Macbeth

Well, seldom has an author taken a few lines out of Hollingshead, and a bare mention in The Anglo Saxon Chronicle and spun a classic play from them. This play is one of the core Shakespeare Great Plays. Read it, then read it again, see it on stage, on film, read it aloud with a group of friends, just live with it for the rest of your life. You'll feel better for doing so. ( )

What in the world can anyone say about one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies? That it is a bloodbath. No poisonings. No smotherings or stranglings. No shootings. Every death brings the killer face to face with his victim. The killer must thrust the knife or swing the sword, feeling the flesh resist then tear, hearing viscera and fluids gush then drip, and heed the shrieks and groans of the injured, the rattle of death from the dying. Few are spared, not women and children, not the elderly. Inevitably, blood flows freely, staining murdered and murderer alike.

And why?

Macbeth, a warrior, is played like a fiddle by three creepy, scuzzy gorgons. First, they tell him of an honor he knows he bears. Then they tell him of an honor he'll soon learn has been settled on him. And finally, they hook him with the notion that he could be king. Here is a warrior, by profession a killer. He can apply his job skills, make the king dead, and assume a new role. Except the King has two healthy sons (also warriors), one of whom could reasonably expect to succeed Dad in the family business. Then too, there are Macbeth's brethren in the warrior fraternity who would rightfully desire to avenge the murder of their king.

In the final scene of Act I, Macbeth has it out with himself, concluding "I have no spur/To prick the sides of my intent, but only/Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself/And falls on the other." In plainer terms, the only motivation for this murder is ambition. To him, it's not enough. "We will proceed no further in this business…" he tells his wife. But she plays that fiddle too, questioning his manhood, accusing him of cowardice. "I have given suck," she says, "and know/How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:/I would, while it was smiling in my face,/Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,/And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you/Have done to this."

Yow! His goose is cooked.

[Macbeth] is one of Shakespeare's last works. First performed four hundred years ago, in 1606, it has been performed regularly every year since (probably). Here are some famous lines:

WITCHES: Fair is foul, and foul is fair.
(Act 1 Scene 1)

MACBETH: Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
(Act 2 Scene 1)

MACBETH: Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep: the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”
(Act 2 Scene 2)

WITCHES: Double, double toil and trouble:
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
(Act 4 Scene 1)

SECOND WITCH: By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
(Act 4 Scene 1)

LADY MACBETH: Out! damned spot! One, two, — why, then ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? – Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.
(Act 5, Scene 1)

LADY MACBETH: All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
(Act 5, Scene 1)

LADY MACBETH: What’s done cannot be undone.
(Act 5, Scene 1)

MACBETH: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(Act 5 Scene 5)

You ought to read it, methinks. I dodged it for more than a half-century, but now I'm content. I'd suggest reading an edition that pairs Shakespeare's text with a contemporary "translation". The Spark Notes version I read has the original text on the left, a modern text on the facing page. Worked for me.

The play is the shortest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, without diversions or subplots. It chronicles Macbeth’s seizing of power and subsequent destruction, both his rise and his fall the result of blind ambition. Macbeth and Banquo, who are generals serving King Duncan of Scotland, meet the Weird Sisters, three witches who prophesy that Macbeth will become thane of Cawdor. ( )

No matter how many times I read/teach this play, I still love it!

Shakespeare was THE master! ( )

One of my favorite stories EVER. I love Shakespeare's language and how he writes (most) of his female characters. Lady Macbeth steals the show, I absolutely love her. She is the OG Cersei Lannister. She is so foul, conniving, manipulative, and such an iced-over monster of a woman. I want to be her when I am older. The fall into madness all the characters go through is so twisted and brilliant. The Macbeths deserved their fate, but that doesn't you can't appreciate the power and intelligence they held as a couple. One of my favorite Shakespeare stories. ( )