Birthday issue 2019: „The Tragedy of Macbeth“ – there IS a way of doing this!

This year I did something brilliant for Shakespeare’s birthday without having any idea how brilliant it would turn out. In fact, I had the greatest holidays of my life – even though it was only four days – accidentally implementing my very own Shakespeare festival. This happened because I realized that I would get completely free and empty four days over Easter, and that it would be a great idea to bring the celebrating forward. Which meant – besides no restrictions on alcohol 😊 – to watch all the Shakespeare DVDs that had ended up in the precariously growing pile on my sideboard. So I saw “Love’s Labour’s Lost” with Kenneth Branagh (a rather old film version of the play which is brilliant, and an ingenious blending of Shakespeare and 20^th century musical theatre) besides the old BBC TV version to figure out what the play is about, the RSC’s “Tempest” with Simon Russell Beale as Prospero (which I saw in the “Cinema” some time ago and recently bought on DVD, and which is just SO BEAUTIFUL! – and such a comprehensive and sophisticated production of the play), the “Shakespeare Live” birthday gala from 2014 (which completely surprised me as to what I had seen at the time and not SEEN!), and, finally, again, the RSC’s “Macbeth” (which is getting better and better AND BETTER every time I am watching it …)

I might be on the verge of getting completely insane, but doing it actually pushed my definition of happiness up another peg – in particular watching “Macbeth” again and finally realizing WHY it is my favourite play - and probably text - of all times. There definitely was another dimension of “Shakespeare” suddenly opening before my eyes, but, of course, a dimension that I ENVISIONED loving this play as I did and trying to know every word of it … and then THERE IT WAS: Somebody else owning the text in the way I always wanted to own it, and knew I could! There was EVERYTHING I ever found in it, and more - which finally led me to ask the RIGHT question, which got ANSWERED! Of course it wouldn’t have happened without everybody playing as great as they did – maybe what I came to admire most about the RSC’s recent productions is how much they succeed in getting EVERYBODY on the same page with this text. But, without doubt, it was Chris Eccleston who made me ask and delivered the answer. He did when I saw it the first time, I just haven’t been able to spell it out right. It is not just uncanny, there actually is no word for it: the way he UNDERSTOOD the text – and was able to process what he understood so that I could see it. I just thought all the time: That’s it! Even about little things like timing, and pauses, and stressing certain words … Yes! THAT’S IT! Why didn’t I get this before??? But of course I did, which made me able to understand the extent of what materialized as he played it. (And of course there is no way of doing this twenty times over, and more, in the same way! This is just not humanly possible, as much as we might wish it to be.)

So, THERE DEFINITELY IS A WAY OF DOING THIS! (And – even though I was never keen to decide the issue – I know now who is my favourite actor of all times. As I knew for some time, trying like mad to get everything of his work on DVD I was able to get – and, unlike when I did this with other actors, more or less everything was worth watching! I just didn’t WANT to decide. Now “Macbeth” finally resolved the issue. Of course it must be the person who figured out how to play this!)

So, I WAS RIGHT – of course! – already when I saw it in Stratford. But, as I am getting used to, I am extremely pleased as well to have been WRONG – about Lady Macbeth. In my opinion - after having seen this again - not just the theory about Lady Macbeth being an “extension” of Macbeth but also the feminist approach which I unfolded in my last post is misguided. (Which doesn’t mean that misunderstandings aren’t often more procreative than getting it right – and that the influence THIS misunderstanding had on such texts as “House of Cards” probably had greater impact than anybody getting it right at any time. And I am rather pleased as well that it doesn’t change what I have written about Cleopatra, so that this post - which I love! - didn’t become pointless.) For what I understood watching the RSC’s “Macbeth” I’ll need rather more patience than I feel I have right now, being in this mood. But it will definitely be worth finding it. It just isn’t the kind of answer you can pin down with a few words.

It is also rather difficult to know how to begin the reasoning because I don’t remember what came first. So, maybe, it doesn’t matter, and I’ll start with Lady Macbeth … At some point I realized that there IS in fact CONSISTENCY between who Lady Macbeth is in the beginning and what happens with her in the end, but that - instead! - with Macbeth THERE IS NOT! Basically, she just reacts like a HUMAN BEING would NORMALLY react to TRAGEDY. The thing about tragedy is that it is what human beings are NOT SUPPOSED to endure, and what makes them break - in this case because they cannot get rid of empathy just like that. (Most likely our talk about very personal things at this breakfast meeting – and things “we” usually never talk about, like empathy! – made me make some progress on this issue?) Most productions of “Macbeth” take care to show Lady Macbeth as somebody who understands and is capable of empathy, who is just trying really hard to get rid of it, being so resolved as to what she is about to do.  And, consequently, not as somebody who is completely ruthless and fearless – like Claire Underwood! – but somebody who is trying very hard and successfully to manage her fears. (Of course, Claire Underwood isn’t fearless at all – as she isn’t stupid! In particular, she is deadly scared of anybody ever finding out who she really is! Or what she has done - which is what most people are much more scared of, by the way, than of actually BEING a “bad person” …) So, basically, even though I still didn’t really like the way she played it, Niamh Cusack was a much better Lady Macbeth than Robin Wright would have been, showing her fear and weakness from the beginning. Because what we never really realize is that it is HUMAN – not just feminine – TO BE WEAK!

As I just stated, a tragic situation is not what a human being is made for. This is probably the basic definition of it, though, strictly speaking, only if “we” have brought it upon ourselves. In a way, this is great as it can carry human beings BEYOND what they - or anybody else - think they are able to endure or achieve. But this – even though it happens not just in fiction! – happens extremely seldom. And these exceptions are not really Shakespeare’s area. He was much better at – and more interested in – showing what USUALLY happens when somebody has done what “cannot be undone”. I think, Lady Macbeth reacts entirely normal to “tragedy”: realizing that “nought’s had, all’s spent when our desire is got without content” she already IS broken and is just keeping up appearances because she cannot let Macbeth down – whom she must know very well SHE has lured into doing this! Actually, the most tragic thing that probably happens is that – as they played it! – Macbeth gets into this mess more by thinking about HER than about himself – so, basically: by giving in to empathy! And he is the one who is genuinely shocked about what he has done – even though he is used to killing! – and who cannot deal with the murder of Duncan. The interesting thing is what happens AS A RESULT of this situation. And never before I saw this I understood how ENTIRELY CONSISTENT Shakespeare is there. Even exactly where it is about men and women.

One of the greatest moments of the whole production was for me the moment when Lady Macbeth realizes what is happening with Macbeth in their conversation after he has commissioned the murder of Banquo. It is the first time he rejects her – in this moment, I think, still because he feels for her and doesn’t WANT to implicate her, but also because he is getting impatient, only seeing his own objectives and losing touch. And this is what she realizes at this moment – and which becomes the reason for her to “crack” because, seeing that she cannot help him any longer, she loses the grip on life she still has, and - as she has already given up on her own dreams of greatness! - all reason for her to live on. From this moment, becoming insubstantial to what is happening, she begins to drift off, and it is just logical that we are losing sight of her until she resurfaces as wreckage.

From this moment on it is Macbeth ON HIS OWN – a step which he takes consciously, and which ultimately leads him on this “solitary journey into depravity” - a brilliant formula that Chris Eccleston found for it in the McLean interview which I quoted. And – thinking about it - I have always found that this is something that MEN do. As I – to my own dismay! – recently found out that I don’t understand men AT ALL I have no answer as to WHY. It just appears entirely logical, I suppose, from what I OBSERVE about men. And, of course, I have always been fascinated with this kind of “lonesome hero” – as, obviously, many people are. Which, I suppose, is okay UNLESS “we” are lured into thinking that somebody like Macbeth – or Donald Trump, or Anders Breyvik! – are great. And as I first realized seeing it in Stratford – and documented in my blog – Chris Eccleston got it absolutely right as to what Shakespeare wanted to convey: What happens with Macbeth might be fascinating, but there has to be a disturbing and ugly TRANSFORMATION. Especially because he makes us believe that, IN THE BEGINNING, Macbeth is not only a normal human being but somebody “we” would actually like and want to be our political leader. In this case it probably served him best to be entirely “natural” – or, more exactly, as he would like to be seen by others! When I am thinking about the McLean interview I find it interesting that Christopher Eccleston struck him as somebody who would be “good in a crisis”. So, basically, somebody “we” would trust and follow. Being so exact from the beginning, all the SMALL changes in Macbeth become effective and have repercussions on everything that is happening on the stage - as it would be in real life! And this is of course why Shakespeare, when played well, is so much like real life. So, I could finally SEE why “Macbeth” on the stage without a Macbeth who knows what he is doing doesn’t really happen, as it never did for me before I saw this. (Which is not automatically the case with any other Shakespeare play as the responsibility is usually more divided.) Reading the interview, I got the impression that Christopher Eccleston is somebody who likes to take responsibility. Seeing him on the stage, he appeared overbearing – which was probably the reason for me to, unconsciously, dub him arrogant. This was probably a misconception because he PLAYED Macbeth being arrogant. But, being the actor that he is, there might be a difficulty where the line is. And if there is one. Of course there is one – but here the commentary of Richard Armitage on “Hannibal” came to mind. The bit about how other people on the set reacted differently to him as Richard Armitage and as the “Red Dragon”. He said that their reactions helped him to play it, but, I suppose, he rather helped them a lot to help him! So, there is something that cannot be disentangled completely, and probably shouldn’t be. Seeing the DVD, Chris Eccleston just appeared as the “magnet” who gave the production and the people the perfect direction. But I remember that he appeared much “bigger” – and more threatening! – when I saw him on the stage.

So, now, the strangest thing that happened with “Macbeth” is that the question I kept asking about this character from the beginning – and which I kept pushing back as stupid! – turned out to have been the right question in the first place:

IS MACBETH INSANE?

Going back to the origins of the question, I remember the exact moment where I reconnected with “Macbeth”. Strangely enough, I “always” knew that it was my favourite play, but why??? I hadn’t even seen any great productions of it. One in German by Staatstheater Nürnberg (which had been satisfying - but obviously not as memorable as their strange and intense “Richard III” a few years before that - and which I don’t remember anything about apart from the leading actor being tall and good-looking, and the stage very red) and two very bad ones in English. (Even though one of them contained Sean Bean – whom I came to “upgrade” by a lot just recently! – it is a good thing that I don’t remember anything about them. Apart from the stupid issue of the severed head … Urrrgh!!!) And - even though I have done better than this after reconnecting with Shakespeare in 2014 - I was aware that, until Stratford, I had never actually SEEN anything of the text that was IN MY HEAD. So, the initial reconnecting didn’t happen on the stage but through another fictional text.

I mentioned this moment at least once in my blog, I am sure: when Richard Armitage said about playing Thorin Oakenshield in “The Hobbit” that he read “Macbeth” and was fascinated, not with the killing, but with the inevitability of what ensued. (I even REMEMBER that his own words were much more to the point, but I haven’t saved this quote anywhere 😢! I don’t think it was in the specials to “The Hobbit”?) I expressly put it to memory WITHOUT really understanding it because I anticipated that it would become relevant some day – which is NOW! I realize now what exactly the connection is, and that their journeys are, in fact, parallel journeys. Or can be read like this – where Thorin is concerned Tolkien leaves most of the fine points and connections to the IMAGINATION of the reader. Respectively, the actor who would one day in the not foreseeable future play this character for the screen and would be well advised to have A LOT of it. It was just great luck – and great casting! – that they picked somebody who knew how to come by it. If everything else fails there is still Shakespeare!

I have this feeling that the connection is not at all random, though, where Tolkien is concerned. Just looking at myself: I “had” Lear and Macbeth – the core of it – before I remember reading it, or seeing these plays. And I am not even English! (So, didn’t grow up with the stuff the way Tolkien must have.) Seeing “The Tempest” lately it was clear as day to me that THIS is where Tolkien’s world came from. Not that the myths and languages are less important, but the HUMAN STUFF that holds it all together and makes it available to readers of all ages and denominations mostly comes from Shakespeare. Presumably, most of OUR HUMAN STUFF - insofar as it ended up in fictional text throughout the centuries - comes from Shakespeare!

As I cared so much about the “Hobbit” films to turn out right I was a lot more scared of the MADNESS – remembering what they did in “The Lord of the Rings”! – than I would have been prepared to admit. And I have this feeling that something parallel was going on where Richard Armitage is concerned. I really hated it when Michael Fassbender, in the “Macbeth” film, paced his chamber like a wolf in a cage, and I hated Lady Macbeth madly running about the stage in Stratford. And I am rather sure that special actors with great taste and a much better grasp of the “human stuff” than I have myself, like Richard Armitage or Chris Eccleston, would have hated this too. As I anticipated, I wasn’t entirely happy with how this issue turned out in “The Hobbit” but, I think, Shakespeare basically rescued this part of the story from becoming pathetic and a total disaster.  

As I have learned from reading Shakespeare a lot, and as, of course, both Christopher Eccleston and Richard Armitage know, Shakespeare is the one who is getting this kind of issue absolutely right – and so “we” will get it right as well if we are able to follow where he leads. In fact, displaying madness in the way I just described is completely unnecessary and misleading where either Macbeth or Thorin is concerned. Strictly speaking, neither of them is “mad” in the sense of suffering from any kind of pathological disorder. (Thorin probably isn’t mad at all, he is JUST A DWARF – and as, I think, Richard Armitage hinted at in a “footnote”: there is no “dragon sickness” anywhere to be found in “The Hobbit”!!!) Nonetheless I was right not to drop the question because the “everyday” madness that might happen to anybody at some point in their lives is much more interesting. And the kind in question here appears to be closely related to humans with only one complete  X chromosome. (Ouch, I won’t begin to speculate about dwarf chromosomes now … Same difference, though!)

One of the questions I couldn’t let go about Macbeth had been if he actually is pathological in any sense, so: if there is something wrong with him FROM THE BEGINNING. For example, if his “ability” to see things other people cannot see is in any way relevant. I continually dodged the question as something Shakespeare clearly isn’t very interested in himself – so probably wouldn’t help me to understand the play better – but it kept popping up … And I realized that I had to somehow get past this question without “cheating”.

I remember from the specials to “The Hobbit” that Richard Armitage had been concerned about WHEN EXACTLY the madness is supposed to take hold of Thorin – which is crucial to find a foothold and a REASON for showing it NOT in the way I described as a pathological state that, basically, DOESN’T NEED ANY EXPLANATION. On what all this hinges, to make it believable and relevant, is the NATURE of the TRANSFORMATION. And - even though there isn’t really that much of a parallel development - both actors got it basically right, and basically did the same thing. People who are becoming “mad” – and this is the genuinely disturbing thing about it, I think – even might be totally okay as long as they are BY THEMSELVES. The change we have to see becomes effective in their changing relationships with other people. I am still fascinated how subtle and exact this change was, and with the way I noticed it, seeing the play in Stratford. Now, seeing it again on DVD, I could observe in detail how Macbeth’s relationships with other people are changing. And the bits that never made sense when I “read” the text in my head over and over – like: “I have almost lost the taste of fears” – suddenly fell into place. I still cannot believe how somebody can be AS EXACT about this kind of thing as Shakespeare actually is!

Richard Armitage didn’t have anything that nailed Thorin in this way, he rather nailed it himself by showing the INNER nature of this state of madness by Thorin’s changed behaviour towards other people. There is this almost pathetic vulnerability on the one hand and, on the other, this shocking lack of empathy. Both, I think, as it is in “Macbeth”, which explains his saying “She should have died hereafter …” and breaking down in the same scene. (Though nobody ever actually DOES break down in this scene – which is absolutely right because they are men, and men don’t do breaking down - I persist that it IS there nonetheless!) And in “The Hobbit” the pathological state of mind completely materializes in Thorin’s relationship with Bilbo where there is BOTH: the way he loves and trusts him unconditionally – which makes him vulnerable – and, at the same time, the inability to see him as a separate “human” being – which is why he actually would have killed him with his own hands. This moment is the lowest point of their relationship, as well as the most interesting. In fact, what I was so thrilled about in “The Hobbit” from the beginning that it became my favourite bit of the book.   

Now, this HAS to be the birthday issue this year – though it comes too late, even considering that Shakespeare was born ten days after his present birthday, April 23rd, due to calendar changes. (Claudia enlightened me about this!) It has to be because I actually came full circle with “Macbeth”, and arrived where I have started – finally UNDERSTANDING now, I think, why I never stopped doing this: READING SHAKESPEARE.

And it will be a much appreciated opportunity for letting this go for a while and finally getting other things done – not least because I am sure now that I will be back here before long!