Macbeth

RSC production at the Barbican theatre, with Christopher Ecclestone as Macbeth. Possibly the best staging of the play I've seen with a superb central performance, bringing layers to the role that I hadn't noticed before. ( )

There is a commonly used structural/plotting device in drama whereby the nature of the leading characters are elucidated by their varying responses to the same event/temptation/threat. I'm not sufficient a scholar to know if this approach pre-dates Shakespeare but he certainly used it and it has certainly been employed many times since - because it can be very effective.

It's used in Julius Caesar - compare and contrast the conspirators' motivations for assassinating Caesar and it will tell you much about the varied natures of those conspirators.

Here in MacBeth it is used even more prominently - so much so that it is the responses to one act of ambiguous temptation in the first Act that forms the entire action and purpose of the play. Three people are tempted by the prophecies of the Weird Sisters. "Weird" derives a now rare meaning, "fate" from Old English "wyrd", that I am confident Shakespeare was aware of. Think about it; the Fate or Fateful Sisters. Makes perfect and terrifying sense in the context of the play.

So the three people tempted are MacBeth and Banquo, of course, since they were present for the prophecy, and Lady MacBeth, who hears it later from her husband, and stands to gain much, indirectly, if those uncanny sisters speak truth.

I feel that if the basic idea occurred to a contemporary Hollywood scriptwriter today, we'd have the story of virtuous, heroic Banquo, who would die himself whilst killing the usurper, leaving the throne to his son. Shakespeare, however, knew that a flawless hero is actually a fairly boring protagonist and instead relegated him to the secondary but crucial role of person who ignores the temptation but nevertheless reaps the reward offered in the prophecy (if founding a line of kings is any consolation for being murdered on the way to a feast hosted by your former best friend).

More interesting is the morally conflicted man who knows that the quickest way to the throne is also the worst and his ambitious wife who urges him on though she, when it comes to it, cannot do the evil deed herself.

So first we have the contrast between the good man and the bad, then we have the contrast between the initially reluctant man who goes on to commit crime after ever more brutal and heinous crime and the woman that, though she did nothing directly herself, becomes ever more remorseful and unhinged, until she can stand it no longer, her prayer to be "unsexed" having not been answered.

These contrasts reveal the Tragedy of the potentially great and good MacBeth.

I really read this in:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/30864936 ( )

LATW audio production of the Scottish play. All of the cast are adequate but none of actors really stand out (sadly not even James Marsters) - although my opinion may have been coloured by almost the entire cast using American accents. The sound effects used for scenes with the witches are excellent and add just the right tone of weirdness that these scenes require. Not a bad version of the play but not one I'd recommend as a way to experience the narrative for the first time. ( )

Othello to me was a tragedy. A man who wants to believe the best of his wife, but due to the whispering of others believes the worst in him. And even in death she does her very best to protect him still.

Macbeth was a play about one man's mission to become King. And his wife that stood by his side to make sure that came into being. If anything, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are definitely the perfect marriage. He has drive, as does she, and she will force him to do what is necessary in order to get what he and she wants.

The play begins with the end of a battle with Macbeth and we get to see how he is told constantly how brave, wonderful, and true he is (irony).

Here enter the three witches:

Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!

What is crazy though is you go from Macbeth putting down an uprising from another Thane (means a chief of a Scottish clan or a man that holds land) for trying to overthrow the King and you have everything after this dealing with Macbeth doing what he can to overthrow/murder the King so he can be King after hearing of a prophecy about how he will be King.

I don't know how you go from hearing a prophecy to hey this means I should kill the King. And I don't know how you ignore that the witches didn't say you would be a long lived King, but whatever. Apparently logic and Macbeth have never met.

FYI I still love this freaking play. It is juicy, the dialogue, the heat you get from Macbeth and his wife, how much he loves her, how much she pushes him, how them listening to each other led to their downfalls. Love it.

Apparently a couple that kills together, stays together. Or something.

Honestly after the murder of the King it becomes a question of when Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are found out. They do their best to lay the crime on others, but anyone with sense (Banquo) starts looking at these two sideways and starts to put two and two together.

And because of the initial prophecy that Banquo's descendants would become kings, you know have Macbeth and Lady Macbeth planning his murder as well.

There's a lot of murdering going on is what I am saying.

And after the murder of Banquo is when Macbeth becomes troubled by what he has done to gain the throne.

Yeah he was fine up until then, but you know, now, regrets. See this is why I have a harder time with sympathy for Macbeth. Othello though stupidly was still tricked into betraying and murdering his wife. Macbeth went ahead and did what he wanted. I know some would argue that his wife pushed him into it, I still say that he did it with very little pushing. Yes Lady Macbeth strikes the killing blow for the King after Macbeth falters, but the actions afterwards to get rid of Banquo are on him.

As per usual, we have a ghost (Banquo) wrecking havoc on the living Macbeth. I would say that the ghost was just his own conscience beginning to gnaw at him, but that's just me.

After running back to the witches for more prophecies, we have Macbeth feeling secure in the knowledge that after what the witches have told him, no man can hurt him since all men are borne of women, that forests cannot move. He ignores the warning about Macduff. After seeing once again that Banquos descendants are a huge line of kings he becomes enraged again.

What comes after this is what finally breaks Lady Macbeth. Macbeth orders all of the inhabitants of Macduff's castle to be put to death. Which includes his wife and son. All I have to say is once you bring children into it, I 100 percent just hope the rest of the movie/book/play is you getting your ass owned.

I do want to say that Macduff to me was a bit of a coward. He had to know that Macbeth was going to come knocking. So leaving his people at his mercy so he could live. Eh.

Lady Macbeth descends into madness and we have Macbeth becoming harder and crueler doing anything he can to wipe out any opposition to his rule.

When Macbeth learns of his wife's suicide, he loses it completely.

One has to wonder if she kills herself because of her guilt of what they have done, or what she has seen her husband become due to all of their machinations.

Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Of course the end comes for Macbeth. Because of course those of us who have watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Star Wars knows that prophecies often have double meanings.

So Macduff beheads Macbeth and the prophecy of Banquos descendants becoming kings comes true.

( )

We had to read this one in year ten, and I enjoyed it, although not as much as Romeo & Juliet the previous year. ( )