First of all: I noticed that, summarizing Holinshed, I inadvertendly got into structuralism which I liked initially at uni but then rejected because I noticed that I just forced structure on text that was already structured, or, if I defined structure that was there, this was mostly just redundant. Now I noticed by chance the real usefulness of structuralism. It only engenders new information if it is used for COMPARING different texts. So, of course I kind of forced structure on “Holinshed” – which might be structured according to totally different categories! – but using it to understand a fictional text that is based on it shows why I felt the inclination to structure it in this way. Using Holinshed, I can nail it why I now regard “Macbeth” as “history” – or rather “historical tragedy”, with both of these categories blended to perfection. I also see more clearly why I was stubbornly barking up the wrong tree when it came to tragedy because I didn’t take the political issues seriously enough - which I now do as I think I know what they are. And I think I did a step forward on the matter of EVIL – the key issue of the play in my opinion. I will come to that …
This post will be rather chaotic, I feel, because I am still brainstorming. And it will need an awful lot of patience because I always discover that I should deal with another issue FIRST before I can deal with the one at hand and so on … So, I’ll just tackle them in the order they come to mind and go back to the issue of the weird sisters in my personal production of “Macbeth”. As to establish the identity of the sisters would require to make up my mind about EVIL first, it will have to be provisional. I brought up the question if they could be English spies with Claudia, and she said that they couldn’t because the English are not evil – in the context of the play - which certainly is a valid argument. My first idea was that they might be Norse spies, and I discarded it on the spot. Asking myself why I don’t like it at all instantly lead me deep into my quest for the nature of EVIL. At first glance, the Norse are a much better candidate for harbouring “instruments of darkness” because, in the context of the play, they are the arch-enemy. These Norse invasions where a great threat and ultimate catastrophy at the time (in 1034!), and people living in the early seventeenth century in England were still much closer to this than we are. Nowadays “Vikings” are cool, at the time they were so not! Nonetheless, I don’t think that they really were an important contemporary issue. As to the play: the Norse threat is already over when it begins and the tragedy is set up. More importantly still: the Norse represent danger from the OUTSIDE. The true nature of evil as an element of tragedy is INTRINSIC. This is why I always feel that explanations like war or social inequality – though they might be part of the dynamics! – are falling short.
Of course – and this is the great thing about them – the weird sisters can be whatever we want them to be on the stage (apart from witches!): binmen, transvestites, refugees, mythical beings, homeless people, or children – as long as they are part of an explanation I can take seriously. It seems that the REQUIREMENT, in my case, is that they – in their main function as “instruments of darkness” – have to be seen to set into motion the workings of evil in the play. Apart from being highly entertaining, they have to be GENUINELY THREATENING, and this is a high bar – almost impossible in fact! – to set on a stage. Apparently, I have decided to take EVIL in “Macbeth” extremely seriously – as serious as buckets of blood, but this would only be an indicator. (Blood is red because it's a colour that gets our attention – or is it the other way round?) As an “explanation” it falls way too short. The “weird sisters” instead have great potential as a metaphor. So: really serious AND entertaining, how do we do that? Fashionably, I seem to have opted for the action movie version.
I am now quite sure that my idea that the “weird sisters” might be spies – or SECRET AGENTS, which is what they actually are concealing their identity to manipulate people! – comes from my involvement with “Spooks” (the BBC series) which I watched countless times. I always feel that, if we want to REALLY understand a phenomenon we think we know everything about, like EVIL, there is nothing like a change of perspective. In fact, people like me know nothing at all about evil because we are fortunate not to have had first-hand experience of it. That’s what all these “violent” films and tv programs are for: to enlighten us about it, but most of the time this is just pretence because they are usually designed to keep evil ON THE OUSIDE. A threat to “normality” and family life the good side has to fight off. This seems to be a requirement for them to be deemed entertaining, but it is not. For me, the fascination of “Spooks” springs from these people having to get involved with evil – not just fight it! - for the sake of the “greater good”. Nobody would think of Tom Quinn (played by Matthew Macfadyen) as an evil or even shady character. He is a genuinely good guy who loves his girlfriend and her daughter and has their best interest at heart. If anything, he is MORE moral than average people. On the other hand, lying and killing dangerous people is part of his job description. It is not an uncommon predicament for “action heroes”, but the perspective is somehow completely different because evil cannot be kept on the outside. It invariably infects their life and who they are as people. One of the most extreme moments, in my opinion, is when Danny Hunter (played by David Oyelowo) – who is actually a sweet guy and a genuinely good person! - finds himself in a situation nobody can prepare for. He has to murder a man, who might be disgusting and dangerous but no threat to him personally, in his sleep. This was one of these rare occasions where I got a bit sick watching - morally, not literally like the character. And my favourite character is Ros Myers anyway, probably because it doesn’t even make sense to ask, in her case, if she is good or evil. She seems to be in a completely different category of “human”. Nonetheless there is no doubt that she is on the “good” side. There is one type of spy to which all these characters ultimately belong: they are “clerk” spies who are loyal to their country and would always put the good of the nation above even their own lives. This is what “redeems” them, whatever they do. My “sisters” would of course belong to the other kind: people who are doing this basically out of self-interest and – not to forget! – for the thrill of it. The kind that usually are double agents. For whom? God knows … except that – metaphorically speaking! – in this case it would be the devil.
So – I know now WHY my weird sisters turned out to be spies. The next question is if they could be English spies. Under the preliminaries I have just established, I feel that they can, though I wouldn’t make it a main issue because on the stage things easily become convoluted, and it might send the wrong message. My next project – if I was a producer, that is – might be a “Macbeth” film or mini series which would start with an ingenious idea from Claudia: the weird sisters, respectively (double) agents, on the payroll of the English king, “turning” the Thane of Cawdor. My point is: If it was a film production, I would want to be much more specific about the historic background as it would be set in 1034 and would have a lot of tall, bearded Norse warriors in it. (Love them!) And an English king laying plans for a future invasion of Scotland probably quite early on. Of course, Shakespeare didn’t want to dwell on this but he is faithful to Holinshed in this point and doesn’t seriously want us to believe that King Edmund is taking Malcolm in and furnishing him with the means to invade Scotland solely from the goodness of his heart. At least I would be sorely disappointed in him, if he did! - But that’s just POLITICS – not a question of good and evil in the first place. “Shakespeare” I always regard as this genuinely political battlefield where no opposing side or different truth is concealed or left out. The more the merrier – or the more entertaining! Good and evil doesn’t come into this, it’s a different sphere. But “Macbeth” – which I always envisaged as this straightforward play, compared with “Hamlet” or “Lear”, where I always think I understand everything – has developed into this rather uncomfortable and dark space where these two spheres clash with deadly precision. This is the reason why it is the PERFECT tragedy, in my opinion. All this political complexity AND the workings of the human stuff - ambitions, strength and weaknesses - lead to this singular ESCALATION of events that HAS to occur in this way and which nobody has the power to stop. With our “sisters” at the heart of it, wielding their “crucible”, making everything worse. It is this FATALITY that is so endlessly fascinating, not least because we see it constantly at work in our own world.
Not surprisingly, my brainstorming landed me in the middle of the text-vortex too soon. There are more tedious points to be cleared up first. They will be about where and why Shakespeare deviated from Holinshed – or where he pointedly used stuff from Holinshed that doesn’t seem to make sense in the first place. Basically, it’s about the contemporary issues on which the comparison with Holinshed sheds some light. I don’t really know why I tend to label these issues as tedious. Maybe because – from a 21st century point of view! - they seem to get in the way of the play reaching its full potential. But I know that this is unfair. In the case of “Macbeth” the culmination of contemporary issues has a name: KING JAMES I. And I don’t really like him … (Who does?) Nonetheless, without him, my favourite play might never have been written at all or might have turned out completely different. Here is why:
THE WEIRD SISTERS AS WITCHES
In fact, I had this rather complicated semantic bundle of the weird sisters as “Fates” and witches disentangled at length already. As “Shakespeare” isn’t really big on supernatural beings, it is unlikely, in my opinion, that the weird sisters would have become witches – and thus have figured so prominently as “instruments of DARKNESS” - were it not for King James’s interest in witchcraft and the book he had written about it. (I haven’t read the book, it might contain more direct proof.) As goddesses and witches are a fairly long stretch apart, there is a semantic breach that leads to all kinds of consequences I am constantly struggling with. It just doesn’t “add up”. Nonetheless, I see it as a major achievement to have thus brought the issues of FATE and EVIL together, even though I don’t think it was deliberate and still haven’t quite worked out why.
WHY BANQUO AND MACBETH COULDN’T HAVE BEEN BEST PALS
Another issue closely related to King James doesn’t seem equally important, but I recently discovered that Claudia felt the same about it. Therefore it is likely that people will be asking this question: Why couldn’t Macbeth and Banquo be best pals? In fact, Claudia always took it that they were, and I did too, in a way. In my case the idea probably came from the “Shakespeare Retold” with James McAvoy as Joe Macbeth, a chef whose co-worker and best buddy is also the one he has later killed by a hired hand while he is out biking with his little son. I loved the idea, of course, because it is SO DARK. As I know Shakespeare, he usually would have built on this, more so as Holinshed clearly states that Banquo was the chief supporter of Macbeth in his rebellion against King Duncan, and I have ample proof how closely Shakespeare read Holinshed. It would have been such an obvious choice: the both of them having been fighting side by side against the invader … But it couldn’t be. I had noticed already, reading the text closely, that Shakespeare subtly rejects this idea by putting a bit of distance between Macbeth and Banquo from the start. He seems more intimate with the King as well than Macbeth, even though Duncan seems to see Macbeth as the main achiever. But the first encounter with the King conveys more personal warmth in his exchange with Banquo whereas the relationship with Macbeth is more formal. I also always wondered why this idea hasn’t been realized in any of the productions I have seen, apart from the “Shakespeare Retold”. Basically, they were right. Banquo and Macbeth couldn’t be too chummy in “Shakespeare” because Banquo was regarded as the ancestor of King James. According to Wikipedia, Banquo, the Thane of Lochaber, is a fictitious person, but at the time there was a family tree linking King James and the Stewarts to Banquo and his son Fleance. This was, of course, of chief interest to Shakespeare who even tried to cram in the chapter in Holinshed about Fleance and James’s ancestry via the rather awkward lining up of Banquo and his innumerable descendants in the “cauldron scene”. It is also the point where the play might have been part of political “propaganda”. The Stewarts actually needed a bit of patching up of their genealogy, as their ancestry – unlike the one of the victor Malcolm in “Macbeth” who belongs to that ancient line of Scottish kings we read about in Holinshed! – was obscure. They actually were the House of the Stewards of these kings until the ancient line died out and the stewards took over. Banquo and Fleance had to be invented to fill the gap. Shakespeare didn’t make them up, but he made a point of it. - As my personal production of “Macbeth” would be entirely contemporary, James I wouldn’t come into it, not even indirectly, and Banquo and Macbeth might be as chummy as the actors might want them to get. I even think that, in this way, one could make more of the moments where Banquo subtly distances himself from Macbeth … But there is, in my opinion, a much more fundamental impact King James had on the play. He is actually where we can nail a semantical shift throughout history.
KING JAMES AND THE NEW BRITAIN
Reading Holinshed really made me aware of these long periods in history that are just repetitive. The wheel of fortune grinding round and round and, after a terrible amount of bloodshed and suffering, we are exactly where we were before – at best! If there is change, it is gradual and subtle and might reveal its potential many years or even centuries later – like the instalment of a “Prince of Cumberland”. From this perspective, the big changes that lead to a new state of affairs entirely are few and centuries apart. One of these certainly was the ascension of the Scottish King James I to the English throne, putting an end to the age-old bloody rivalry between England and Scotland that was such a persistent cause of indissoluble predicaments, bloodshed and suffering. I think that this was genuinely felt at the time as a respite and a step forward into a better and brighter future, leaving the latest traumatic episode of the execution of James’s own mother, Mary Queen of Scots, behind. PEACE, finally … I even imagine there might have been a sense of the new BRITAIN that effectively started when the two biggest nations on the British Isles finally joined together. Before that, Britain had just been some kind of tale from the past where native Britons and Romans fought one another and King Arthur’s knights fought dragons and mythical beings. Suddenly it had become a REALITY. I really had to “conjure up” this spirit to be able to imagine that “Macbeth” might have been something else, to begin with, than the darkest, most fatalistic tragedy. At the time, some of the worst political issues regarding England and Scotland finally appeared to be solved. So, basically, “Macbeth” must have been intended as a “celebratory issue”. Of course, there is something very important about the Elizabethans I will never really understand, but to celebrate the expectations of a bright future with a gruesome, bloody tragedy seems to have been just what they liked. Still, all this darkness must have been felt as the background against which the present and future could be made to shine more brightly. The wheel of fortune never stops – nobody knew this better than Shakespeare! – but it creaks to a halt from time to time like the Ferris wheel, and to be then on the top is the best view on life you will ever get. So – celebrate away!!!
Knowing the future, naturally, we wouldn’t want to celebrate. My best memory about the DocX “Macbeth” – apart from Indira Varma as Lady Macbeth – was this big, brewing darkness like the gathering of a really vicious storm. No wonder I am scared of the future, of Britain or Europe or the world, the way things are looking right now, though there is this inextinguishable hope that, some day, we will be back on top ... At the moment, “we” are definitely on the way down, probably already further than we realize.
“When shall you three meet again?”
“Oh, we already have, a while ago! You just haven’t noticed.”
