If nothing else from this past weekend, I will never forget the experience of performing the “Tomorrow” speech. Not just standing there speaking memorized lines; just letting all the emotions flow through me and inform my voice, and being in that moment.

I’ve reread my first crack at interpreting the speech and I can see more clearly how this thing slides right into the scene. The first line, “She should have died hereafter”, is six iambic feet. Greenblatt and the other editors of my Norton Shakespeare stick the words at the end of the line, leaving a total pause of eight metrical feet between Seyton’s line “The Queen, my lord, is dead” and Macbeth’s first line. I was right about the pause, and it felt right on stage; I was not so right about delivering that first line quietly.

Macbeth has just found out, here, that his wife and partner has committed suicide. When I was up there letting this speech rip, I had in myself and in my voice despair and grief, at losing a loved one to suicide; guilt, that I should somehow have prevented it; anger, for all the injustices in my life, big or small; it was anything but quiet.

I can’t tell if it was overacting. All I can tell is that it changed slightly every time I performed it, but it was true to the moment. Performing this speech is not so much about the shoulds and the how-tos; it’s about letting the character’s emotions speak.