Book #67: Macbeth

Book #67: Macbeth by William Shakespeare

January 7, 2014


As I write this, I have a stage production of Macbeth playing on the YouTube app on my phone. No reading of any Shakespeare work would be complete without a viewing of a performance. I've taught a couple of Shakespeare plays (Hamlet to a group of seniors; A Midsummer Night's Dream with a class of advanced 7th graders), and it's always included a read-aloud of the text, and a viewing of a production. How could it not? After all, Shakespeare was written to be watched on a stage, not to be read. But on the flip side, his word play is genius...that's what makes Shakespeare such a legend, and makes reading it on its own such a treat.

Whenever I've read Shakespeare in the past, it's always taken me a bit to get into the language before I can really start understanding what's happening. I didn't find this to be the case with this play, and I wondered why that was the case this time. Maybe I've read so many Shakespeare plays in the past that I can finally understand properly? While I've a ways to go from completing his works, I think I've gotten one essential work out of the way.

So Macbeth is one of Shakespeare most famous works. I was already familiar with the very basic premise, that Macbeth and his overly ambitious wife betrayed the king to get to the top, and that there were some witches involved. It's definitely one of Shakespeare's darker tragedies, but the end of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth doesn't feel sad like, say, the deaths of Othello and Desdemona. There really aren't any characters in this play who are totally redeemable, except maybe Macduff (who fights to help young Malcolm overthrow the traitorous Macbeth and reclaim his father's throne), and Banquo (though he also sought information from the witches, he didn't do anything to make his fortune come true...plus, he dies). You don't want Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to succeed, and you can see that, though the witches predict great things for Macbeth, his ambition will also bring about his doom.

It's interesting how often the dialogue references "being a man." Lady Macbeth emasculates her husband as often as she can, in order to drive him to action. Like, going to battle and proving his mettle there hadn't been enough proof that he was a man. But she always claimed that he could be "greater." And yet, with all the talk of "being a man," it is women who set the wheels into motion. Macbeth, on his own, had dreams and ambitions, to be sure, and he would have gone far; but without his wife to push him, he wouldn't have killed King Duncan, or seen to Banquo's death. And they both believed in what the 'weird sisters,' the three witches, had said about Macbeth becoming king.

The themes of treachery and ambition are nothing new in Shakespeare's work. The mystical elements, with the witches, is pretty unique; I read once that it's because the play is Scottish, and Scottish people of the day were superstitious and believed in such things, I guess. The witches don't have much stage time, but they are integral to the plot, and are some of the more famous characters in Shakespeare's works. The sighting of ghosts (as Macbeth is haunted by Banquo's spirit) can be seen in Hamlet, but otherwise that wouldn't be such a typical element of a Shakespeare play. Treacherous women, too, are not seen in the Shakespeare works with which I am familiar; Lady Macbeth is a unique character in herself. In the production that I'm watching, Piper Laurie (who is most famous for playing Carrie's creepy mama in the original film) is playing the evil lady, and her performance is deliciously devious. The is sexual, though Lady Macbeth desires to rid herself of her "weaker" feminine qualities (like, the conscience that would have kept her from preparing the scene of Duncan's murder). Strong female characters can be seen in some Shakespeare works, but strong and evil, though common in other works, is unique for Shakespeare in this play.

There are some lines in this play that I adore. When the bells are ringing in Act II, Scene II, as Macbeth is signaled to kill Duncan, he says of the bell, "Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell/The summons thee to heaven, or to hell." Wow! Earlier in the same scene, Banquo jokes with his son about the starless sky: "There's husbandry in heaven,/Their candles are all out." And of course, who can forget Lady Macbeth's line in Act I, Scene VII, when she is encouraging her husband to go through with the murder plot: "We fail?/But screw your courage to the sticking-place/and We'll not fail." Her first soliloquy in Act I, Scene V, she is calling up for her own courage: "...unsex me here/And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/Of direst cruelty!" (This line would go along with what I was saying about gender roles in this play). Lady Macbeth has a number of memorable lines. I have no interest in acting, but if I ever had to choose a part from a Shakespeare play to perform, it would definitely be Lady Macbeth.

It's really no wonder that Shakespeare is still being read, like 550 years later. I believe I've commented before about how the themes of Shakespeare's works are timeless, and all that, so I won't really delve into that here. It's worth noting that in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Katie had her children read a page from each of two great books: the Bible, and the complete works of Shakespeare. She believed that having them do this would help them to develop intellectually, and it would seem that she was right. To some extent, if I ever have kids, I would want to expose them to great works like Shakespeare at an earlier age. His works are, as I've said, such an important part of the very foundation of our culture that they could be connected to almost everything.