The Tragedy of Macbeth

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   At the end of his ambition, Macbeth discovers that power seized through crime gives life no meaning but empties it: everything he has done reduces to noise signifying nothing.

   The Tragedy of Macbeth · 1623

   Power seized through crime doesn't fill life with meaning; it empties it, leaving only sound and fury.

   The tragedy presents ambition as a machine that consumes its own fuel. Every step forward — a murder, an alliance, a new fear — demands another, and the meaning promised at the start is forever deferred. When Macbeth hears of his wife's death, he does not weep: he takes stock and finds his story is mere agitation. Shakespeare does not moralize directly; he lets the character hear his own emptiness in words. The sound and fury are abundant, but they signify nothing to the man who produced them.

   “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.”

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