Poetry Visualized - Tomorrow And Tomorrow -Ian McKellen

Tomorrow and Tomorrow -Ian McKellen - Shakespeare

Ian McKellen "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow " from the 1979 TV version of the Trevor Nunn production by the Royal Shakespeare Company

G. Fletcher ("Studies of Shakespeare", 1847):

There is no want of physical courage implied in Macbeth's declining the combat with Macduff. He may well believe that now, more than ever, it is time to 'beware Macduff'. He is at length convinced that 'fate and metaphysical aid' are against him; and, consistent to the last in his hardened and whining selfishness, no thought of the intense blackness of his own perfidy interferes to prevent him from complaining of falsehood in those evil beings from whose very nature he should have expected nothing else.

There is no cowardice, we say, in his declining the combat under such a conviction. Neither is there any courage in his renewing it; for there is no room for courage in opposing evident fate. Bu the last word and action of Macbeth are an expression of the moral cowardice which we trace so conspicuously throughout his career; he surrenders his life that he may not be 'baited with the rabble's curse'.