Macbeth Soliloquy Glossary: She should have died hereafter (5.5.17-28)

a poor player (26)

i.e., a pitiful actor.

"The emblem writers of Shakespeare's day often pictured life as a stage and men and women as actors. Shakespeare drew freely from these writers as he found use for their thought and teaching. But in this passage one might easily find traces of the sadness that must have been in his own thought as his mind dwelt for a moment on the breaks in the ranks of his own little company and the actors who had strutted their little hour upon the stage of the Globe theatre and now were heard no more" (Coles 270).

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Reference

Coles, Blanche. Shakespeare Studies: Macbeth. New York: AMS Press, 1969.

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