“What’t wrong with Macbeth?” part 2: The “Stratford Macbeth”

From where I am standing now, my experience with the “Stratford Macbeth” - as I now refer to the production - was incomplete, partly because I didn’t SEE everything – there is a limit to what you can see of the acting if you are looking down on the top of the actors’ heads most of the time - but predominantly because of my own limited perspective on the play and the resulting expectations – as if I couldn’t see the woods because of all the trees … The production wasn’t spectacular, in an obvious way, and I think, even if not consciously, every time I expect anew to be dazzled by a “sparkling”, brand-new “Macbeth”. Compared to my inner “Macbeth”, this one felt reduced: all these great scenarios and landscapes crammed into some kind of dusty, limited space: a bedroom where the three little sisters are playing with their dolls – they WERE triplets, by the way! A hospital room where the already decrepit Duncan rises awkwardly from his bed to greet the conquering heroes, and so on … A “compressed”, dreary reality, not just where space is concerned but also “time-wise”: at the murder of Duncan a digital stop watch is set to be counting downwards for two hours, and the porter – here more like a sinister caretaker – is always there in the background, making the count of the dead with chalk on a brick wall … In my imagination the world of “Macbeth” had always been “bigger” – more glamorous, more scary …? But to make the woods appear behind all the trees, REDUCTION turned out to be a good thing.

 

The other thing I had so wrong – and why it proved so useful to go through all these experiences again as I did – was that I always focused – and put the whole tragedy – on the main protagonist. I had liked the Stratford “Macbeth” mainly because I finally saw a Macbeth who was like a human being I could understand, and I liked it even better in the aftermath, when I read an interview with Chris Eccleston which contained rather a few things I could connect with – though I only remember his scepticism about the issue of manliness and the male image which was really revealing. (The biographical background and the striking sensitivity of the interviewer conveyed an impression of him as a totally “no bullshit” person who knows what he wants and what he can do, and would call a spade a spade no matter what others might call it. Which rather corresponds with what I have seen of his acting that always struck me as exceptionally honest – in the sense that he just wouldn’t do anything he isn’t completely convinced about.) And I liked it still more, watching the DVD again, finally able to put the pieces together and appreciate how precise his acting was, and also what everybody had done on that stage. Obviously, Chris Eccleston pulled his weight, but it also became clear that I had to shift my focus. “The Tragedie of Macbeth” is in fact a misleading title, though not, as I thought, because of the “tragedy” bit. This was actually the moment where I saw the woods appear behind the trees and understood that an important part of what’s wrong with Macbeth were just my own expectation. In a very literal sense that had gradually be dawning on me, even Macbeth is ONLY JUST HUMAN

 

. But before I come to the bigger picture, I’ll come to the details of the production, that is, the “positives”:

 

HUMOUR

 

Compared to other “dark” plays like “Othello”, “Richard III” (which I have down as Shakespeare’s best comedy!), even “Hamlet”, “Macbeth” seems rather devoid of humour. At least I can’t see it, apart from a very dark irony that is not really a laughing matter. This kind was well represented by the porter, or rather “caretaker”, taking care of death in the manner his colleagues in the sixties took care of the facilities in their schools or apartment blocks: not over-enthusiastically. A subtle hint not to take all the fuss too seriously. “Things at the worst will change …” It will probably all be reset in two hours. The humour in “Macbeth” is kind of an underhand affair, but it is there. In retrospect – and apart from the “Shakespeare Retold” that wasn’t really Shakespeare – this production was actually the funniest I have seen, but there might be room for improvement …?

 

I forgot to mention the Globe Theatre’s “Macbeth” in my general survey, which I also have on DVD (– makes me wonder how many more I may have seen and dismissed!?) It wasn’t one of the worst, though not very entertaining or surprising either, with Macbeth meeting the usual clichés; but one scene stood out which usually belongs to the boring bits: the meeting between Macduff and Malcolm at the English court which they played as a funny scene – as if Macduff didn’t take Malcolm quite seriously. Strictly speaking, that doesn’t really work, but it made me aware of the absurdity of the situation Macbeth has initiated. It was a bit like “The Death of Stalin” which is in fact a funny film that gives you the creeps: Sometimes humour is much better at making us see how WRONG things are than highlighting the atrocities we got used to a long time ago. (This totally changes, of course, as soon as they start happening TO US!) I notice that I am still undecided about humour in “Macbeth”; the play cannot be the exception to my rule that “Shakespeare” without humour is not “Shakespeare”. The two kinds I detected so far certainly worked.

 

MADNESS

 

The single feature I am most grateful for – apart from Christopher Eccleston playing Macbeth! – was the ABSENCE OF MADNESS. At least where Macbeth is concerned. His Macbeth didn’t go mad, and as this was the best Macbeth I have seen on a stage, I know now that I have been right all this time. It totally works!

 

As I have to raise the issue of madness at some point and it never seems to fit in, I’ll do it now. I have always been totally convinced that it is not just unnecessary for Macbeth to go mad but a distortion of the story. Lady Macbeth’s madness, in my opinion, is a completely different affair, and I’ll come to that. There are two points, though, that have to be cleared up about Macbeth and madness. The first one is that he “sees things” that other people cannot see. On an Elizabethan stage, Macbeth panicking because he sees Banquo’s spirit in the banquet scene whereas nobody else can see him would have been greeted as first rate entertainment. Nobody would have wondered about his state of mind because the kind of psychological consistency “we” are trying to create on a stage didn’t apply. WE would certainly want to make up our mind about WHAT KIND OF GUY this Macbeth is – or at least the actor would want to do that. And THIS guy already HAS seen or heard things nobody else could see or hear.

 

There probably is a significant contradiction between my awareness that psychology was of little consequence on an Elizabethan stage and my conviction that Shakespeare’s real calling was the workings of the human mind and soul. I have actually no clue how to overcome this contradiction – thrilling because this tells me I must be wrong about SOMETHING – yeah!!! - but my experience is that in most cases I examined a convincing psychological explanation could be found, either by me or some actor who played it. They are, of course, almost always reductive. Unless proved otherwise, the opposite might work just as well. Still, I am always looking for consistencies. And I found one, I think, about Macbeth “seeing things”.

 

Of course, all of this stuff about Banquo appearing on the stage in person and the dagger being there for everybody to see or not initially is about what works on the stage, not about psychology. Usually, the dagger is not really there for the audience to see, and that seems entirely consistent. In the banquet scene sometimes different solutions are tried out. Claudia reported one where they repeated the scene the first time without Banquo, the second time with him (or the other way round?). Not having seen it, I cannot imagine what this would achieve. In the “Stratford Macbeth” they only brought in Banquo at the second “call” and played the beginning of the scene without him. Not a bad idea because it brings in a sense of escalation. I am always slightly pissed off that the ghost never enters on Macbeth’s call, but this is actually intended. I checked the first folio, and there the ghost turns up both times BEFORE Macbeth mentions Banquo. I’d like to find an explanation for this!

 

(Oh – and I might have done so! That’s my “easter egg”, see below …)

 

Looking at it through psychological glasses, the bodily appearance brings the AGGRAVATION of a situation that has been there already before Macbeth has any reason to become “mad” = before the killing of Duncan. It could be seen as obsession. Macbeth becomes obsessed with the idea of the murder and conjures the dagger and the atmosphere of darkness and horror to go with it. It is something that Lady Macbeth does as well – strategically! – when she conjures the “spirits” that must be somewhere out there to “tend on mortal thoughts” and help her follow through with her evil plan; but there is a difference. Only a slight difference in the beginning, but Macbeth doesn’t have to conjure the dagger, he SEES the dagger, and THEN the mental image initiates the other fantasies. After the murder, Macbeth is visibly shocked, whereas his wife is not affected RIGHT THEN in the same way; her attempt at convincing herself that “the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures” and it is “the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil” works for the time being. She cannot deal with the blood, as we will see, whereas Macbeth is dealing with it on the spot – which actually gives him a better chance of overcoming the trauma! In my opinion, he doesn’t “crack” later – that is: become dysfunctional - whereas his wife does. He also hears voices in the aftermath of the murder - whereas Lady Macbeth only hears what is really there - and gets so scared that we must assume they are real for him. Again, this gives him an opportunity to mentally deal with what has happened.

 

So, when Banquo actually appears on the stage, this is an aggravation of something that has occurred before, especially as it now becomes public, but also because it has become impossible for him to attribute it to his imagination as he did with the dagger; and the audience can appreciate the climax when Banquo turns up for real – if only because of the shock effect. - It struck me recently, thinking about this scene, that the excuse Lady Macbeth makes for his behaviour – that he has been like this “from his youth” – might not have been entirely made up. She is the one who knows that he has seen things – the only one he could have told about the “air-drawn dagger”. It is something that comes to her at this moment to use – something she has never really understood about her husband: that he has this vivid imagination which makes him get awe-struck and over-excited quite easily. In fact, this already plays a role in the beginning, considering how different he and Banquo react to the weird sisters, respectively in the way this misunderstanding is created about how to deal with the prophecies: Macbeth still “toys” with the possibility of killing Duncan – as ONE option that, in my opinion, he never really intended to see through! – whereas for his wife it’s an unequivocal call to action.

 

This “disposition” might not really have caused a problem BEFORE HE MET THE WEIRD SISTERS. Thinking this through, it struck me how fundamentally Shakespeare deals with the reality of EVIL in “Macbeth”. It would definitely go beyond any scope to reflect to what extent “we” have come to rationalize evil, almost to the point of total denial, and how impressed I was therefore – and still am! – by Tolkien having reinstated it as a REALITY that CAN be defeated … In “Macbeth”, the evil is equally real – that is: existent “outside” of evil people and their “timely” dealings - but we tend to rationalize it away by marginalizing its “instruments” or putting a piece of actual reality in its place we think we understand - like war in the National Theatre’s “Macbeth” with Rory Kinnear. But even if we were able to understand it, there would be little chance to defeat it because the devil cannot be targeted directly, and his ways are entirely too clever for us. I think that, in coming in contact with the weird sisters, the inherent danger in Macbeth’s condition becomes aggravated because his human weaknesses are the places where evil can take root. In more than one respect, the aggravation of his “infirmity” endangers his own state of mind and, like a virus, makes evil spread to other people. The banquet scene is such an important step in Macbeth’s downfall because it damages his standing as king and therefore the loyalty of his followers, and, “in conclusion”, the institution of kingship itself. A state of affairs that, in Shakespeare’s world, can only beget tyranny.

 

Having come so far, I can suddenly see that the second aspect of madness in “Macbeth” – the more important one – is in fact closely linked to the first. I always had this feeling that this change from a basically decent person in the beginning into a bloody tyrant – to be crammed into two hours of stage time! – is impossible to explain – or represent – convincingly. There the madness helps, but the reason I fundamentally object is that it achieves nothing apart from “explaining” everything “away”. It sweeps aside psychology together with any social and political implications which, I think, Shakespeare laid down in depth. The problem is, as so often in “Shakespeare”, that it is actually MORE complicated than I – or most directors dealing with the play – are prepared to consider. There are psychological reasons – like stress and fear – AND social reasons – like distrust and isolation – AND political reasons, as I just explained, that alter Macbeth, AND, on top of all that, EVIL as this kind of catalyst that nobody can predict or understand … The human being Macbeth struggles with all of them, and the struggle might sometimes make him appear insane because he has put himself into such a perverse position. But, in my opinion, this struggle shouldn’t be shown as a mental condition.

 

So, I am surprised one more time of how much can be achieved by taking psychological issues in “Shakespeare” seriously! – Not so good: In fact, I must appear mad to anybody but myself given the amount of time I have now spent on this already epic treatise that nobody will ever read, neglecting my health, my household duties, my social relationships and probably my work – and still It feels as if I have only scratched the surface. It is obvious that this kind of complexity can never be adequately represented on a stage. My inner “Macbeth” may contain all this and try to find solutions, but in an actual stage situation lines have to be cut and decisions have to be made. In fact, the “Stratford Macbeth” showed me the meaning of “adding by subtracting”.

 

THE LADY

 

As I already mentioned, in the case of Lady Macbeth madness is entirely acceptable, probably even necessary. I still think there will be a post about the lady, and this one is already too long, so I am just stating it at this point. Nonetheless, I don’t like it. I didn’t like Niamh Cusack running about the stage like a crazy hen, and I didn’t like her acting which seemed to me overdone and without depth. When I watched it again recently, I didn’t like it much better, but it suddenly made sense. I saw that I had dismissed her Lady Macbeth more on a point of principle than bad acting because I hate Lady Macbeth being shown as weak and damaged FROM THE START. She has to be the one who has this sway over Macbeth to turn him around, she cannot be this pitiful creature … This time, the broadening of my perspective in the meantime allowed me to see what they were doing. I still don’t think that it is what Shakespeare has written, but what he has written might not be what serves his purpose best under any circumstances. In the context of THIS production, the relationship between Macbeth and his wife had to be clear and concise, and obvious, as it was clearly just a little piece in a complicated puzzle, but has to contain this important turning point. I am always trying to see a relationship between husband and wife on the stage and usually fail, and I could see nothing on the part of Lady Macbeth this time – but the way Macbeth REACTED to her made me glimpse, just in one moment, the COMPLETE relationship and history of this couple! I always had this feeling that Macbeth – though he adores her – is a little bit afraid of his wife. In this case, he is more than a little bit afraid FOR his wife because he knows that she is vulnerable. And as soon as I saw it, the behaviour Lady Macbeth displays makes complete sense. Macbeth doesn’t dare to go against his wife because he fears the consequences for their relationship – which is kind of what Lady Macbeth says, just from a “stronger” position, when she threatens: “From this time such I account thy love”. But frailty can be as powerful a weapon in a relationship, even if it is not wielded consciously, and the more I think about it, the more I can see how it worked because it made me see a lot I always WANTED to see in a production of “Macbeth” but never did. First of all, there IS a relationship of a couple with a long history – predominantly painful, but they are visibly and strongly linked through this pain. And it provides an opportunity to show Macbeth as somebody who CARES – who is capable of empathy = the “milk of human kindness” Lady Macbeth is talking about. At the end, all this is gone. Macbeth cares about nobody but himself, and this is enough to show the enormous change he has undergone as a human being. The desired effect is achieved “quietly”, without raving and shouting, with marvellous efficiency. And even though I still don’t like it, it is much easier for Lady Macbeth to become mad when she is “unstable” from the beginning. I regret it because a lot of great “Lady Macbeth stuff” just goes down the drain, as usual, but in the context of this production, where time and timing literally are “of the essence”, it is a comparatively small sacrifice. As I already wrote, there are greater things at stake …

What’s wrong with Macbeth? – (the accidental birthday issue)

This has already become so complex, I have to make some kind of synopsis of the important issues in “Macbeth” and the decisions I made about the play:

 

TRAGEDY

 

I have always read “Macbeth” as one of the first modern tragedies – where the main protagonist takes a wrong decision with catastrophic consequences and engages our empathy (not necessarily because they are a “good person after all” but because we understand that something like this could have happened to us) – but this is NOT the only way to read it. It is likely that the play is somewhere on a scale between Greek (= fate-driven) and modern (= guilt-driven) tragedy, but where exactly is difficult to establish. (I have also developed a feeling that these assignations are a “crutch” – useful at times but not to be taken too seriously! It will come up again …) Theoretically, it could even be nowhere on that scale because the Macbeths could just as well be seen (and played!) as “medieval” villains, not as “tragic” protagonists. I consider this to be an unlikely reading because of the enormous height of the fall Shakespeare makes Macbeth take, but there is a possibility - and more than a little evidence! - that people have read and might still be reading it like this. “Tragedy” is not just a fact, it involves a DECISION every reader has to take. My infallible proof of the decision I took was that, in my inner “Macbeth”, “Heroes” by David Bowie is playing on the stereo when Lady Macbeth enters to speak with Macbeth before the fatal banquet (- and she switches it off.) I thought it such an obvious decision, but most of the productions I have seen either went against it or didn’t succeed in showing it. So, proof of tragedy is still outstanding …

 

DARKNESS

 

Apart from blood, the most important “matter” in the play is DARKNESS. Quod esset demonstrandum, but the proof would be a waste of blog space because of the omnipresence of references to night/darkness in the play. The really interesting fact is anyway that there is so much more of it in “Macbeth” than in any other of Shakespeare’s thirty-odd plays, and the proof of THAT would definitely go beyond ANY scope, so I have to rely on my recollection of the thirty-five plays I have actually read, so: Quod ERAT demonstrandum (= proved)

 

As the “weird sisters” are INSTRUMENTS OF DARKNESS – which Banquo suspects, but there is confirmation on a plot level because they are instrumental in Macbeth’s decision to commit murder – a relation between them and the darkness is clearly implied. (proved) They have therefore to be central to the play and cannot be marginalized (proved), which they usually are (proved on the basis of my knowledge; empirical proof on a larger scale would be desirable.) So, why do the weird sisters not “work” in the way they are supposed to? They might not merely because of my own expectations being wrong – though I think I’d go with anything except boring! - or it may have something to do with the contradictory semantical issues I have unfolded. It might also just be tradition that is to blame (= that there are things you can and cannot do with the weird sisters)? “We” certainly don’t want to see witches on the stage anymore, but what do “instruments of darkness” look like in the 21st century? (And WHAT is the darkness?)

 

(I am aware that this “proved” thing becomes annoying, but I need to do it to establish where I leave the firm ground of “provability”, which invariably happens.)

 

FATE

 

Fate is certainly a central issue of the play, for plot-reasons and as a general matter of importance in “Shakespeare”. (as proved) The designation of “weird(wyrd!) sisters” for his witches is additional proof. Accordingly, there is a strong logical link – via the weird sisters - between fate and darkness = The weird sisters being instruments of darkness should have something to do with them being in charge of fate.

 

Matters I have to look into further:

 

What exactly is the DARKNESS?

 

The exact “job description” for the sisters as “instruments of darkness”

 

EQUIVOCATION (and its relation with fate)

 

LADY MACBETH

 

THE MACBETHS and their fatal relationship

 

What’s wrong with MACBETH?

 

So, now I am back where I thought I had been already, and, even though there are unsolved issues on previous points, I’ll take up the question which has bothered me for years:

 

WHAT’S WRONG WITH MACBETH?

 

The link between tragedy and Macbeth as the main protagonist has already been established. If I want to read this play as a tragedy - which appears to be such an obvious choice – it should be represented in this way on the stage. All these great, coveted “tragic” roles like Lear, Hamlet and Othello seem to have a “limp” that is more or less difficult to overcome. Apart from Hamlet, Macbeth seems to be the worst. Compared to Hamlet or Lear, he is not even that “coveted”, or at least not equally indispensable to a theatre actor’s CV. Why might that be …?

 

I feel exhausted already, but the best thing to approach this issue would be to do what I have been doing on and off, though never systematically: to examine every single Macbeth I have seen on a stage or a screen and establish what was “wrong” with them. Basically: Why were they all BORING?

 

(To be precise, two of them were not: Christopher Eccleston in my most recent RSC “Macbeth” and James McAvoy in the “Shakespeare Retold”, but they stand out as the exceptions.)

 

The EARLIEST – and one of the first – productions of Macbeth I have seen is the old Polansky film from 1971 which might be a work of art in its own right but didn’t offer me any clues about the play or its protagonist. I don’t remember who played him, nor do I want to because the acting was grotesquely “off”, not only where the lead was concerned; but it doesn’t compare because it was a time where the absence of psychological depth in the acting might have been seen as “naturalism” and which I am quite glad to have “skipped”. I don’t even REMEMBER Lady Macbeth – and this also says a lot. It is quite revealing how seldom I can remember Macbeth and Lady Macbeth TOGETHER on a screen or stage, considering the long and substantial scenes between them in the first three acts of the play. As I stubbornly continue to understand the Macbeths as an item, the absence of the lady from my memories is never a good sign. So, as to a theory of WHO Macbeth is supposed to be, I draw a BLANK, apart from the fact that he seems to be a BRUTE without any regrets about what he has done, or any recognizable psychology, and I am rather sure he WENT MAD – which is often the reason it LOOKS like bad acting … (Great British actors won’t want to believe this, but their attempts at madness are – similar to their attempts at speaking American, or German for that matter! – INVARIABLY doomed to fail.)

 

This is probably quite unfair, but my MEMORIES of the Polanski film are rather close to those of the WORST “Macbeth” I’ve ever seen – and probably the first! - by an American University theatre group when I was still at uni in Munich, so: pre-1996. There is nothing at all to say about it apart from it containing a lot of wild hair and beards – like the Polanski film! – and appallingly bad acting, a lot of shouting, no Lady Macbeth that I remember and definitely MADNESS – a recurring theme very badly in need of being looked into … (I am not chuffed!)

 

Having remembered this, I’ll effortlessly jump to the “Macbeth” with Sean Bean – the second worst production I have seen (on a par with the Polanski version) but with ONE point of interest to it … I might ask myself why these frankly horrible experiences hadn’t put me off my favourite play early on – and why it BECAME my favourite play in the first place before I ever saw it on a stage. I think the first Shakespeare I actually saw - on the telly - was the Derek Jakoby “Hamlet” (with Patrick Stewart as Claudius who was the greater revelation at the time). I am not sure but think we read “Macbeth” at school, in German, and that might actually have been the reason, even though it was in German, so not really Shakespeare. As I wasn’t interested in the English language at the time because we had such bad teachers and never read anything interesting but was very much into stuff like Schiller, it might have been sufficient for me to get thrilled. That it REMAINED my favourite play of all times until the big “revival” post-2013 – though almost on a par with “Richard III” – is more strange. It might not even be such a bad thing that I don’t remember how “Shakespeare” began because it feels as if it had always been there - before I began - like the air I breathe …

 

As I am going about it more in the order of my experience than of when the respective version of the play had been produced, it is actually Sean Bean next. That was in 2004 or – most likely – the beginning of 2005, that is post-Lord of the Rings! I must have seen a decent German production not long before that or afterwards, at Nuremberg theatre, but I don’t remember much apart from a tall, dark, striking Macbeth – rather more like my inner Macbeth than any of the others! – and a stage that was very red. (If it was to symbolize the blood, it didn’t work because that only came to me right now … It certainly isn’t my idea of creating a bloody MESS!) So, the only thing I remember about the Nuremberg “Macbeth” is that it was mostly conventional but less offensive than the one with Sean Bean where bad acting and a severed head – something all the other theatre productions could do without - are basically the only things I remember. (Or didn’t the Ralph Fiennes version have a severed head? Appalling! - If it had, I forgot right away, but I’ll get to check because it will come to the “Cinema” next month, and I’ll definitely see it again because of Indira Varma.) In any case, it was very “literal” and unimaginative. One good thing – there WAS a lady; I remember flowing red hair and very energetic acting. (I should have enjoyed that more than I probably did because this would be the only adequate Lady Macbeth I would see in a long time …)

 

But there must have been at least SOME idea about who Macbeth is supposed to be. I read part of a review because I was looking for a date, and there Sean Bean was quoted in the sense that he played a SOLDIER – so, intentionally rather physical and BRUTAL, not “brainy” at all – and that was probably just what he did. It is on a par with the old BBC adaptation for television with an actor I don’t remember who did the same thing. Macbeth is just this athletic, virile, brutal guy – potentially a villain! – who kills to get to the throne and continues as remorseless and inhuman as he had always been … Taken literally, “The Tragedie of Macbeth” is NOT a tragedy but a slaughter. More than that: it seems to be the “default setting” for this character = what “happens” when nobody can be bothered to think about it further: a murderer who becomes a tyrant and – disputably! – gets mad in the end. It’s the part of Macbeth that remains if we chose not to give a shit about neither what people are saying about him in the beginning, nor what HE is saying, nor any of these fascinating human relationships so carefully displayed … and, above all, it’s such a BORING choice!

 

Anyway, this was the first of several great actors I have seen making a hash of Macbeth, therefore probably the most painful. In 2013 I revived my interest in the play in the wake of the “Hobbit hype” because Richard Armitage mentioned Macbeth as one of the models for his character. (In this sense, Thorin Oakenshield actually became the first convincing Macbeth I have seen, and my “inner Macbeth” – when I started to learn the play by heart – certainly had his voice in it …) Subsequently, I started to collect all the versions of “Macbeth” I could get on DVD – some of which were so horrible I won’t mention them, apart from a very Scottish “Macbeth” with Jason Connery – whom I had down as a terrible actor already since the (great) Robin Hood series … I think I decided there and then that Macbeth is NOT SCOTTISH. Of course he IS Scottish (– nothing against the Scots, on the contrary; Graham McTavish is the only actor I indelibly “casted” for my inner Macbeth, as Macduff -) and probably a BODYBUILDER. I am not joking! (Even Chris Eccleston – my best Macbeth on a stage so far - thought it relevant to show us that Macbeth kept fit and could do some fighting if he had to.) So, MUSCLES are definitely a requirement, and he SHOULDN’T BE OLD.

 

A muscled brute in military garb who can wield a sword convincingly (respectively use a machine gun), or a half-naked Scot with long hair and a wild beard – how could it get any worse? I was in for a surprise when I saw the film from 2010 with Patrick Stewart. He played Macbeth as a twentieth century USURPER and DICTATOR. That is, this was the concept of the film, so this was what he did – and it was BORING!!! As the film was based on Shakespeare’s text, the first three acts virtually got skipped, and of course there was “no” Lady Macbeth. Or, if there was, she didn’t have anything to do as everything was decided from the beginning. The worst thing was, though - which I encountered here for the first time: Macbeth – even though he looked fit to fight! – definitely was AN OLD MAN!

 

I was surprised that the film version of the RSC’s “Macbeth” with Antony Sher which I saw not much later – interestingly the only one that left any traces on the internet or in their shop between 2001 AND 2018! – was so much older than the Patrick Stewart film because, on the surface, it appears so much more sophisticated. (I still have a fondness for it, if only for the reason that it is the only trace Richard Armitage left as a member of the RSC. He played Angus, I believe, and had about two sentences to say and to stand with spread legs all the time so as not to look so much taller than the other soldiers …) But only on the surface; as a new adaptation of the play it is appallingly “empty”. Macbeth is an OLD MAN without illusions or energy or ambition - or wife to speak of (even though she was played by Harriet Walter!) The whole thing is so empty of any kind of interpretation or psychology that this emptiness itself became interesting - almost as if a spell was cast over the play for it to be put to sleep to be kissed awake at a more opportune time. I think it is from this moment that I was actively waiting and hoping for a hero to come and break the spell …

 

Of course I cannot continue to say nothing at all about Ralph Fiennes playing Macbeth, so I will say one sentence. If I am thinking about it, he played him much as Antony Sher did – so, even NOTHING can create a tradition of sorts!? – only that he got PROPERLY mad in the end. (At least I think this was the intention; as I said: it never works!)

 

I know there must be “method” behind the madness, but not even Michael Fassbender could convince me of it, probably because I am still stubbornly denying the necessity. I have no clue what the point is of Macbeth becoming mad – though I am probably not right. I shall have to deal with the madness, but frantically pacing the room like a caged wolf I see as an excuse for NOT dealing with it! There isn’t much more to say for or against the “Macbeth” film with him released in 2015, at least not in its capacity as an adaptation of the play. I don’t even think this was the intention, even though they used a cruelly reductive version of the Shakespeare text. If it was, it was clearly still under the “aesthetic” spell of 2001. Quite like the latest attempt at a film from 2021 with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand that definitely hit the mark of “totally noncommittal”. Maybe certain texts get so emptied of meaning by endless repetition that the “timelessness setting” no longer works, and this was just happening to “Macbeth”? At least their Macbeth, like Michael Fassbender’s, was still middle-aged …

 

So, back to great OLD MEN playing Macbeth. Interestingly, in “The Hobbit” they made Thorin – the dwarf king with a beard so long that he has to tuck the ends through his belt so as not to tread on them - YOUNGER because they knew this whole story would only WORK if he isn’t already an old king without a crown trying to take it back but the HEIR to the throne who still has a lot to look forward to. In my opinion, it’s exactly the same for Macbeth. The tragedy of Macbeth is valid because he has this fatal decision – and this enormous fall – to take, but it is “bugged”, probably in more than one way. One of them is a “time-bug”.

 

The problem is that, on the stage, there is just NO WAY of showing convincingly how much time has passed. The downfall of Macbeth requires at least a few years - more likely many years - from his access to power until his death. At the end, Macbeth is at least on the brink of old age when he speaks about his “way of life” that “has fallen into the seer, the yellow leaf …” I don’t want to say that the play is bugged from the beginning because on an Elizabethan stage there wouldn’t have been a problem. The same way an “average” Elizabethan would have been perfectly fine with witches, they wouldn’t have been the least bit interested in these finer psychological points “we” find so fascinating in Shakespeare’s text. (This is something I am always trying to ignore whilst being well aware of it!) My idea for dealing with the problem is that Macbeth should be still middle-aged, and the “yellow-leaf” stuff at the end would come out slightly ironical and self-pitying, kind of like a “midlife crisis”.

 

By the way, I HAVE SEEN my perfect “Macbeth”! I have seen it – but it was not by Shakespeare. It must have been shortly after 2013 that I hit upon the “Shakespeare Retold” with James McAvoy. In this story, everything that never works on the stage works because the “time-bug” has been removed. The “ban” on tragedy is lifted. It is the perfect version of this story with Joe Macbeth as YOUNG and ambitious sous chef who is doing all the work and therefore thinks he should inherit from his lazy and conceited employer who is taking all the credit for the new Michelin star. He kills him, of course with the help of his attractive and ambitious wife – brilliantly played by Keeley Hawes – who is the one with the social and management skills but also a chink in her armour because of the loss of their child. (“My” Lady Macbeth until Indira Varma came along!) Banquo, his co-worker and best buddy, is killed by an illegal worker whom Macbeth blackmailed while biking with his son on the heath. It also has the best – and weirdest – “weird sisters”, the only ones I saw that really “worked” because of the great "binmen" idea I already mentioned. Perfect “Macbeth”! I realized only recently how much it has shaped my inner “Macbeth”. Actually, more than it should have!

 

It wasn’t even Macbeth, respectively James McAvoy - who is a genius, but so are/were Sean Bean, Antony Sher, Patrick Stewart, Michael Fassbender and Ralph Fiennes, all of whom I have seen doing incredible things as actors. James McAvoy as such wasn’t that much more interesting as Macbeth, he was just YOUNGER! The main thing was that, for the first time, I could detect an IDEA what this play might be about. I got convinced that Macbeth is about how far somebody would go to advance their career and the consequences of this choice. I still don’t think I am entirely wrong, but there are even bigger things at stake …

 

There was still one “Macbeth” to “sit through” before it gets REALLY interesting. 2018 was clearly a “Macbeth” year. Before we departed for Stratford we saw Rory Kinnear as Macbeth in the “Cinema”. I didn’t expect anything at all because he is one of the most boring actors I know - and got something more. There was actually one scene that was remarkable – psychology-wise – and this is not a mean feat where “Macbeth” is concerned! It was the scene after the murder of Duncan where he displayed the most genuine and devastating REMORSE I have seen on a stage. Therefore I will probably remember him fondly to the end of my days because I don’t suppose that anybody will ever again try and do the OBVIOUS!!! At least I had now proof that it’s not impossible to play WHAT SHAKESPEARE HAS WRITTEN …

 

And there was even a Lady Macbeth in this production: Anne-Marie Duff. She is exceptional, so there was ONE human being on the stage the moment she turned up. But I belief they casted her because she is so great at playing these damaged people – and a Lady Macbeth damaged from the beginning was not at all what I WANTED to see …

 

Then, in the summer of 2018, Claudia and I flew to Birmingham and travelled to Shakespeare’s hometown to meet Irmi - the third member of our “Macbeth Club” that only sits every other decade on special events – to see the RSC’s brand-new “Macbeth” with Christopher Eccleston. I pause just a moment to recall our sitting on a sunny bench opposite the swan-filled river and the theatre where we MIGHT have seen Chris Eccleston on a balcony. I was sceptical at the time but, in retrospect, I think we did … (one of the top moments of my life actually!), and then us meeting Irmi at the “Swan” … Even though my mates were not chuffed, the actual event I recall as a break-through of sorts.

 

A lot of what I described just now I have on DVD but I didn’t watch anything again because I had already dismissed it as unsatisfactory, respectively – for the “Shakespeare Retold” – remembered it really well. But it is a great thing that the RSC still produces DVDs, and of course I had “Macbeth”. It was a really good idea to watch it again as this made me aware what a break-through it actually had been. As I am writing this on Shakespeare’s birthday – after I drank a Limoncello Spritz to commemorate – I toast him vigorously as one of the few people who never cease to surprise me. The experience seemed “patchy” at the time – kind of incomplete - but now I can appreciate this production as an exceptional effort because - without knowing it! - I have come a long way. And - better still, though it didn’t feel so good at first! - in “one fell swoop” it eradicated some of my most persistent errors …

First interlude: Weird sisters?!

 

Having found a very short, sweet and satisfactory answer to the key question about the WEIRD SISTERS, I have skipped all the work I had already done. So, before entering the “final battle” about the Macbeths, I thought I’d give myself a break and walk a path I already cleared – or that was what I thought!

 

The first step of the long journey had been taken years ago, when we went to Stratford to see “Macbeth” with Christopher Eccleston. On this occasion I bought the RSC’s latest edition of the play. In the preface the editors explained their unorthodox spelling of the “weyard sisters”. This was the first time I heard that the weird sisters are NOT, actually, WEIRD.

 

I must say I was a bit disappointed because I liked them “weird” – and my inner “Macbeth” rather relied on the weirdness, aesthetically - they couldn’t be weird enough for my taste - and plot-wise: Why are Macbeth and Banquo usually so little surprised – and confused, maybe even to the point of distraction!? – when they have this run-in with the sisters?

 

In retrospect, it was more than a bit of semantics but a big eye-opener because it awoke my suspicion that nothing about the weird sisters might actually be what it seemed, and I already began to gather “stupid” questions without answering them, which is something I always do. Questions like: Why is Lady Macbeth “always” wearing a green dress? Of course she is not, literally, but I saw it twice now and got the idea that it MIGHT be traditional and might carry some sort of meaning. Probably just bullshit, but I know that it will bother me until I’ve found an answer … (or know why I was asking the question; in this case it made me aware of the importance of TRADITION where “Macbeth” is concerned. All this is “heavily loaded” stuff, most of which has nothing to do with “Shakespeare”.)

 

This is my catalogue of silly questions concerning the sisters:

 

#1 Are the weird sisters really WITCHES?

 

#2 Are the weird sisters really WEIRD?

 

#3 What are they, if they are not WEIRD?

 

#4 Are they really SISTERS (= blood relatives)? (And, if they are, why?)

 

#5 And – if they are not (just) witches - which side are they on?

 

I’ll do the answers before breakfast, but they are only the beginning. In fact, each of them turned out to contain its own little can of worms.

 

#1 Yes and NO.

 

#2 NO (and yes)

 

#3 WYRD.

 

#4 (Emphatically) YES. (Because they say so. For the “real” reason refer to #3!)

 

#5 Anybody’s guess.

 

#1 WITCHES??? Perversely, I always took it that the weird sisters were NOT witches. The reason is probably that nobody ever calls them witches, not event they themselves: “The weird sisters, hand in hand …” (the sisters), “and oftentimes the instruments of darkness tell us truths“ (Banquo), “… by which title before these weird sisters saluted me” (Macbeth), “I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters” (Banquo), “You secret, black, and midnight hags” (Macbeth), “And betimes I will to the weird sisters …” (Macbeth), “Saw you the weird sisters?” (Macbeth).

 

This ambiguity – if it is not just due to a convention of not NAMING witches!? - calls for an explanation, but not the one I chose, unless I believed that a thief is not a thief, even though they have stolen something, just because nobody knows it and can CALL them a thief. There is no doubt that the sisters are practicing black magic and ARE therefore witches. The ambiguity, if intended, is not for the audience, who is in on it at the latest when they are boasting about their dark deeds before they meet with Macbeth and Banquo. In fact, the animal attributes (“graymalkin” and “paddock”) make sure it is in on it from the beginning. It is for the “benefit” of the protagonists. Banquo strongly suspects. He is the one who interrogates them and refers to them as “instruments of darkness”, but, in the end, it might not have made much difference. He is prepared to make them his “oracles as well”, and who knows what would have ensued … Macbeth clearly uses the ambiguity for his own ends. Blinded by ambition, he doesn’t WANT to know. (“Such supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good …”)

 

So, witches it is!? - Not quite. There is a another, more potent, argument that there is more to them than just witchcraft … see #3!

 

#2 WEIRD??? The RSC’s editors used the historic spelling “weyard sisters” to avoid the contemporary connotations of “weird” (= (extremely) strange). According to them, the intended meaning was “wayward”, as in “wayward behaviour” = selfish, bad, unpredictable, difficult to control. Great attributes for the sisters! I was instantly persuaded and didn’t even think of checking. In fact, it’s “weyward” (not “weyard”) in the First Folio (– which rather plays into the editor’s argument, but the chutzpah might have raised my suspicion …)

 

As almost anything where the weird sisters are concerned the argument isn’t exactly FALSE, just incomplete and therefore misleading. Something good certainly came of it: I knew now that the weird sisters are not WEIRD. (Although the description – “so withered and so wild in their attire” that they “look not like the inhabitants of the earth” and Banquo’s confusion about their sex might still make them weird enough for me?)

 

Exhausted already … but it’s getting worse! Seems to be a “two coffee problem” …

 

One coffee and three chocolate easter eggs later:

 

#3 WYRD ??? When I started to check on everything I still didn’t understand about “Macbeth”, I also looked into the “weird sisters” and instantly discovered that the RSC put me on the wrong track. We know WHO the weird sisters are – in the first place! It is neither a secret nor open to discussion because we know where they come from. Shakespeare’s source for “Macbeth” was Holinshed’s “Chronicle of Scotland” where the protagonist, returning from the battlefield, meets three women who deliver their prophecies about his future. These women are neither weird nor old hags, they are beautiful noblewomen = the Elizabethan version of the Greek Fates, so, clearly not witches but GODDESSES. IN THE FIRST PLACE, they are neither “weird sisters” nor “wayward sisters” but “WYRD SISTERS” – “wyrd” being the Anglo-Saxon word for “fate”.

 

But again it is not as simple as that! Before I am again starting to cast doubt, I insist on setting it down that the “weird sisters” are neither weird nor wayward nor witches IN THE FIRST PLACE, but age-old, powerful goddesses in charge of the fates of men (and women). (HEATHEN goddesses, mind! Whereas in a Christian universe the one and only God is personally in charge of everything, the Olympian gods were usually rather relaxed about humans – unless their doings concerned them personally! – and thus left the petty details to three industrious occupants of the spinning room. This, in my opinion, muddles the issue of fate in “Macbeth” not just a little bit. See #5!)

 

Now to the “buts”: That the sisters are goddesses in HOLINSHED doesn’t mean that they have to be goddesses ON THE STAGE. As usual, Shakespeare takes the liberty to do with his source exactly as he pleases. In “Macbeth” the sisters are vengeful, irresponsible, mischievous old hags who practice black magic and create havoc, therefore WITCHES and as WAYWARD as they come! ON THE SURFACE, the goddesses probably became witches because the producers of the play wanted to please King James I who became an expert on witchcraft after almost having been shipwrecked crossing the channel, a mishap he attributed to the influence of witches. “The yeasty waves” which “confound and swallow navigation up” would have conjured a rather unpleasant memory. But I don’t believe that this is all there is to the witches. Even if not entirely intended, they certainly developed a life of their own.

 

As the Anglo-Saxon word “wyrd” and the “Elizabethan” word “weyward” have no etymological or semantic connection whatsoever, it stands to reason how they came together in the first place. I suppose it is the influence of witches because “wayward” is exactly what they are, and, I suppose, the expression “wyrd sisters” (approximately pronounced as “word sisters”) wouldn’t have made much more sense to an Elizabethan audience than to an audience of the 21st century. Only the part who had a classic education – respectively an inclination to check Wikipedia – would have known what it meant. Therefore I think it most likely that “weyward” wasn’t a spelling error of the First Folio but the intended meaning. (Which is great but created a semantic “storm in a teacup” due to the mixing of entirely independent contexts.) So, in the end, the RSC was probably “right”, but, again, it’s not as simple as that …

 

#4 SISTERS??? The reason why I don’t care for the RSC’s decision is because it is reductive – with consequences I came to dislike. The reason that the witches are not CALLED “witches” I already explained. (Either there was a convention against naming witches or the ambiguity was intended for the protagonists.) But this doesn’t explain why they are called the “weird SISTERS” by everybody who refers to them = Macbeth, Banquo, and the sisters themselves. This is actually rather noteworthy, and I think the likeliest explanation for this is that they are intended to BE sisters, and this can only be because Shakespeare wanted to keep the semantics of the FATES – who ARE three SISTERS. (Intuitively, this had been important for me from the beginning, so that I liked to imagine the witches of my inner “Macbeth” as weird triplets!)

 

So, using “weird” instead of “wyrd” or “wayward”, in my opinion, I keep both intended semantic contexts alive because the word “weird” didn’t exist before Shakespeare invented the “weird sisters” and therefore the expression constitutes an amalgamation of both contexts. Using “weird”, a new word, I don’t cancel out either meaning. Sorry, I just love this etymological stuff – but there actually is more to it …

 

#5 WITCHES OR NOT - WHICH SIDE ARE THEY ON??? The reason that both contexts have to be kept alive to understand and – which is more contestable! – represent the sisters on the stage is, in my opinion, that FATE is such a central and contested issue in “Macbeth”. In Elizabethan times, fate is probably not as “absolute” as in ancient Greece, but it is a central term of Protestant faith and therefore omnipresent in “Shakespeare”. “Hamlet” is one of these works of fiction that constantly teach me that understanding is overrated; there are much better things one can do with them. It is supposed to be the most “modern” of Shakespeare’s plays; in truth it might have become that much later and originally have been the exact opposite because, as Claudia and I recently established, it is pure Greek tragedy. The protagonist already got into a tragic position before he is actually grown up and in a position to act. Hamlet’s solution, in the end, is total acceptance of fate: “The readiness is all!” Along the way, there certainly is a bit of action but also what always feels like too much monologue on the stage – which basically was the chorus in Greek tragedy: coming to terms with things. In “Macbeth” the fate issue is trickier because “modern” tragedy is all about guilt, not fate, and as soon as “we” start to act, we also become guilty. The problem with Elizabethan tragedy, respectively an Elizabethan “mindset”, is that “Elizabethan” is not just Elizabethan. It is, if anything, a default name for an extremely dynamic social conglomerate, full of factions and irreconcilable contradictions. This is probably one of the features that made “Shakespeare” so versatile and enduring. (The bloody thing doesn’t add up!)

 

The way the three sisters are placed in the play suggests that they have, in some way or other, a part in the tragic development. It suggests that Macbeth would not have become guilty if they hadn’t told him his fate, but this is only clear-cut if we don’t scratch the surface. Beneath it, the sisters are semantically divided. If they really were goddesses and in league with fate, in a world ruled by the one God, they couldn’t be “instruments of darkness”. And they cannot be “wayward” – irresponsible and, in consequence, not to be taken seriously – and “wyrd” – important and influential – at the same time. So, it seems we have to decide – and, doing this, one way or the other, we give them real influence over the story we are going to read. Goddesses or old hags – they are the SPINNERS = makers of text. We might not WANT to grant them this power, but, try as we might, we won’t succeed …

 

Here I’ll come back unexpectedly to the question of the green dress. I haven’t solved this one, but it struck me as a decision that was already made unconsciously before somebody thought of dressing Lady Macbeth. In my opinion, there are a few settings already set before a new “Macbeth” is even thought of. One of them is that Banquo has to be present in the banquet scene. Both Claudia and I tried to change that – and failed. Another seems to be about the weird sisters, and it finds an expression in the RSC’s decision for “wayward”. In Elizabethan times, witches were not a problem. The general public believed in their existence and knew what they could do and in what way they were “instruments of darkness”. There was also no ambiguity about where the darkness came from. In a twenty-first century production of “Macbeth”, I’d be outraged if the sisters were witches. If I see a contemporary production of “Macbeth” I expect to see … do I even know what I expect???

 

At the Dock X the sisters were refugees of war – the least powerful, most marginalized of people. In the “old” RSC production with Antony Sher they were some kind of ragged homeless, if anything even more irrelevant and powerless. In the new one with Christopher Eccleston they were little girls – children, the least powerful part of society from the point of view of generation. The “Shakespeare Retold” with James McAvoy – still my favourite “Macbeth”, though unfortunately without any “Shakespeare” in it - brings the tradition to a head in a very entertaining way: The sisters are binmen, and their prophecies work exactly BECAUSE nobody really listens to them. Binmen are about the basest part of society as to career choice. They are irrelevant. Who listens to the prattle of binmen?!!!

 

So, even BEFORE a new “Macbeth” is thought of, the decision to marginalize the sisters is already made, and I am already in for a new disappointment. At second glance it doesn’t even work, they are too important a structural feature to be obliterated. And the choice what to do with them – apart from marginalizing – is more relevant because it tells us where “we” today locate the DARKNESS. Poverty and destitution make people powerless but threaten society because they lay bare its self-delusions. (Beware the binmen! In fact, they are almost omniscient because they see EVERYTHING!) The powerless immigrants wield an enormous impersonal power to destabilize “western” societies by making the brown filth overflow once more. And children are the most “wayward” of people, basically uncontrollable, selfish, and unreliable. They have to be supervised or referred to institutions. In fact, we couldn’t even imagine a world where children actually were allowed to run free …!!! (Even though it was ALMOST like that when I was a child, but today cars run free everywhere, so children have to stay at home.) But the little girls on the Stratford stage, though creepy enough, were extremely docile. They probably existed only in Macbeth’s imagination, therefore: no real threat. Most importantly: They DIDN’T DO ANYTHING.

 

THIS is one of the settings I’d most definitely change.

“The tragedy of Macbeth”

 

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?

Instruments of darkness

 

The spoils of London are but slowly emerging – which I love! So, “Dexter” and the psychopaths get delayed again in favour of Shakespeare. After we had seen the basically boring “Macbeth” at DocX with Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma, Claudia and I had a substantial chat over fish & chips and London Pride amber ale about what always goes wrong with this play and why we always think they would have done so much better with us as directors … The next day we saw what now is my THIRD amazing “Othello” at the Sam Wannamaker Playhouse and started wondering again: Maybe this play really IS cursed? … over which I slept, and the next morning, on the Elizabeth Line to Heathrow, I realized that I had the answer.

 

(Which I wouldn’t have, by the way, without my previous excursion into “real life” described in my last post! Have I mentioned that “Patience” is my second name, and that I am fond of long delays? Maybe not for some time …)

 

“Boring”, by the way, only when Indira Varma was not on stage – best Lady Macbeth I’ve ever seen, as I knew she would be. (Like I knew Christopher Eccleston would be the best Macbeth I’d probably ever see; I don’t dare to imagine what might have happened with the two of them on the same stage … most likely so much less than I could imagine, not with the other “bits” missing. But of the Macbeths later. It turned out as a good idea to approach the play from a different angle.

 

This started some time ago last summer at the Café Münchner Freiheit, and it started with the “weird sisters”. Now that I can see where it has led, I am amazed. I mean, I began to revisit “Macbeth” – my favourite play of all times, if I had to decide! - in 2015 or 2016, if I remember this correctly, and began to learn the text, initially with the objective of creating my own ideal production of the play in my head, which I gradually forgot about. As I had learned it by heart, I had this feeling that I totally understood the text, being aware at the same time that there was little I did understand. But I never felt compelled to do anything about it, apart from the short interval when we went to Stratford to see the Christopher Eccleston “Macbeth”. I obviously had the feeling that somebody would “resolve” this for me – a state of delusion from which I miraculously surfaced some time BEFORE we went to see Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma in London. And this might just be the beginning – in theatre terms – as we are getting another chance to see David Tennant as Macbeth this Fall because this very successful – and probably interesting – production we sadly had to skip will be given another go. Come virus, war or industrial action – if we can make it, we’ll be there!

 

Of course this is not an indication of anything because there is always a “Macbeth” on in London, but sometimes there are these “clusters”, and I can’t help feeling that I have become a part of one. Given this sudden break-through, the time might just not have been RIGHT for “Macbeth”? I had been pleased to see the RSC perform the play the way I UNDERSTOOD IT – being fully aware that I didn’t have a clue! I haven’t ditched what I thought I understood, it is just only a tiny fraction of something so much bigger, and everything else has been held in limbo. Now – that is, last summer – I began the painstaking effort of looking into every tiny detail, every obscure word, every metaphor, every historical angle – and thus to become fully aware that what I understood so far is just the tip of the iceberg. I didn’t finish the work and might not, due to lack of time, but recently have begun to reap the benefit. I wouldn’t have, though, had I not somehow become part of one of these inexplicable “adoption clusters” – where some people who matter have this feeling it might be a good time for a “new one”. As I said, it might just be chance, but, on my departure from London, I got this sudden, very strong feeling that – at this moment in my life AND in history – the time has come once more for “Macbeth”. And – I just love these moments when “Shakespeare” makes me realize how naïve I have been! – that this isn’t exactly good news.

 

On the lazy, sunny afternoon at the café I was still very far from this point – to tell the truth: “Macbeth” was the last thing on my mind! - but we had decided to see the play in February and felt compelled to do a bit of brain storming. The only thing I remember about it now is the initial question:

 

WHO ARE THE “WEIRD SISTERS”, AND WHAT DO THEY WANT?

 

It came from the Shakespeare chat group that Claudia follows, and I remember thinking that it was probably a stupid question, but this was condescension. My own hypothetical production of “Macbeth” had actually started with a visualization of the sisters. In my opinion, they had to be anarchic, destructive, a decisive aesthetic factor in the production, and, first and foremost, GREAT FUN. I had therefore been invariably disappointed by how boring and nondescript they turned out in every single production I saw and by the lack of a concept, or at least one I could SEE. At the DocX, they were supposed to be refugees of war, but to get this you had to read the programme and still answer the question: What has this to do with anything?

 

At this point I realize that I am still brainstorming – in fact, my brain is suffering some sort of explosion, and I have to set down the fallout immediately before it disappears … Maybe it is exactly the point of the three sisters that they are so nondescript, or rather that their description is so contradictory that they could in fact be anything – or nothing! - so that everybody could make of them what they want. (“What are these, so withered and so wild in their attire that look not like the inhabitants of the earth and yet are on it …”) Of course it is disappointing that people usually make so little of them, but we shouldn’t know WHAT to make of them because this links them to the overall theme of EQUIVOCATION that I had set down as one of the key issues I didn’t yet understand. I have more of an idea now, but the issue is still growing. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” – a lot in “Macbeth” is not what it appears to be – or is supposed to be - but isn’t it US who are still not getting something? Clearly Shakespeare meant to insinuate a structure of reality that is FUNDAMENTALLY disturbing. There will be a little more about the weird sisters - probably a great deal more - but I realize now that at the bottom of my fascination with them was a premonition that they might be exactly at the CENTRE of the play = where we DON’T look! That it might not just be ME but “US” who haven’t understood yet, and that RIGHT NOW it might be slowly dawning on us …

 

There are a few things they got right in said production – apart from casting Indira Varma as Lady Macbeth. (That I will say NOTHING AT ALL about Ralph Fiennes whom I am usually so fond of as an actor says everything!) One of them was the “weird sisters” – at least marginally. It didn’t really work, though, but I think they meant for them to be actually DOING something. This is one of the few things which are unambiguously obvious about the sisters: that they are meant to be doing something, not just standing there – or creeping about on the stage, it doesn’t really matter which! – looking pretty – respectively, weird! - and speaking these alluringly nonsensical lines. As Claudia astutely remarked, they are meant to be “INSTRUMENTS of darkness”. (Sometimes, just sometimes, all you need is to know the text!) Which struck me as a good answer to the first part of our initial question: WHO ARE THE WEIRD SISTERS? And with just one further step it resolves the second part as well: WHAT DO THEY WANT?

 

I realize that it wasn’t just condescension to think of them as stupid questions because I could think of a hundred stupid – or rather immaterial – ANSWERS to them, one of which would have been my own. I will look into the “weird sisters” historically in due time because it is interesting and helped me get to what now might seem like a flash of inspiration, but the brunt of the matter is that the weird sisters could be anything, as long as they are instruments of darkness on top of it = INSTRUMENTAL in the production of the DARKNESS that features so often and so prominently in this play. As much as the “physical matter” is predominantly blood, (so predominantly that I favour productions with a lot of blood on the stage, another thing they did right at the DocX), the “spiritual matter” is darkness - which I haven’t really noticed because I have been looking elsewhere. (Blood is red because this makes us pay attention to it!)

 

The second part of the question is in fact kind of silly, but nonetheless important. Of course, the weird sisters don’t WANT anything – as in having an ultimate objective - because they could be anybody, or nobody, and their personal motives are in fact immaterial. Their raison d’être is to wreak havoc and make sure that darkness prevails. They are the likes of Loki, and no wonder that I kind of like them!? (I am just back from watching “Miller’s Girl” – film of the year already! - and am thinking that as long as you haven’t answered the question of how to be dangerous, life isn’t worth living …) So, I was right to think these were silly questions – though I was wrong to think they needn’t be answered. It turns out that the issue isn’t really the weird sisters, it’s the DARKNESS.

Only in darkness we can see our light shining brightly

 

I spent such a long time outside my head I cannot believe it, but when I entered it again, things had changed. I know that there is no greater danger for really getting on with things than complacency. Nonetheless, right now I enjoy being complacent. It feels as if I have earned it.

 

Feeling less depressed, I barely remember it, but there was a really long time when everything looked uniformly bleak if not threatening, without a single silver lining – apart from the thought that it could be so much worse. Therefore it’s a long way back to fictional issues, but the interaction became interesting. I have probably been so inconclusive on fiction vs real life because there hadn’t BEEN any “real life” barging in like this.

 

There was exactly one place where things had improved in 2023 – even though (or because?) they got a bit over my head: at work. A small token of the big improvement after our head librarian – who had “bad karma” written on his forehead – retired was that we all received “christmassy” fortune cookies that tasted of cinnamon and contained the usual uplifting rubbish, apart from mine which read: “Only in darkness we can see our light shining brightly”.

 

I was flabbergasted. I don’t think it ever happened to me that I got issued the right words at the right time. At the moment though, I could only see the darkness … Simultaneously, I became aware that I already WAS less idle and complacent than I used to be. In a way, I had been preparing for the bad times.

 

Right now, things may not really be looking up, but seem to be getting a move on. And, together with the change of light, that makes me feel as if I was a part of something – a feeling I had entirely lost. One example: I had been listening to the BBC’s “Ukrainecast” from the beginning – I know there is still hope for people gathering behind the RIGHT causes as long as the BBC exists! – but recently almost stopped because it became too depressing. Right at this moment, Macron started talking about NATO getting troupes into Ukraine – which might not sound that ludicrous as it does now in a few months’ time when everybody got used to the idea! Of course, if we ONLY had Macron OR Sunak OR Scholz we would be fucked, but as long as the division of labour holds with France and Great Britain contributing bold ideas and practical support, and Germany most of the funds, there is still hope. And not to stop listening is an expression of this hope.

 

A similar issue was the fascist movement gaining ground because of the “weakness” of the current government – still the best government we ever had, in my opinion, because they have at least some ideas about the FUTURE. Sometimes the darkness becoming overpowering can induce the little scattered lights to rise and shine. And then they are not so small and dim anymore. I had despaired of the limp climate protests, but suddenly there were 200 000 (!) people on Leopoldstraße – the population of an entire city – screaming that they hated the AfD! And I was one of them. They haven’t stopped since (- though I don’t doubt we will get lazy and complacent again.)

 

(The experience of rising chaos and all-encompassing darkness went deep, though, this time, and finally made me “crack” “Macbeth”. But there is still a lot leading up to this …)

 

Before that, there was a lot of “family” to work through. At the best of times – grin! – I forget that I am part of a family and carry on happily with my little life. But when they are not so good, I become aware that my family is the only thing I have. And that it might be falling apart, or has fallen apart a long time ago without anybody noticing. This might have been mostly the depression talking – the point of families is exactly that they don’t fall apart - but this doesn’t mean that everything is even remotely as it should be. And realizing this made me willing to put a bit of work into it – setting aside other things. This war mostly disagreeable and stressful, and I realized the benefit only when I recently spent a week in London with my friend and found that I was so relaxed that I was kind of floating the whole time, as if nothing even so slightly disagreeable could touch me – nor did it, in fact. I felt entirely free of doubt, and I think the reason was that, somewhere on the way through this muddle and mess, I realized that I had a totally clear and clean feeling about what was right for me to do, even though others might not like it, and that all I had to do was to follow that feeling. Part of the trouble with my family is that everybody is so nice and disagreement such a difficult issue, but sometimes it is not possible to agree with everybody, and I invariable feel bad when I pretend to. But when I stand my ground, others respect me more, even listen to me, though they might dislike me at this moment. For the first time, I experienced RIGHTEOUSNESS as something satisfactory and important, as long as it is not misused to make others feel bad, because it is an expression and a strengthening of one’s own moral compass. (Like screaming: “Munich hates the AfD!” – which, unfortunately, is a long way from making anybody feel bad.) Somehow I got this right and, in my own eyes, had emerged as a better person. Which I think is the intrinsic goal of life: to grow in our entirety as a person, not just in detail, like looks, fitness, intellect, professional abilities etcetera, we just don’t know how to do it, most of the time. Therefore it felt like a real achievement, but also as if I got really lucky, to the point that I almost understand now what people mean when the say that they feel “humbled” – and really mean it!

 

(I also realized during this stay in London where we saw the most incredible theatre how reading, but especially theatre – as a time-saving, instantaneous method! – may help to boost this inner compass. I think I even wrote this once, without really understanding it yet, that this is because we are enjoying OURSELVES. Life - at best! - is the HARD road to perfection, but they both work together.)

 

This should have been the introduction to what I really intended to write, but it got too big, so I take a break before I embark on splitting hairs about psychopaths, sociopaths and empathy deficiency.

Book fest

 

It has been an impossibly long time, but there have been important things. Which is an excuse. There are always things, it’s called life. I knew that something was not right, but the “wrongness” had accumulated over a long time, so I didn’t know anymore what “okay” had been like. I won’t go into the “medical” side of things, I just remember to have noticed at one point that I didn’t really READ anymore; I just wrote things about reading from my memories of what it had been like. Now that is mended, I am reading again! So, the compulsory break was good for something, and this is a fresh start. It will all be about READING now.

 

First time I noticed the difference was when I re-read Sally Rooney’s “Conversations with Friends”. As it is often the case, this was caused by a screen adaptation, available on ZDF media centre. It isn’t great like the one for “Normal People”, but it gradually became interesting to the point that I decided to re-read the book. I hadn’t really liked the book either, not like I had loved “Normal People” (which I read first), in fact I had been slightly annoyed by these people who had all the things I never had and still thought they had problems. Now I was mesmerized. How could I have “missed” such an exceptional book! I won’t go into detail, I don’t remember it well enough, having moved on, but I retain the memory of REALLY reading again like a forgotten flavour …

 

It won’t do, though, for the blog, to keep mentioning great books. One question already popped up which became more acute later: Why is READING BOOKS so entirely different from any other kind of reading?

 

My ”British history project” is going well too, though I am marooned in first century AD for probably a very long time. I haven’t even finished the four volumes about Boudica and her Celts by Manda Scott yet, although I am approaching the final battle. To be honest, in the long run they were a tedious and annoying read, nonetheless they taught me a few very important things about history and how I “use” it, and I will slowly re-read them as “background” when I am getting round to the time-consuming pleasure of sampling the “real” history behind them. From the little I have read yet, I came to the – maybe – premature conclusion that nothing in these books literally tells me something about who the Celts were. (Quite unlike Bernard Cornwell’s “Stonehenge”, by the way, which, astonishingly, gave me some real understanding of what “Bronze age” people might have been about.) Nonetheless, I think that Scott's overall conclusion is sound, namely that Roman culture – which really is so astonishingly like our own in many respects – has created a future that is in many ways problematic. In particular, patriarchal structures – which still rule most of the world including parts of my own! – were not inevitable. The Roman’s were just so successful because of the military system they created that they first flattened everything and convinced the rest with their superior technology and administration. In this way, they made patriarchism – on which their culture is based – permanent for millennia to come. And this is where it becomes so interesting because I understood that the multiple “problems”, the ugliness and inacceptable blood-letting of the present, is partially happening because we are on our way to OVERCOME patriarchism for good, and this is causing a lot of “stress” in the system. As much as all these fascists, trumpists, homophobes and leaders of Medieval cults might want to ignore it: the leading culture AROUND THE GLOBE is no longer patriarchal but based on freedom of the individual, diversity, flat hierarchies and so on. (Basically something I don’t even have a name for yet, which is exciting! We want to call it democracy because that’s what WE know, but it is not.) And this time it’s irreversible because global economy and “the internet” are on board. It won’t “go away” anytime soon.

 

Rome did go away eventually, it probably just took longer than people would have imagined. The death throes of patriarchism will also go on for a long time still, at the loss of many lives; they might even lead to our extinction, but the one thing I know for sure – and which I have understood on a deeper level looking at the Romans from a different perspective! – is that we are right in the middle of them.

 

Now I am coming to my very own “book fest” which I have staged this week, having finally received the hard copy of Richard Armitage’s first novel “Geneva”. Somehow this f... program forces me to write in HTML now and doesn’t allow me to insert pictures anymore, therefore I have to describe it. I bought a quarter bottle of champagne, propped the beautiful new book against the wall, put a big, bright-yellow candle in front of it and placed the champagne and one of the trendy new flutes I recently bought from Depot on the side. Then I lighted the candle, drank the champagne and began to read the book. It was great!

 

The detour was actually good because it provided an occasion for me to try and be atmospheric, and this is what struck me when I first read the book myself. I loved hearing it on Audible, especially as a was so chuffed that Nicola Walker gave her voice to Sarah Collier, and I noticed the atmospheric quality then, but I enjoyed it infinitely more when I read it myself. Especially from the point when they are coming to Geneva. I could smell the cold, crisp air of the mountains and saw the lights tinkling on the lake under a supernaturally clear sky. I walked the corridors of the futuristic Schiller Institute and skidded down the icy slope in free-fall … Reading the story for the third time, it didn’t matter any longer that it is a thriller with all the faults inherent in the format. (In particular, they have to “end well” because people wouldn’t use them for recreational reading if the mirrored the “real” horror and despair of life’s disasters, and this usually makes them “deflate” towards the end.) Now I just enjoyed the incredible attention to detail that never leads to redundancy because there is a dash and a rhythm to the writing that propels the reading forward. (I was just in a position to compare it with the tedious and endlessly redundant detail of Manda Scotts books!) It is just such a BEAUTIFUL READ!

 

I became aware that I have not just collected samples of great reading but come up with two answers to my initial question along the way. The question why reading BOOKS myself is so different from having them read to me or using other media for reading. They are not mutually exclusive.

 

The first is that I have to make the effort myself – figure out HOW to read it – instead of leaving certain decisions to the actor(s) reading it. It might also make me pay more attention to features that are not inherent in the text, for example the voices of characters created by the actor(s).

 

The other explanation is that books are not “meant” to “run” in the background while I am actually doing other things, but to be approached with all my being and with all my senses – having to re-create sensual images of all kinds FROM MY OWN MEMORIES. This applies likewise to audio books but might work better when I have to do the whole business of re-creating myself. Watching stories on screen instead provides me with NEW visual input and experiences that I may add to the “library” I later use to read books …

 

So, this was the best in a long time but it is getting better. I have begun to write fiction again. But as the weather is so great outside and I have a lot of work in the garden, this will become the subject of a new post. I guess I’ll skip Halloween this year and will celebrate Thanksgiving instead – grateful for all the beautiful and useful books I have read, and for the multitudinous stories yet to be written.