"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.”

These lines have been taken from the famous tragic play of Shakespeare, Macbeth. Above
written lines are among the most famous soliloquies of Macbeth. It takes place in the beginning
of Scene V, Act V. Seton tells Macbeth of Lady Macbeth's death, and Macbeth delivers this
soliloquy as his response to the news. Shakespeare had written that man's ambitious appetite for
power, once it has preyed on everything in its path, can eat up only itself. Power-seeking tyrants
tend toward self-destruction; if this curse falls on anyone, it's likely to be the curser.

At this point, Macbeth hears a heart-stopping scream. While a servant is dispatched to find the
cause, Macbeth confesses in a brief soliloquy that such noises no longer have the power to
frighten him. The report of Lady Macbeth's death perhaps comes as no surprise, either to
Macbeth or to Shakespeare's audience. The famous lines "Tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow" have a resigned, almost wistful tone to them, occasioned not only by the death of his
wife but also by Macbeth's entire loss of purpose. Although there is perhaps an underlying
bitterness at lost opportunity in the words "petty," "fools," "frets" and "idiot," for a man who has
received such desperate news, this is not a desperate speech. In fact, compared with some of
Macbeth's earlier "set pieces," its rhetoric is controlled, its metaphors precise: Time is like a path
to "dusty death," and our lives are as "brief" as a candle. We are like shadows or actors on the
stage of life.

Macbeth is hardly affected by her passing, and his soliloquy reveals his true feelings about her
death. Macbeth essentially says her death is no shock to him, as she was bound to die anyway.
Already one can tell he is truly evil at this point of the play. Macbeth completely lacks sympathy.
Macbeth personifies death in lines 8-10 saying, "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. The use of
personification is used to describe the way that life is nothing more than an illusion, much like
the fiction of a play. He goes on to say that life is like a bad actor who has his time of fame and
is never re-casted due to their poor performance. In other words, Macbeth is trying to say that all
lives are horrible, and they only happen once.