“I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked!”, or: how to make the worst of your career

I impulsively chose this line from “Macbeth” as a headline, I think, first of all because it is such a great example of what is so special about Shakespeare to the present day – but even more so compared with contemporary plays like the “Spanish Tragedy”. That he makes it his business to know his characters so well that it is almost uncanny – and gives uncannily good actors the chance to know them even better. Reading these other tragedies from the period confirmed my impression that Shakespeare induced naturalistic acting – in fact, “invented” an early form of method acting even BEFORE actors could figure out how to use it. Somehow I am convinced that, without Shakespeare, great British actors like Martin Freeman wouldn’t exist - who was seriously concerned that he couldn’t figure out if Bilbo had had sex! Seeing what he did in “The Hobbit”, I take it that this was just about twenty percent joke and eighty percent truth. And Richard Armitage wasn’t joking when he answered the question what colour Francis Dolarhyde would paint his toenails … I could be wrong, of course, but if they were joking it was about the big mystery of method acting which is obviously so difficult to take seriously. How should you know HOW you know? This kind of answered the question from my last post - why they know so well WHAT we have to see - but just by replacing it with another question …

I imagine Macbeth to utter this sentence instantly, as a gut reaction, when the worst news gets confirmed. It is just what he would do – what he WILL do in the end! – when everything else fails. It wouldn’t even occur to him to stop at any point, even though he has his “Nothing moments”, frequently – as when he envisages to be permanently deprived of sleep. But, in the end, his reaction to them is as accurate as it is practical. He ACKNOWLEDGES the fact and then tries to CHANGE it. There MUST be something he can do to be able to sleep again! Even if it means meddling with the “frame of things” and changing the order of “both worlds”. It might sound lunatic and appalling – certainly is meant to be! – but it is just how somebody like Macbeth WOULD deal with this. He is a soldier - probably the best in Scotland, so it isn’t just overestimating himself when he thinks that he should be king. (As, by the way, do the other thanes who CHOOSE him!) And, as a soldier, he is well acquainted with Nothing. He is used to death lurking at every corner, but he knows HOW TO DEAL WITH IT. He certainly needs to be clever, he cannot afford not to analyze, to misjudge his enemy, because, if he did, he’d already be dead. And his “Nothing moments” are equally specific.

Except one. In fact, there is one moment where he stops. It is when he learns about the death of his wife and falls into a very short, very deep depression. When he analyzes life in the way Hamlet does. It might be interesting to think their relationship FROM THIS MOMENT – though we never do this. Nobody would do it, least of all Macbeth himself. It is too heartbreaking … There are certainly SOME things we cannot deal with – like being utterly and finally alone - but there are also always other, more pressing, problems … What drives TRAGEDY is our relentless struggle to keep Nothing out of our lives.

Macbeth certainly is one of these people who already HAVE the kind of career others envy. Somebody who never had to deal with “To be or not to be”. And he doesn’t even know how lucky he is because he has something very few people actually have, and, if they do, usually take for granted: a great, functioning, relationship with his partner. Even though “everybody” seems to think otherwise I always imagined Lady Macbeth to be very attractive and clever – kind of like Keeley Hawes played her in the “Shakespeare Retold” – fiercely loyal, of course, and they are still in love with each other! There is this issue about offspring - there always is something - but I don’t doubt they would have carried on splendidly if the incident with the weird sisters hadn’t occured, she always taking care of the tricky and disagreeable issues, loving it … There is tragic potential in not knowing what you have, that’s for sure! – I already mentioned on behalf of the RSC’s “Macbeth” that “we” like winners. We usually imagine them to be like us – or rather us to be like them! – because we have “deleted” Hamlet. Again: thanks to Andrew Scott for reminding me!!! But I STILL like Macbeth much better than Hamlet … And it is so common to think that, if we FINALLY were rich, or famous, or got promoted to this position we always thought should be ours, all our problems would come to an end. One of the deeper reasons why I find “Macbeth” so fascinating - and have always thought of the play as this timeless analysis of human careers - is how mercilessly it disabuses us of this idea. The moment “we” have won is the moment the REAL trouble begins. I couldn’t know, but I imagine that, when the initial exaltation has passed, the winners find themselves still with half a lifetime or more before them of carefully managing success, of imminent failure and great opportunities for disastrous mistakes. It may, in fact, be nicer sometimes to be the loser that unexpectedly finds the grain the other hens higher on the pecking order have missed …

Underneath it all there is, of course, no other kind of text so intimately connected with Nothing as tragedy – though its protagonists do their best not to acknowledge it, even might be totally ignorant – or dismissive – of their part in their own annihilation. This is self-evident because tragedy always ends with death. But good tragedies have their Nothing moments not just at the end but embedded into their story. As, at least in fiction, there are always deeper reasons for disaster these stories tell us a lot about Nothing – and why it might even be useful or necessary for us sometimes to admit it into our lives. It isn’t as simple as that, though, because tragedy begins when what shouldn’t have happened already HAS happened. It is also – as Richard Armitage said with deadly precision on behalf of “The Crucible” – about WHAT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN. Macbeth cannot escape his doom because he cannot escape who he is. Nobody can, as - one would think! - nobody should have to. More precisely: What appears dangerous and stupid to others might just appear as the only viable option to the protagonist at this moment. The logical step to take. I mean: Isn’t it REALLY STUPID AND IRRATIONAL what Macbeth does??? At the same time it APPEARS kind of inevitable. Why is this so?

Maybe the “beauty” of “Macbeth” is mostly in the PRECISENESS of the argument: “We” don’t become guilty because we are bad – we turn out bad because we became guilty. As his wife – who certainly is the person that knows him best! – persists, there is a lot of good in Macbeth, even real kindness, which is almost impossible to imagine when we see what comes to pass. But SHE must have seen it. And his argument about not killing Duncan is flawless – until his wife breaks into it, relentlessly playing him by taking up his deepest fear. Which is - as Christopher Eccleston pointed out – to do with his masculinity. What happens to Macbeth is also the reason why – in fact! – every man should be insecure about his masculinity. Just FOR HIS OWN GOOD – so as to be able to take a step back and THINK about the issue, not just accept that it is what utterly defines him. But this is easier said than observed – especially if we are not male. It is hard to understand WHY Macbeth should be insecure about his masculinity, respectively TERRIFIED of somehow losing it. But this is where HIS NOTHING is – the Nothing that shapes his fate. He just CANNOT step back and consider that it might be possible - just once! - not to act “like a man”. Which means just going forward, grasping the opportunity that will get him “everything”. It is fascinating how the irrational becomes perfectly logical IF we understand that Macbeth must feel that he is nothing if he is not a man. And how beautifully Shakespeare unfolds this in the argument between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, my favourite bit of the play! I shouldn’t be surprised that it is also the great, hidden Nothing moment of “Macbeth” – but I am!

As I think that the point of tragedy is to make us understand the irrational and accept the unacceptable – so, in fact: “human DNA”! – there is probably no “hope” for Macbeth. (If he could just go back on his own “time-line” …) He is already doomed because of who he is. It just might be useful sometimes to think WHY we want something so much. If it really is what will make us happy, or if we might just be utterly terrified of something we cannot even admit to ourselves. If I analyzed this moment correctly it might contain the explanation for my basically unfounded impression that Macbeth never really WANTED to be king. Not like Richard III who ENJOYS having power, certainly gets his kicks out of it. Right in the beginning of the play he presents his “career ambitions” as a way out of a boring and humiliating position. He knows WHY he is doing this, certainly has given it some thought. To Macbeth it just suddenly appears to be where his career must inevitably lead: first Glamis, then Cawdor, then King. As soon as this is clear, THERE IS NO POINT in asking if it is what he really wants, it is just the next logical step to take. How could he BE A MAN and not do that???

I DON’T think that it is an easy question to answer, but is this REALLY what “we” want: to become more famous, or powerful, or wealthy, or whatever it is for us? Or shouldn’t there rather be another reason - some kind of promise of REAL fulfillment - for doing what we do? Just something more sustainable than our FEAR of being Nothing …???