Angriest Rice Cooker Director’s Cut 26–On sound and fury
This comic was basically an excuse to print that speech from Macbeth, just because I love it so damn much. Macbeth is probably my favorite Shakespeare play, although that may be just because I’ve never read or seen Hamlet (crazy, I know). Part of it is also that I read it fairly young and it had a pretty strong impact. I think the part that really makes me love it is this scene and the scenes after it. Macbeth gives this speech after being informed that his wife has committed suicide, driven by the guilt of the couple’s horrible deeds. Even though Macbeth is a truly bad fucker, I love the way he responds when his world collapses around him. I feel that somehow, even before he learns that Macduff was not “of woman born” and therefore not subject to the prophesy that protects Macbeth, Macbeth knows that the fight doesn’t really matter. He’s beyond tormented by his evil deeds to simply accepting that he is irrevocably damned. When confronted by Macduff, his response is “Of all men else I have avoided thee:/But get thee back; my soul is too much charged/With blood of thine already.” I think you could read that as something of a taunt, “I killed your family, get back or I’ll kill you too.” But coming on the heels of the “sound and fury” speech, it reads to me as a kind of grim numbness. He’s not apologizing for the horrors he’s committed; they’re way too big for that. The only thing he can do is try not to kill the son. Macbeth is past caring what happens to himself, and it’s not just because he believes himself unkillable. When Macduff shows that he is not “of woman born,” Macbeth admits that hearing this “hath cow’d my better part of man!” but fights rather than yields, even though I think he knows he is going to die. There’s something beautiful in his fatalism, and for me it starts with this speech. Anyway, I took the lines and added some rice cooker angst and presto! comic. I actually wanted to put more of the speech in, but that was all that fit and still more or less make sense by itself. Here’s the whole thing:
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
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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