Writelike Shakespeare: Macbeth's 'Tomorrow' soliloquy

For this lesson, we'll be using a lot of word group or grammatical labelling as opposed to the more subjective, meaning-oriented labelling we often use.

If you haven't done the Word Groups lessons in Writelike, or are unfamiliar with functional grammar, then some this labelling might seem odd. Here's a quick summary:

Noun group: a group of words that represent someone or something. The group can be a single noun, or can be a complex of words including noun, adjectives, adverbs, pointer/determiner, prepositional phrase, and so on. Examples: 'tomorrow', 'the way to dusty death'.

Verb group: a group of words that represent an action or process. The group can be a single verb, or can include multiple verbs and adverbs. Examples: 'creeps', 'have lighted'.

Prepositional phrase (also called a qualifier or an adverbial phrase): A phrase that adds extra detail to a noun or verb group. Consists of a preposition + noun group, and can occur at the beginning or end of a sentence or clause, and can be chained and nested together in elaborate ways. Examples here: 'from day to day', 'to dusty death'.

Adjective group: A group of words that describe a person or thing (noun group). Can be one adjective or multiple adjectives. Can be embedded inside the noun group they describe. Examples: 'walking', 'poor', 'dusty'.

Adverb group: A group of words that describe a an action or process (verb group). Can be one or more adverbs. Can be embedded inside the verb group they describe. Can also describe noun groups—so they are generally slippery and confusing. Examples: 'no more', and possibly 'in' depending how you read it.

Main nouns: Tomorrow, today, yesterday, pace, syllable, time, fools, death, candle, life, shadow, player, stage, tale, idiot, sound, fury, nothing.

Adjectives: Petty, last, recorded, dusty, brief, walking, poor.

Main verbs: Creeps, lighted, out, struts, frets, told, signifying.

• The words are simple—no fancy vocabulary.
• The words are evocative—death, idiot, syllable, time, nothing. They pack a punch.
• The words are all related around themes:
  • The experience of passing days: from the future, to the present, to the past.
  • Foolishness, ego, failure, death.
  • And the sense of being an actor on an Elizabethan-era stage, lit by torches, casting shadows, acting bombastically, but saying nothing, and then leaving the stage empty.
• Most of this speech is made up of noun groups and a handful of verbs, with only a scattering of grammatical words. Even though it sounds simple, it is densely packed.

Because Macbeth is so packed with images, we don't want to start writing until we have some images and actions of our own.

One way to do this is through free-wheeling word association.

This just means holding an idea or image in your mind and turning it over and over, exploring it from all angles, writing down whatever words come to mind. In this instance, we're especially interested in capturing evocative things and actions. 

Here are some examples for our drive-thru and everything-falls-apart ideas from the last activity:

Those words don't mean a lot by themselves, but you can see each group has a distinct fingerprint compared to the other.

Now you're going to do the same exercise.

Choose your source of disappointment. Even if the source is silly, you should imagine the disappointment as crushing.

Explore it in your mind: what images or words come to mind, what feelings, what actions?

Write down all the words you think of. You're on the hunt for words that feel strong and vivid, but write down any words at all to get started—something good will come.