Macbeth (1623)

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SPOILERS ahead. Yup, the whole play. If you haven't seen it, get thee to a library or your film dispensing mechanism of choice; there is most likely a DVD (or what have you) close at hand and you can watch it tonight. This one is on the 'everybody must see it' list. (Reading the text is great, but seeing it counts. It is a play, after all.)

Seen it? Great. On to the review.
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Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
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.

Ah, Macbeth. The bleak. The dark. The blood. The blindness and the confusion. Shakespeare invented grimdark. It's all here. The prophecy left in the murderer's hands. Not a hero in sight. The world running red and dirty. The end that neither explains nor alleviates the preceding darkness; indeed, alone of Shakespeare's tragedies, the end that presages further chaos and bloodshed, with Donalbain waiting in the wings as he is to murder Malcom.

So why don't I love this thing? This is my second time through Macbeth, and I have to say I was really hoping it would rise in my esteem quite a lot. (I feel like I owe this play my esteem, or at least a passionate response.) But no. Zip. Zilch. Nada. What gives?

Partly it's that the language in this play is just broken, and I don't mean that in a cool, 'off the hook' kind of way. This is the play that gave us "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow," and that released the phrases 'one fell swoop,' 'charmed life,' 'sorry sight,' 'be all and end all,' and 'come what come may' into the wild. But there is also plot confusion from the get-go: in the opening scenes, Macbeth "unseamed [Cawdor] from the nave to th' chops." Immediately after, Cawdor somehow still needs executing. In the next scene, Macbeth is surprised that the man he mortally wounded is dead. (Many finer folk than I have commented on the issues of time in the play, but there is no way to blame it on theme, in my own opinion. Even the Bard nods, though he may have been helped along by a coauthor here.) Added to this, there are several passages in the whole work that simply make no sense, not even with line notes. So, so frustrating.

Partly it's that the human interest portion of the plot does not really interest me. Yes, the witches give Macbeth the prophecy, but it is Macbeth who gives short shrift to his own conscience and forges ahead with murder. (He actually points out that if the prophecy were true, it should come to pass with no interference from him.) Yes, the Lady (WOW, the Lady:

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry “Hold, hold!”

SO great!) eggs him on, but truly, Macbeth wants her to. They each feed the other's ambition without fail. As with any tragic protagonist, Macbeth's downfall is of his own making, and I just don't find his ambition to be anything but banal. The man murders the king, just like Cawdor wanted to before him, just like Donalbain will after him. Kings, they get murdered at this time in history. Why is Macbeth so worthy of our attention?

And it is Macbeth who gets our attention. He speaks nearly a third of the words in the play (see this Wolfram Alpha analysis of Macbeth). The Lady rapidly fades after the initial murder, pushed immediately out of the action as Macbeth engineers Banquo's death, then withering away to her sleepwalking scene. (Oh, I get the thematic crossing of strength from her to him, but I miss her so much once she fades out!) He whines, he whinges, he grows old in his evil, he struts and frets. But in the end, he gets exactly what he signed up for when he put the knife in Duncan, dying a small tyrant, surpassed by Banquo's issue. (Malcom is not wrong about 'this dead butcher' in my reading.) Don't get me wrong; he is moving and beautiful at times; his petty weaknesses are easy to identify with. But he is not big enough to fill the play. Is the tragedy that he could have been different? I find I don't care. He wasn't.

So, not my favorite Shakespeare. But give it a try, as it may be yours. Many people like it far better than I do. (If you are going to read it, I highly recommend this Arden Third Series edition, as the line notes will be indispensable to figuring out what the heck is going on. The edition would easily be five stars if critical editions were separated out under GR's mysterious rules.) ( )

This was the first one I read. I was astounded by the beauty of his language. ( )

The moral to the story. "Lie with Dogs and you will wake up with fleas" ( )

Well, I LOVED the witches. Their rhyming and incantations. And just for being awesome. Other than that, I found the language interesting as Shakespeare usually is, but the plot was a bit dull and bloody to my taste. Overall, interesting, but not a favorite for me among Shakespeare's plays. I do generally prefer his comedies. In tragedies everyone dies and I don't really like anyone... ( )

Too dark to be so beautiful.. ( )