Jonathan Bate

A profoundly affecting play, Macbeth is Shakespeare's darkest tragedy, though perhaps not as nihilistic as the pre-Christian King Lear. Not that Macbeth's Christian era has any considerable redemptive effect on the play. There is Christian imagery throughout the play, of course, but I would contend with critics like Empson and Bloom that Shakespeare was not a particularly Christian playwright. It has hard to say anything about Shakespeare from his plays - he is the least auto-biographical show more writer in the Western tradition, one might say. He may well have been Christian (perhaps even Roman Catholic, as some have speculated) but I do not think his plays, Macbeth least of all, espouse any overt religious message. One can tack such a message onto Macbeth, if you wish, by investing Macbeth's opponents (young Malcolm, Ross, Macduff, and the other rebellious thanes of Scotland) with the ethos of 'good Christian knights', sent to kill the emissary of evil. But I would contend that this is a misguided misreading of the play. Macbeth may be morally abhorrent, but the play is closer in structure to a Sophoclean tragedy, with the focus nearly entirely on Macbeth, not on the 'avenging Christian heroes'.

Bloom contends that Macbeth is extremely horrifying not because of its disturbing imagery and actions:Titus Andronicus is much more bloody, and yet less horrifying than Macbeth, and in any case, playgoers of his time could go to Tyburn to watch bloody executions. Rather, the horror is in Macbeth's extreme interiority and his proleptic imagination, which infects the whole play, as well as those who watch or read the play. Reading Macbeth awakens anxieties in us because it makes us aware of our own propensity and capacity for evil. 'Evil' is, of course, a particularly ambiguous term nowadays, with relativism making such a strong claim to our morality. But, within the confines of world morality, few would claim that Macbeth and his wife's initial ethos of 'the ends justify the means' is not particularly terrible. Even the Macbeths realise the horror of what they have done, though it has diverging effects on the two. In any case, the though that we may be capable of atrocities is uniquely tempting in this play. Macbeth is initially a 'golden boy', though we sense the danger of his propensity for slaughter, even though it is initially in service of the monarch. I never lost my admiration for Macbeth's bravery throughout the play, though I would strongly condemn his actions. It is this dichotomy between centripetal admiration, and a concurrent centrifugal revulsion, which draws one into Macbeth's unique psychology.

Lady Macbeth is the only of other strong character in the play - the thanes and Malcolm are colourless in comparison. But she falls away after the beginning of Act III, and the play then focuses on Macbeth to the near-exclusion of everything else. This is unique in a Shakespearean tragedy - even Hamlet has his mother, uncle, and Horatio. Macbeth is left centre-stage, with his famous soliloquy on death ('Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...'). Though he is killed, we remain strangely uneasy at the end of the play. I think this is because of the above-mentioned identification with Macbeth: we fear our capabilities for evil, but, in a perverse sense, also exult in them. Even more perversely, I felt a distaste for king Malcolm and his easy morality. Perhaps I am merely a misanthropic egoist, always fearing that the 'do-gooding rabble' might come after me as well. All I can say to that is:

Stars, hide your fires!
Let not light see my black and deep desires.

More seriously (well, you judge whether I was serious previously...) is the role of the witches / weird sisters in the play. Do they control Macbeth, planting the seed of murder in his mind? Or has he always had the potential for evil in him? The text is ambiguous about this, but I suspect that Macbeth considers evil long before the witches appear. For instance, they never, ever tell Macbeth to do anything. He comes to the idea of murder all by himself, with some promptings from his wife. And, conversely, when they make predictions to Banquo, Banquo does not run off to kill the monarch. Evil (whatever you mean by that word) seems to reside in humanity itself, not in the outside universe. Which is a bit of a cop-out: the witches are, after all, in the play. Bloom says, despite his fascination with the witches, that they are nearly redundant, which I would agree with, following my interpretation of Macbeth's own culpability. But, then, why did Shakespeare feel the need to add them to the play? Was it only because James I had an inordinate interest in witches and the supernatural in general? This hardly seems like a good enough reason for such a large aspect of the play. Is it because Holinshed mentions them in his Chronicles, on which the play is based? Shakespeare often leaves out things in Holinshed which he finds extraneous. Or did Shakespeare also find witches fascinating? It could be for anyone of these reasons, but I think the last is the most intriguing.

This is, obviously, a great play. It is economical, fast-paced, and cuts to the bone of what Renaissance tragedy could do. It is also frightening, and more so the more one thinks about it. I could say much more about the play - I've left out a whole discussion on the use of humour in the Porter's scene, which Coleridge hated, but which De Quincey examined at length. I also haven't said much about the role of imagery in the play, or the pathetic fallacy of nature responding to the death of the king. Time is short, the art too long.

On a last note: thank God this play isn't as amenable to post-modern reimagings as, say, Othello or The Tempest! I hate polemical interpretations which pervert Shakespeare's plays beyond all recognition. Retellings are fine, but don't give me a Marxist-feminist-structuralist play in which Macbeth is a hero of the proletariat, who kills the factory boss, but then descends into a homo-erotic coupling with the cross-dressing 'Lady' Macbeth, who convinces him to re-exploit the poor factory workers.

Obviously, at the end, he is overthrown because of repressed longings for Malcolm, who resembles his mother. Obviously.

God, help us. show less

[The Genius of Shakespeare] - Jonathan Bate
Over the last four years I have read many plays and much poetry from, shall we say the age of Shakespeare. To be more precise the late Elizabethan period when Shakespeare wrote and had produced the first batch of his plays, before the plague hit the London theatres in 1593/4 and the publication of his longer poems. I have read much that is readily available and so plays by Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, George Peel, John Lyly, show more Thomas Lodge, Anthony Munday and that most popular playwright Mr Anonymous. I have ploughed through many of the poets and sonneteers: Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Richard Barnfield., Giles Fletcher, Henry Constable et al and so I have my own ideas as to why Shakespeare was a "Genius" in an age that could be labelled The English Renaissance.

Picking up Jonathan Bate's book "The Genius of Shakespeare" I was rather hoping that he would share his views on why he thinks Shakespeare's plays and poetry were the work of a Genius. I was looking for some sort of analysis of the words on the page. What made Shakespeare's writing at its best (and that is most of it) stand head and shoulders above his contemporaries. I had to wait until the final section of his book which was entitled "The Laws of the Shakespeare Universe" to satisfy my curiosity, however it was not until I had finished the book that I could appreciate what a finely structured piece of literary criticism Bate has produced.

I think my issues with the book were focused on the first third, where after some anecdotes Bate concentrates on looking for autobiographical evidence in the poetry and then rehearsing again the known facts of Shakespeares life, adding to this, some conjectures on the the periods where there is no written evidence. This of course leads him into the authorial controversy, in which he goes at some length to ascertain that the man born in Stratford-Upon-Avon was the Shakespeare that wrote all the plays and poetry, accredited to him. I have to say this bores me silly. I think that Shakespeare from Stratford-Upon-Avon is the author of much of what is available, but I don't care in the least if he was not. What is important is the quality of the works that are available to us. Bate also launches into the speculation on: who were the people to whom Shakespeare addressed his sonnets, who was the young aristocrat, who was the dark lady. Why oh why has so much ink been spilled over these issues, I want to shake hold of these people and say read the fucking sonnets and enjoy the wonderful poetry and write about that. Don't be an inkhorn. To be fair to Jonathan Bate he does also put the sonnets in their historical perspective, reminding his readers that they could just as well be an exercise in Elizabethan sonnet style based on Petrarch as they could be actual love poems written to or for a contemporary person.

In the first section of the book I did enjoy the chapter entitled Marlowe's ghost, where Bate concentrates on Shakespeares contemporary playwrights, paying particular attention to Marlowe, who was something of a genius himself and someone who may have provided a springboard (unwittingly of course) for Shakespeare to launch his own particular style.

Part two of the book examines Shakespeare from a historical perspective. How has his work been judged over a period of some 400 years. How have changes in fashion affected his appreciation. What influence has his work had on other artists, dramatists of course, but also musicians, philosophers, painters and more casual readers. Bate comes up with the idea of Shakespeare as a field of forces in space-time, while acknowledging he is also the chief of the dead white authors brigade.

It was the final section of the book that interested me the most. He gets down to the nitty-gritty of the words on the page. Shakespeare's art is all about the condensing of his ideas in memorable words and phrases, this condensing also leads to ambiguity. It is the ambiguity that fuels the imagination, that brings readers back to the plays and poems time and time again. It also has given the work an appeal to readers over the time span since Shakespeare wrote his masterpieces: different modes of life, different fashions, different philosophies, different movements for example the Romantics have been able to relate to the plays and the poems. Bate gives examples of alternative readings of the plays and how directors can emphasise different sections, phrases, or even right down to individual words to turn preconceived thoughts on their head; something that Bate calls the truth of aspectuality. The fact that Shakespeare was an actor, and a producer of plays as well as a writer and collaborator gave him the ammunition to ensure that the plays worked as performances. Bate has used the idea of a 'performative truth' to encompass this idea. A more mundane reason for the success of Shakespeare's plays is their availability. The first folio printed after Shakespeares death in 1623 contained the 36 principal plays, collections such as this were not normal, many playwrights suffered through plays being lost or not even printed at all.

The final section satisfied my reasons for reading Bate's book, but it also brought into focus the structure of the whole thing, which was not immediately obvious to me. Bate is attempting to provide an analysis of all aspects of Shakespeare's genius. His education, his experience, the effect of his work on other artists, the adaptability of his plays, the raising of his profile over the time period and finally why his work can be considered the work of a genius. Occasionally Bate disappears briefly down some rabbit hole or other, but one cannot accuse him of lacking in ideas or insight. An excellent critique of an enormous subject and so 5 stars. show less

I'm so very glad to have this as part of my collection. I adore the layout and aims of Bate & Rasmussen's RSC Complete Works, even if I ultimately believe the more all-encompassing scholarship of the Ardens is the pinnacle in Shakespearean research. But every home should have a complete works, and the RSC is top-notch.

Of course, a "Collaborative Works" is always going to be divisive among reviewers, and my own mind is both rapturous and doubtful about this edition. The plays herein are show more freshly edited and lovingly presented, with a vast amount of detail about the authorship question, stylistic analysis, recent productions, and an overall view of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. (One of the most important changes in scholarship in the last 50 years is a renewed willingness to see Shakespeare as a creative working in an active theatre industry, rather than some gloomy tower-bound "author" creating plays.) While I'm academically conservative, it is true that the academic establishment has a tendency to grow defensive against change, and I welcome the editors keeping Shakespearean scholarship on its toes. Some of the plays here almost undoubtedly have the Bard's blood running through them, and it's great to see them being revived.

If I have any issues, it's really only that there could have been MORE. The editors openly admit that "The London Prodigal" is very probably not by Shakespeare. I'm completely fine with that. As they point out time and time again, this notion that plays by Shakespeare are instantly valid for our day and age while others are simply archaic is absurd. These plays are vibrant and enjoyable, as well as reminders of the great variety and versatility of the theatre of an entire age. So I suppose my shame is, after reading the introduction and reasons why some plays were omitted... well, why not include a few more? Make this a brand new "Works", to bring so many plays back into people's homes?

Anyhow, that's a slightly ambitious point. I'm very happy to have this. Bate & Rasmussen may have drawn the net too wide in search of Shakespeare (even if I think it is too narrow overall) but it's surely better to encompass all of Shakespeare plus some assortments, than to omit some of his words simply out of some sense of tradition? show less

A fascinating book and a very good read. And a good basis for controversy!
One reviewer on LibraryThing ("proximity1") attacks it fiercely and at extraordinary length - in truth an essay, rather than the longest book review I've ever come across. "proximity 1" seems totally opposed to the view espoused by Bate, that the works of "Shakespeare" were actually written by the grammar school boy from Stratford. Despite its length his review seems to take little interest in the rest of Bate's show more rather more interesting perspective as to why and how, "Shakespeare", whoever it was, became and remains such a collossus of world literature.
For a much more balanced - though critical - review, see Peter Berek in the Shakespeare Quarterly, Spring 2000.
Bate certainly writes with passion and fervour and - for those not of an already strong and fixed view - his stuff about who was the author is entertaining. But its the rest of the book, reporting on and interpreting how perspectives and insights on "Shakespeare" have evolved through the centuries, that most non-specialist readers will most enjoy. show less