When Is Death Taken In Macbeth

What Death Will Take In William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the protagonist Macbeth converses with Seyton before his ineluctable end, which occurs during his epic grapple for power with Macduff. During this exchange, Macbeth states, "My way of life/ Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf" (5.3.25). Overall, as it is shown in his vicious attempts to rise to power, Macbeth has little regard for death, yet in this moment Shakespeare provides a glimpse of the misery and uncertainty that surround his demise. Shakespeare likewise explores the worries of those who are facing imminent death when the speaker in Sonnet 73 is perturbed by death, yet like Macbeth, he knows the certainty of it. By portraying the fears and anxieties of the speaker as he faces his decline, Shakespeare explores the idea that death will come inevitably, bringing with it sorrow about what has been taken. He then lessens the harshness of this deterioration with the
thought that we still have time to love. After he likens his death to the yellow leaves of autumn, Macbeth also states, "And that which should accompany old age, /As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,/ I must not look to have." These are the virtues of life being taken away from the speaker. Love, the greatest and most powerful of beauties, and death, one of the most petrifying ideas known to man are what Shakespeare chose to focus on in this sonnet. Shakespeare creates the impression that the speaker is close to death in order to express his melancholy about the gradual deterioration that he is experiencing. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker begins addressing his lover with this statement: "that time of year thou may'st in me behold/ When yellow leaves, or none, few do hang" (1-2). The metaphor of yellow leaves, combined with the "time of year" convey that it is autumn. Winter, the season that comes after autumn, symbolises death, as during the winter the earth is barren and cold, devoid of life. Because autumn leaves become more scarce as the season approaches December, the leaves symbolise the time he has left before death. The indecisiveness shown in the phrasing of "where yellow leaves, or none, or few" exhibits the inability to know when death will come. This is displayed in how the speaker jumps between his idea that there are leaves, or possibly no leaves, or even very few. The quantity of leaves that are on the tree symbolise how much time he has to live. His inconclusiveness creates a sense of foreboding, as being unaware of when his passing will come creates an atmosphere of trepidation. Because Shakespeare accentuates that this end the speaker is anticipating is inevitable, he reminds the reader that even though the life we have before death can seem lovely, it will ultimately bring exactly what we expect. After comparing himself to the yellow leaves on the tree in autumn, the speaker says, "In me see'st the twilight of such day/ As after the sunset fadeth in the west" (5- 6). The metaphor of the end of the day, the time before night, which is black and Stygian, shows that this is a time before death. The sunset, however, shows the potential beauty of this decline: a "fad[ing] sunset" is a stunning wash of colour, a resplendent finale of the day before the darkness of night. The speaker then continues on with the phrase, "Which by and by black night doth take away"(7). Black night symbolises death, and how it takes away the sunset that is the end of the speaker's life. His acknowledgment of the sunset and how it is swallowed up by the "black night" shows how the gorgeous, opulent hues of the gloaming are cancelled out by the hours of darkness. This imparts that the beauty of life is always consumed by death. The words "doth take away" convey night will indeed take away the beautiful sunset: and his inability to stop it. This displays the powerlessness of the speaker, and the inexorability of death. The speaker fears death, as he knows that it will eventually come and take his life, creating a sense of hopelessness, while addressing the beauty of life that decay destroys. As Shakespeare shows how stunning what will be taken from the speaker is, he also exhibits that he can be preoccupied by the thoughts of death and memories of his life. After the speaker finishes his point about night consuming the sunset, he states: "In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire/ That on the ashes of his youth doth lie" (9-10). Fire is a metaphor for his life, as throughout history flames have been a symbol of life, sustaining people since the dawn of man. The "ashes of his youth" are past years, we cremate the dead and turn them into ashes, and his youth is now gone, just like these people. The fire is "[c]onsumed with that which it was nourish'd by" (12). It will be engulfed in the ashes, like the speaker, who is entangled in the final thoughts of his youth before death. The speaker has also transitioned from "yellow leaves," which come in autumn, to "the sunset that fades in the west," to the "glowing of such fire." This reveals the expeditious shortening of time, and the speaker's realisation that death will come more quickly than he thought. He uses a sequence, beginning in autumn, which takes months to conclude, a sunset, which happens at the end of a day, to a fire, which takes mere hours to die. The succession of months, days, and hours transmits the idea of the rapid diminishment of time, and how life passes by quickly and steadily, but surely. This displays that before our demise it is quite facile to get caught up in the memories and rues of youth, and the verity that we have so little time before our unavoidable death. Though Shakespeare creates this dark, foreboding, helpless mood throughout the sonnet, he resolves it with the idea that we must love while we still have the opportunity. After the metaphor of the fire, the speaker then states, "This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong" (13). This is the volta, or the turning point; where the speaker has been leading all along. We have so little time before death that we must live and love while we can. The speaker also knows that his lover sees the inevitability of death, revealed by the phrase "this thou perceiv'st". Despite this, he or she lets the certainty of demise strengthen their love, imparted by the phrase "which makes thy love more strong," as the speaker's lover knows they are running out of time to show how much they care. The final line of the sonnet, "To love that well, which thou must leave ere long," is simple: it states that you should love what you must leave. "To love that well" means that we must love with everything we have, even if we must "leave ere long." This displays that death comes rapidly and certainly, but the feelings of sorrow and longing that the speaker experiences can be assuaged by the opportunity to express his love. Because Shakespeare combines all these elements together, he creates a poem that encapsulates the feelings about death itself.
The coming of quietus that is so definite, along with the melancholy about the end of the speaker's life, the beauty of life we leave behind, and the despair that revelling in our youth brings, leads this poem to one illation: What are we living for? If all roads lead to the same place, what is the point of living? Shakespeare evinced that his speaker lived for love, a power that the subject of his poem believed could overcome death. To truly live, we must truly love while we still have the time, as death comes more rapidly than we would think. Shakespeare put the strife, apprehension, and consternation a human being may experience before demise on the page, and this animates his words. The speaker almost seems real: he struggles with the same struggles that we do, questions the same things we do. Somehow, in this poem, Shakespeare captured emotion, and emotion is the essence of what it means to truly be
human.