark play – not only dark in the metaphorical sense but also in that most of it is set at night-time, and when there are daytime scenes they are obscured by mist and bad weather. ‘Out out brief candle’ is a phrase that appears in the middle of the famous Macbeth soliloquy, usually titled, ‘ Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.’ Each Shakespeare’s play name links to a range of resources about each play: Character summaries, plot outlines, example essays and famous quotes, soliloquies and monologues: All’s Well That Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Hamlet Henry IV Part 1 Henry IV Part 2 Henry VIII Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Henry V Julius Caesar King John King Lear Loves Labour’s Lost Macbeth Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night’s Dream Much Ado About Nothing Othello Pericles Richard II Richard III Romeo & Juliet The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus & Cressida Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter’s Tale ![]() ![]() This list of Shakespeare plays brings together all 38 plays in alphabetical order.
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