The moment I focused on the DARKNESS, “Macbeth” seemed to have come full circle for me. There must be so many people who love this play and know it really well – I already know two of them personally! – but, even if it was possible to find out why, it is probably for all kinds of reasons. And this is potentially disappointing – a bit like the (non-)relationship I have with Tolkien enthusiasts. Being one myself, I don’t want anything to do with them, assuming they are all fantasy fans … I suppose it’s not as bad with “Macbeth”, that there must be a “common denominator” after all, but I cannot know this. And I even know I am being weird and condescending, given how little I understood my favourite play all this time.
One of the few things I understood is that I love this play because, in my eyes, it’s the perfect TRAGEDY. So, I always assumed this to be the “common denominator”. I realize that I still do, but there are questions attached. First question: What do I even mean by it? (And, by the way, isn’t this a perverse reason for loving the play? I think I will come to that …) But there is still one more fundamental issue: Is it even TRUE?
On the surface, it’s an easy to answer question. For one thing, it says so on the title page of the first folio: “The Tragedie of Macbeth”. If I dig just a bit deeper, it gets complicated. First of all, it is highly improbable that Shakespeare himself made up the title. I bet, when the play was produced, people referred to it as “Macbeth”, exactly as we do today. It just doesn’t look good on a title page. Besides, intent, as I often wrote, is problematic. It can almost never be proven and should therefore be disregarded. But in this context it is not that simple. The question if Shakespeare intended “Macbeth” to be a tragedy might be ultimately undecidable, but has to be born in mind as a historical issue. The Macbeths might just have been villains, in an Elizabethan context, committing a crime against humanity and divine law and getting punished accordingly. This is clearly the story, and, as such: NOT a tragedy!
As to the first folio, I leafed through it – online! – and there is an abundance of “tragedies”, from “Richard III” to “Romeo and Juliet” and beyond. The term “tragedy” on the title page isn’t much use, except for channelling people’s expectations. Basically, tragedies are the ones where they die, comedies where they get married. This is obviously not the meaning I intended with my emphatic use of the concept.
I won’t bother with the theory of tragedy, although I might write a few sentences about Greek and modern tragedy later to extrapolate my point. I don’t remember who wrote that Shakespeare didn’t follow any rules – which I personally think is crap. In my opinion, he adapted the rules of contemporary theatre practice highly successfully, and transcended them, highly successfully, when he had to. Not surprisingly, he disregarded each and every rule 18th century classicists forced on Greek tragedies in order to make them fit THEIR OWN ideas about solemn greatness and noble simplicity. I am afraid they would have found real Greek theatre shockingly vulgar, garish, and mundane, whereas Elizabethans might have liked it. So much about the problem of rules made up post factum. I don’t say that the “classicist” analysis is entirely without merit, but it is mostly unnecessary for answering my question. “Tragedy” might not be exactly “in our genes”, but it certainly is in our basic social make-up. It’s all about us being individuals WITHIN a society – which we have always been, no matter how much the content of this relationship might have changed.
Thinking about the adaptations of Greek tragedies I have seen recently - “Antigone” with Jodie Whittaker and Christopher Eccleston on “National Theatre at Home” and “Medea” with Sophie Okonedo at the SohoPlace Theatre – made me ask the question why these antique plays STILL work as tragedies. Of course they are heavily modernized – so that we don’t notice that the characters’ predicaments are partly, or even entirely, predicaments we don’t understand anymore, or understand differently. Greek tragedy was “fate driven”, whereas we live in a time of individual guilt and responsibility. As a rule, it shouldn’t be compatible. The remark I just made about Elizabethans and Greek tragedy was part polemic, but it gave me a new insight. Unfortunately, the more I think about Greek, Elizabethan and “modern” tragedy, the more complicated it becomes. Elizabethan tragedy might be so much closer to Greek tragedy in exactly one point. I recently streamed an aesthetically fascinating production of “Othello” by the National Theatre where the set consists of big stairs like an auditorium or amphitheatre with people sitting on them and reacting (mutely) to what is going on on the stage. I found this fascinating because I think it is exactly about this: the feature Greek and Elizabethan theatre had in common and modern theatre has lost – no matter how much “classicists”, like Schiller, and later generations, tried to conjure it: A NECESSARY public function.
To begin with, Greek tragedy must have served a completely different purpose compared to contemporary tragedy (– if it even exists anymore. But this is another issue; it certainly exists spread among different media, though hardly anybody sits down to write a tragedy for the stage. We still go to the theatre, though, to see “modernized” tragedies, be it by Sophocles or Arthur Miller.) Greek theatre was part of a public ceremony and - among other purposes – must have had a direct impact on making people conform to values and believes held by the ruling elite. I suppose this worked because the audience was entertained, aesthetically overwhelmed by great rhetoric, and – now I come to the thing that has been, and always will be, the same – strengthened in their sense of “belonging” because they became EMOTIONALLY engaged. Even though Antiquity might not have had a concept of individuality in our sense of the word, texts like the “Ilias” or Sophocles’ tragedies are full of rather violent emotions “getting in the way”. I suppose that theatre – especially tragedy! – was just ace at reconciling people emotionally with their fate or “the general cause”. To be dealt with properly, feelings have to have an outlet, the individual must be allowed to mourn and rant over the cruelty and randomness of fate. The more extreme the cruelty and imposition shown on the stage, the better it works. And then there is the chorus to explain it all and “rein” the feelings “in”; to make sure that the heartbreaking story is not “misunderstood” and feelings get dangerously “misapplied”. From a modern point of view, it is hard to understand that “Antigone” didn’t start a riot, but this cannot have been the intention.
It's the Greek version of “catharsis”, as I understand it. In a way, we still have it – with different signs. Elizabethan public theatre must have been very different from Greek theatre because it worked on a commercial basis, quite like modern West End theatres, though an urban public, comprising all social classes, certainly was more of a reality than - as in modern times - an aesthetic construct. That means that “tragic” issues would have been defined and received very differently from what we are used to. And, to complicate the matter still further: “Shakespeare” was probably not JUST Elizabethan theatre but already contains a big step towards modern theatre – with a “realistic” approach towards human nature and emotions, partly even beyond the classicists! A step that is quite difficult to assess from where we are standing because it is about what Shakespeare – and the people producing his plays - might have INTENDED. I am mostly being polemic when I am expressing my belief that Shakespeare knew more about psychology than Freud, but it might actually be true. I suppose we tend to underestimate the public function and disciplinary impact, but theatre was not DIRECTLY controlled by the authorities – especially not by the church! This meant that an unprecedented space for individual thinking and feeling had been opened which Shakespeare certainly exploited to its limits. The possibility of uncontrollable feelings running freely must have been one of the issues that made theatre so suspect in the eyes of certain authorities.
The ultimate reason, though, that “tragedy” is such a successful and timeless concept is that WE are the ones to decide. It plays on OUR ability to feel and empathize to our heart’s content – that is as extremely as we like, and still feel good about it. So, IF we are doing this, we CANNOT be wrong about “Macbeth” being a tragedy – and are unlikely to be entirely wrong about it having been INTENDED as a tragedy. (Very important point for me, though probably highly contestable!) Next important point – and the bit where it gets extremely interesting! – is that, as long as I am doing it only “hypothetically” = as long as it hasn’t actually HAPPENED for me watching a production of “Macbeth”, I haven’t proven my point. I remember to have been partly pleased with the Christopher Eccleston “Macbeth” but also felt that it wasn’t yet “perfect” tragedy, like “The Crucible” with Richard Armitage or my most recent “Othello” at the Sam Wannamaker Playhouse.
I shall watch the Christopher Eccleston Macbeth again on DVD – to check - and I hope we will make the David Tennant “Macbeth” in London – though my hopes are not that high that it will be “the one” for me. I don’t know if I really had high hopes for Ralph Fiennes – if I had, I suppressed them as usual – but I didn’t think it impossible that he would surprise me. David Tennant will be a more INTERESTING Macbeth, that’s already certain, but I am not optimistic that he will take the matter any further in the direction I INTEND. Maybe he will do the impossible and finally convince ME that I got it wrong? - The most intriguing thing about “Macbeth” might even be that I have now seen FIVE acclaimed actors playing the character in a theatre production and have been partly convinced only by one: Sean Bean (awful! – and boring), Antony Sher (boring and wrong), Rory Kinnear (boring and nondescript, apart from one scene), Christopher Eccleston (not boring and basically RIGHT, but not sufficiently “tragic”), Ralph Fiennes (boring AND wrong!). I haven’t seen Kenneth Branagh, but according to Claudia he wasn’t exactly exciting either, and I add Michael Fassbender as the most recent Macbeth on screen (totally without depth, boring, and WRONG!) (I left out James McAvoy – my favourite Macbeth so far – but this was in the “Shakespeare Retold” and therefore not quite the same league.) So, SEVEN in total and SIX entirely unconvincing. Why, instead of doubting all these eminent actors, do I not concede that I might be the one who got it wrong?
There is a reason. Two, to be precise. First, apart from Christopher Eccleston, they were all BORING. I never read any reviews because, if I do, I have to take them seriously = think about what might be “behind” them, and this is too time-consuming. Claudia does, and she said that Ralph Fiennes wasn’t universally dismissed – nor was Christopher Eccleston universally acclaimed! - but to get at the expectations behind this is actually very difficult because critics are astonishingly unaware that their point of view is subjective, let alone reveal their own motives. But if I am sitting there, in the theatre, knowing the text by heart, being bored to death by Ralph Fiennes playing it – whereas I am fascinated by Indira Varma playing her part, and have been mesmerized by Chris Eccleston’s approach to the text, it cannot just be ME!
And that’s the second reason. I KNOW that it’s NOT JUST ME. Even though I think now that Claudia and I have rather a different approach to the character of Macbeth and probably to the play, we both disliked Sean Bean as Macbeth, were both bored by Rory Kinnear (- apart from the one scene we both liked!), didn’t think a lot about Michael Fassbender, would probably have agreed about Kenneth Branagh, and both felt that Ralph Fiennes was weak and wrong … Both of us have not yet found “their” Macbeth. And I would be mightily surprised if we were the only lovers of this play who share this predicament.
It is not even likely, though, that we would be persuaded by the same actor – or, if this ever happened, for the same reasons. But this is not necessary for finally establishing “Macbeth” as a tragedy because, “on this” - our! – “bank and shoal of time” tragedy must needs be more PERSONAL and subjective than it was centuries ago. I think this became entirely clear for me for the first time when we discussed the issue over breakfast last Saturday, and I know now exactly in what way the discomfort I uttered in the beginning of this post is completely warranted: People might like “Macbeth” for all sorts of reasons, and tragedy might not even be one of them. But even if it is – and this is not good news for people who like rules, myself included! – why and how they are experiencing the play as a tragedy might be as different. I usually hate it when people call refugees drowning in the Mediterranean or people being killed in an earthquake a “tragedy”, and I thought I hated it for semantic reasons – which I do! - but what I really hate about it is the insincerity. At least I always ASSUME that people reach for the STRONGEST EMOTIONAL CATEGORY they have to pretend they are feeling something whereas, in reality, that’s just their way of not having to think about what it REALLY is. I am still convinced that this is the case most of the time, but I cannot KNOW this! They might actually be expressing a feeling. (And – knowing myself now as I do! – I might well be on the safe side to assume that they are?)
Having come so far on the issue of tragedy, the time might finally have come for looking into one of the big questions that came on the table in the Hudson Fish & Chips in London - apart from great haddock – and a few times before that: WHAT’S WRONG WITH (THE CHARACTER OF) MACBETH?
