Gleanings of “Macbeth”: about reference texts and “timelessness”

The day before I began to write this I met with Claudia – two months after „Macbeth“ in Stratford – and we talked about Shakespeare for hours. This time JUST Shakespeare! It has almost become some kind of routine now – READING SHAKESPEARE – but I still cannot believe that it turned out like this for me. Every time something like reading “Macbeth” happens it comes as this infinitely pleasant surprise …

Though I am eager now to come to “To be or not to be …” and “Nothing”, which got suspended indefinitely because of the unexpected “happening” of “Macbeth”, there is still something left. Claudia wrote me an e-mail before we departed for Stratford, and I kept it because I knew there was something important in it. Now I had time to figure out what it was, and our discussion helped a great deal to finally make up my mind about it. Not really where “Macbeth” is concerned, but about an issue that bothers and intrigues me almost every time I am dealing with “Shakespeare”. This is what she wrote:

“Yesterday I thought a lot about how one of the crucial subjects of the play – the overthrow of order, and chaos – might be represented in a contemporary way (on the stage). The only option I could think of was the murder of a democratic leader who is replaced by a tyrant. What speaks against it is the appointment of a successor by Duncan. This would already mean breaking a taboo and indicate the beginning of the end – and this would be “Julius Caesar”. I think it is important as well to draw a line between “Macbeth” and “Richard II” – which is about the overthrow of a legitimate king – but in this case the focus is on Richard II being an inadequate leader, which cannot be said for Duncan (…) It is even crucial to show that Duncan is a good leader (…) The text is very explicit in this respect and doesn’t allow a different interpretation. And the frame of mind at the time didn’t allow for anything else than to think of a king as God-given. It is just not how WE think (…)”

As usual, there are a number of interesting issues which I would like to address, as, for example, why I judge the political interpretation – about good leadership and tyranny – NOT to be relevant in this case … But the most intriguing question – which I always come to ask myself at some point reading Shakespeare – is if it is necessary, or useful, to make this contemporary “translation” on the stage, this kind of statement on the historical and political situation addressed in the play.

We talked about this as well when we met and - I think! - agreed that this kind of statement is often useful and a big help to better understand what issues the play is dealing with, and probably quite as frequently turns out unsatisfactory, or wrong. In my experience it can be very enjoyable and instructive, as in the National Theatre’s “Julius Caesar”, or more or less beside the point, as in the National Theatre’s “Macbeth”. We especially agreed that we both hate the kind of naïve “update” we usually find on the German stage – where the historical frame of mind gets skipped completely in favour of what a contemporary audience would understand. Something I usually experience as an insult to my intellectual capacities and “educational status” as part of a contemporary audience – and, of course, as boring.

It isn’t self-evident, though, that the historical situation the text is supposed to refer to, and the frame of mind of the period in which it was written, is the sole basis for a correct – or relevant? - interpretation. I wouldn’t have thought so, but, observing my own reading, I came to the conclusion that I basically agree with deconstructivism in this respect that everything we can use for reading automatically becomes some kind of text – otherwise we couldn’t use it – and that, basically, all these texts have the same status. Accordingly, even the kind of text that comes into my reading “by accident” contains the potential of inducing a meaningful text production process. As – quite often where I am concerned - other fictional text that has nothing to do with the play in the first place because it didn’t exist at the time or there is no indication that Shakespeare might have known it, or even random “events” like having an orgasm in a sex scene which undoubtedly adds emphasis and meaning to this scene. I believe that everything that we don’t forget got already turned into a text – like the part of a dream I don’t forget because I am able to TELL it when I wake up – and may reappear eventually in a different context and create meaning. This is just how these things really work, and I am grateful to deconstructivists for having included this suppressed reality. Of course - as philosophers are supposed to! - they have turned this rather evident part of our reading experience into an “absolutist” theory which will never work in a “real life” context. And, though I realize myself that this is a naïve point of view, my subject here is not reading theory but “real-life reading”.

We also had a significant discussion about theatre which made me aware of how much of an anarchist I am in this respect, meaning how much I cherish this “irresponsible” part of my reading. I think this is because it means to become conscious of the part I myself – and who I am – provide when I am reading. I said that I even prefer to see theatre in the cinema or on DVD in a certain respect because there is less random content – like somebody not knowing their text, or a beautiful actor turning up right beside me, or - still my all-time favourite! - this actor in a German production of “Blackbird” actually looking AT US as if he wanted to find out if we might be judging HIM! – to sidetrack me and make me miss relevant things that happen on the stage. On the other hand, I just love it when things like this happen – probably with the exception of somebody not knowing their text. I even love it when the fourth wall is breached in the cinema by a speck of mud or drop of water ending up on the camera lens. Things that are not supposed to happen … I think it makes me suddenly aware that reading is part of life – as being infinitely complex and potentially uncontrollable. In my experience, if “we” are still alive by the age of fifty it is because we somehow have preserved this child in us that basically is an anarchist. And reading cannot be overrated in this respect because everything we are ALLOWED to do “as an anarchist” can happen there.

My ambivalent reaction, however, is an indication of something which is also a part of real-life reading. That we LEARN to choose and prefer certain texts as reference for reading period fiction. And this - if we have learned to do the right thing - means that we come to prefer what is MOST EFFICIENT and successful. This is where I draw the line on deconstructivism. As I already wrote somewhere, I am basically a naturalist which, in this case, means that one of the very few things I believe in is that “things” like a text vortex exist – probably not in the sense a stone or a tree exists, but in some different – less tangible but no less important! – mode of existence. As proof of its existence I have the experience that an INDIVIDUAL text has an effect on me, and can change ME. Maybe I am as close now as I will ever come to answering the question about a “correct” interpretation. As the text vortex, in my opinion, IS NOT A RANDOM THING but depends on the existence of an individual text, certain kinds of text will be more likely to interact with it.

Pity that I haven’t yet got to “To be or not to be” because it would have been such a textbook example for the point I wanted to make about this. It is that in my experience, first and foremost, highly individual personal content from my own life is extremely likely to react with the text vortex of a Shakespeare play (or anything in “Shakespeare”, like sonnets!). But this is practically what my blog is about when I am dealing with “Shakespeare”. It applies to “Macbeth” – where I used highly individual personal content of Christopher Eccleston to fill in for my lack of experience! – and it applied to my first conscious reading experience of this kind which created this blog. This was “The Taming of the Shrew” – where I also used the unexpectedly empathic approach of Petrucchio by John Cleese as a “booster”, but where Katherine is concerned: that was my own!

Technically speaking, what is so special for me about “Shakespeare” is that, if I am unable to activate this personal part of the text vortex – be it directly through my own experience, or content brought in by others, usually actors - I KNOW that I haven’t understood the play and missed the opportunity of reading it. Mostly when I am reading fiction and nothing happens I have the impression that I understand but that it is the kind of text I am bored with. Even if I suspect that I am wrong about this, that I am just unable or unwilling to read it properly, I cannot find the MOTIVATION to dwell on it and make something happen. In “Shakespeare” I already know from experience that, when I have the time and patience to dwell on it, something unexpectedly meaningful will happen. My guess is that the reason for this is the unique COMBINATION of aesthetical and human content which keeps me fascinated with what is going on, so that I WANT to dwell on these issues, however disagreeable, and play with them. (I think we talked about this as well, briefly - amazing! We talked about everything … And it is telling that “Hannibal” (the series) got mentioned – about which we fundamentally disagree! - because it became my stellar example for aesthetical playing. Usually we are playing with objects we like – not with what we dislike! – and don’t become aware of the ACT of playing because we dwell on the beautiful “playthings”. In this case I experienced my anarchist streak so strongly as I did never before, being so delighted with the FREEDOM of playing just for the sake of playing.)

Because of this singularly successful constellation in “Shakespeare” even very painful and disagreeable experiences may turn out BEAUTIFUL. It is even, in my experience, one of the greatest difficulties about performing Shakespeare to somehow “transcend” beauty towards the “real thing” – which often is particularly disagreeable. And I am never so excited as when THIS happens. I remember the “Not mad!” moment from Simon Russell Beale’s Lear as shocking and beautiful at the same time - and this was probably my top one single theatre moment. So, obviously, for me this kind of personal stuff is the most relevant kind of reference text for reading Shakespeare. And this is certainly not a marginal feature of the text vortex but precisely calculated as to what might be most efficient on the stage, and for what kind of text-induced excitement people would have been – and ARE to the present day! – likely to come to the theatres and leave their money there instead of the dog fighting places or the football stadium.

But there are other texts as well that are highly likely to react with the text vortex of these plays, especially everything we (think to) know as historical facts about the period, and what we consider to be the frame of mind it refers to. We had a discussion about the status of this historical knowledge, and, I think, judged it differently. My point of view being more “deconstructivist” - than I myself thought! - I consider written history to be “just” text as well - not some kind of “ready-made” truth - because I am not big on believing, and I am not competent anyway to judge about the truth value of historical statements. To dwell on this distinction might mostly be splitting hairs, though, because when I am reading I am making assumptions about the reality the text refers to anyway. Nonetheless it appears important to me that historical text doesn’t automatically take precedence, and the assumptions “we” make about the frame of mind of a period in my experience usually are faulty or incomplete. I think we even agreed on this because we both find it interesting that this “knowledge” is dependent on the period where it is established, and is constantly changing. Like any other kind of reference text, written history is to take with more than a grain of salt. Nonetheless I consider it as extremely important for reading period text like “Shakespeare”, even - as I just realized - less for its questionable “truth value” than in relation to what I see as a general feature of the text vortex of these plays.

I already wrote in one of my last posts that I find the existence of different time levels in Shakespeare’s plays increasingly fascinating but didn’t elaborate. My most notorious example of this current “vortex feature” is not from Shakespeare, though. It is “The Crucible”, and I am, of course, delighted to have reason to insert a quote by Richard Armitage about the play being “ultimately timeless”:

“It has lines that feel relevant in 1692, relevant in the Fifties, relevant today and relevant tomorrow, in 10 years, in 20 years, while we’re still destroying each other …”

The last bit hit home - I mean RIGHT NOW - being at my mother’s and uncomfortably close to one of these relationship battlefields, where guilt gets explored for maximum damage and blackmail. Still feels so much more scary and depressing when it is happening for real … The point I wanted to make, though, is about the text structure Richard Armitage described. In this case it is a conscious and ingenious choice: to tell this story from the 17^th century as being about something that happened when it was written – in the Fifties. And an outcome of equally clever choices to produce and play it in a way that would still feel relevant to an audience of the 21^st century. Choices which, I think, include this AWARENESS of time levels and the excitement of playing with them. Maybe THIS is even why it is called “timelessness”: playing with different time levels as a method of “cancelling out” time, or at least that crushing effect it has on our lives – which they used in the RSC’s “Macbeth”. But this is speculation. Fact is that this structure of the vortex, which is so consciously exploited in “The Crucible”, is an inherent feature of any period fiction and, consequently, can always be “activated” in “Shakespeare”. And to activate it we need this awareness of a DIFFERENT frame of mind of the period – or periods – addressed in the play as a reference text. In “Macbeth” there are three time-levels involved: The frame of mind of the period the story comes from – pre-Christian Scotland, the frame of mind of the Elizabethan period when the play was written, and the contemporary frame of mind when it is performed on a 21^st century stage. So far this isn’t an exciting observation. It is part of what “everybody” is aware of. But, in my opinion, “timelessness” is not just “there”, it is what WE are adding to the play, getting excited by the existence of different time levels and trying out what we can DO with them. I liked “ultimately” because it contains the awareness of this ACTIVITY. And the NUMBER of time levels – and reference texts – certainly contributes to the excitement of playing, making the play ever “more timeless” and aesthetically relevant. “In 10 years, in 20 years …” – an ongoing, potentially infinite process. I think THIS is what I like about it!

And it just struck me that this partly explains my ongoing fascination with one of my favourite features of “Macbeth”: the “Weird Sisters”. As I have written, for me, they originate from the dawn of time – the Three Fates spinning the thread of our lives at the foot of Yggdrasil. Shakespeare called them the “Weird Sisters”, not the “witches” - as which they must have been referenced in Elizabethan times. And there are, of course, frequent references in the play to the contemporary “knowledge” about witches and witchcraft. It appears to be common knowledge that he “wrote them in” to please James I who himself compiled a book about witchcraft, and would have referenced them better than Shakespeare himself could. At least I have a feeling that he was not entirely comfortable with this addition to his basically naturalistic cosmos of political affairs and heavy “human stuff”. I think that he did his best to leave them conveniently vague – which, on a contemporary stage, is likely to be greeted as an invitation to get rid of them. I understand that. Nonetheless they are a feature I would like to play with, and one of the reasons for this is their timelessness – their dating so far back that this feels like an immeasurable treasure of time and meaning that could be attached to them. Until now I haven’t seen it – no production I have seen so far took up this challenge. But anticipating this infinite potential of playing is beautiful as well. And, of course, in 10 years, or 20 years somebody will want to find a new reason to play with them, a new contemporary context to reference them on the stage, and I might still be around to see it …

“It COULD have been me …”

When I started to “really read” “Macbeth”, after having seen the play in Stratford, I already knew that there would be a long aftermath. As usual, I couldn’t have imagined HOW long. One of the reasons for this was that I retrieved the history I had with the play and which, for the most part, I hadn’t been aware of. Before this, I would have said: ‘It is my favourite play, always has been, but I don’t know why. I memorize one bit of it every day though I will never be able to learn the text completely. And I have never seen a production that I found entirely convincing.” That was it. But, of course, it was not.

As I realized on behalf of my “Merchant of Venice” marathon there is a lot of “Shakespeare” stored in my memory in the mode of “not reading”, and, when I know that I will see a play, I usually start the updating process by “just reading”, to upload the complete content. Somewhere on the way there, usually before I see the play, I begin to “really read” it, that is, to form a conception of what the play means FOR ME. Sometimes not before I see it on the stage, though, as with “The Tempest”. In the case of “Macbeth” I came to remember the exact moment I began to “really read”. The statement by Richard Armitage about the dynamics unfolding as a result of the killing jump-started the process and explained to me why I find the play so fascinating. It is the irreversibility of the process that follows the single false step somebody has taken, the INEVITABILITY of what follows. And “Macbeth”, where the metaphysical guilt is so obvious, is the “purest” example of this tragic pattern I know. As I love it to strike intertextual relationships myself I understood intuitively how it could be used to detect and EMPHASIZE the tragic core of Thorin’s story. It was a story I was deeply involved with at the time, just being in the middle of writing my own version. And, in turn, I used this to update “Macbeth”. From this moment I began to memorize the text – and to wish that a great method actor would play it. So, my expectations were more precise and “reasonable” than I thought, and – even though I did not dare to HOPE – I knew that SOMETHING would happen when Christopher Eccleston would undertake it. The frustrating experience that NOTHING happened when Rory Kinnear played it – even though certain expectations about the updating of the play were met – was revealing. Where “Shakespeare” is concerned I NEED somebody to update it for me – as it should be because “Shakespeare” happens on the stage. In this case, the “vortex movement” that causes these dynamics originates IN the main character, not, mostly, in between characters. I think that this is one of the chief attractions of the play as well as its fatal flaw. The reason why “Macbeth” usually “goes wrong”. If nothing happens THERE, nothing WILL happen. The play will never work for me.

Even though – as it turned out – I basically expected the right thing I still had it wrong. I think I imagined Christopher Eccleston to kind of “flesh out” the character for me, make me understand him better. Instead I discovered that I had been right about this before: There is nothing to UNDERSTAND. Or rather: what I will ever understand about Macbeth I understood already. It had been there all along. All these finer points about Macbeth being “fantastic at his job” and insecure about his masculinity: I couldn’t have said it better - but I could have said it. They are all really important, of course, for the actor to strike a connection with the character, make him feel like a real person. Again the foregoing experience about Rory Kinnear playing him where I definitely MISSED Macbeth and the contrast with Christopher Eccleston who came on the stage AS Macbeth proves the point. No method actor could ever work without striking this genuine connection with the “human stuff” inside HIMSELF. It is the beautiful part of their work, I suppose, and it is beautiful to see, but it is not yet the point – and the “secret” – of what great method actors like him are doing. The thing that “mere mortals” will never comprehend. My closest guess so far: It is the art of knowing exactly HOW to hit the point and to get this RESPONSE out of us.

This was the moment in my reading where I remembered my FIRST encounter with Christopher Eccleston which wasn’t in “Doctor Who” but – ages in the past for me! – in “Elizabeth” (with Cate Blanchett) where he played the Duke of Norfolk. (A rather sinister character whom I have come to like because THREE of my many favourites have played him: Christopher Eccleston, Mark Strong (in “Henry VIII” with Ray Winstone) and Bernard Hill in “Wolf Hall”.) This first encounter was of a questionable nature, but I like to write about it because it amuses me. It must have been something like when I watched the film again, after “Doctor Who”, and something happened that has never happened before, and probably will never happen again: He made me have an orgasm in a sex scene. It was entirely spontaneous, without any touching or conscious “foreplay”, as I definitely didn’t find him attractive as Norfolk – not in these breeches, and not even after he took them off (- too skinny!) And it was definitely played – not, kind of, “done for real”! It still amuses me – and amazes me! – that he COULDN’T miss the point in a sex scene!!! Well, one might think that it is kind of difficult to miss the point in a sex scene but, in my experience, it is what usually happens (- except in French films where there definitely is a different “culture” of naturalistic acting, which I usually don’t like – outside of sex scenes …) And I don’t know if I am right, but I imagine that there usually is a lack of motivation I can understand, lying naked with a camera pointing at your arse, and probably conscious that the person you are usually doing it with will be watching … At least I would think - and understand! - that there must be SOME limit to method acting – as there certainly is! But with great method actors we can never tell. Dreaming the dreams of another person certainly doesn’t happen “just like that” but, I suppose, is part of a “technique” how to wake up as this person already, getting entirely used to being them.

Absurd as this may be, it was the orgasm that made me understand WHY I have been in awe of Christopher Eccleston since I first saw him in “Elizabeth”. It was this feeling that he – potentially – would stop at nothing short of the “real thing”. And the real thing, in his case, is to get this RESPONSE out of us. In “Macbeth” I remember exactly WHEN this happened. Not the precise moment in the text – pity! – but the moment I noticed THE CHANGE. It was when I perceived him kind of peering down his nose, looking SO ARROGANT!

I have always felt that what happens in “Macbeth” is about this change. This change which we know happens all the time but is so difficult for us to understand. The tragic downfall, or “solitary journey into depravity” – whatever our personal update – of somebody we like. I just remembered that my best “Macbeth Retold” before the real one with James McAvoy - way in the past when I tried to learn Norwegian - was a TV series called “Svarte Penger” (“dirty money”) where a young and very handsome policeman is slowly turning into a criminal because of the ONE false decision he has taken. It is really fascinating to watch this downward spiral, but “we” never acknowledge the change. We refuse to see it – or cannot see it! – because we still see the same person and cannot bring ourselves to “abandon” him – even after he has killed! - hoping until the end that it will turn out well!!!

So, the crucial question about playing Macbeth is, in my opinion: How can this CHANGE be brought on the stage so that “we” will take it in? The reason why I am so (unreasonably) fond of Simon Russell Beale is what he did in “Lear” and “The Tempest”. It was kind of like: ‘I know this stuff, you know this stuff, why bother’ - and he walked straight to the point and did his thing in a way that “we” would notice and respond to it. It is a questionable attitude, of course, but I got more out of it than I would have got out of half an hour of beautiful ranting. (He STILL is a great method actor, and still does great method acting, as recently in “The Death of Stalin”, so it is not THAT unreasonable.) In “Macbeth”, in my experience, the point is usually not addressed at all, or they are trying to show Macbeth AS CHANGED by making him either mad, or pathologically scared, or cruel. I was always dissatisfied with this, but didn’t know why, until Christopher Eccleston showed me. The point about Macbeth is that he is NOT SPECIAL in any way but that he is LIKE US – or rather as we would WANT to be: Attractive, fit, “fantastic at (our) job”, hugely confident and universally liked, but, somehow, we never really get what we are owed. Even if we are already Thane of Cawdor, or head of our department, or undersecretary of something – or are playing the lead in “Doctor Who” - there HAS to be something better still. Careers are careers because they are going upwards – otherwise it is just work. (I am constantly glad that I like work!) But, at one point on the way upwards, something happens that inevitably WILL happen. Claudia gave me the crucial hint for my update. I believe Macbeth when he says that he has “bought golden opinions from all sorts of people”, but, according to Claudia, he MISJUDGES his credit. What happens is something nobody can understand when it happens to THEM. CONFIDENT people – like us! - always like confident people. The others they don’t even see. But we cease to like them as soon as they have got what WE wanted and have become ARROGANT.

In my opinion, Christopher Eccleston – consciously or intuitively – made the change about this FINE LINE between confidence and arrogance – which is the likeliest place for us to FEEL IT. The mix-up I made about him being arrogant “as an actor” is certainly collateral but also an interesting experience about method acting. Basically, I can just talk about what I saw – there is no way for me to tell what is behind it. And if he actually had a say in the matter of Macbeth’s death then because he would get it exactly right. He made Macbeth appear as defiant as I always felt he was – unable to give in until the end – and as arrogant as he never appeared to me before. But this is what is required here: FOR ME to perceive him as arrogant and be able to take a step back and see what really happens. Unfortunately, the buckets of blood he causes to be shed, and the fear and the heartbreak, won’t do it! We’ll just look away because we have seen this time and time again. We need to feel the change FOR REAL – within ourselves.

So, this was how “Macbeth” finally happened for me. (Deep breath!)

That is, were it BEGAN for me because, after I had been taken by the hand and shown the way, the updating process started to run amok. It wasn’t possible to take notes of everything that happened. Just one example: I found the word “EQUIVOCATION” somewhere in my notes, which is a concept that, as I noticed earlier, Shakespeare has “hidden” over and over again in different ways and forms in the text: “Fair is foul and foul is fair”, “so from the spring whence comfort seemed to come, discomfort swells …”, or, rather consciously, and twice, in the porter scene: “… here is an equivocator that could swear against both the scales in either scale“ and: “much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery, it makes him and it mars him …”. Then, close to the end he begins to “doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth” (“doubt” as in “suspect”!). I was fascinated by this common figure of thinking behind these different experiences. The hidden insight that nothing exists or is going to happen without its opposite already being present. But this was all rather theoretical, nothing substantial came of it as to what it means in “Macbeth”. Now, with the “vortex” starting to work, all kinds of connections were suddenly established. Shakespeare’s fascination with equivocation is not mainly about the philosophical “beauty” of it. It is about “our” experience that it is one of these laws which rule our lives, and which we suspect are there but cannot really point a finger at. In everything that we attempt or anticipate there is already this contrary force at work that will trip us up eventually – be it TIME, or cancer, or the public opinion turning against us … Like Macbeth we are turning a blind eye – or actually are blind to it. How should we ever do anything, or believe anything, with this knowledge hanging over our heads? My personal solution – or delusion? – about this problem is not to give up hope but try and hope for the RIGHT thing. It appears to have worked so far, but I cannot see what it might have been for Macbeth. (Probably to be content with Thane of Cawdor and try for children instead …??? I am not convinced …) In the end, he consciously acknowledges the equivocation. I think this is why we can still “keep him on” as a tragic hero, not somebody we voluntarily cast off because he is worthless and stupid. At some point, he comes to consciously accept his “fate” – not as this heroic act but just because he sees that he has finally run out of choices. It might be controversial, but I think that kind of committing suicide by giving Macduff his sword is a good expression of the conclusions he reached earlier.

The headline for my reading of the RSC’s “Macbeth” I took from one of my favourite soundtracks from one of my favourite comedies: “The Life Aquatic by Steve Zissou”. It is part of a song about someone who witnesses something terrible happening to another person – like a fatal accident, I don’t remember … - goes back to his hotel room and lies down, and then this thought strikes him with sudden force: “IT COULD HAVE BEEN ME!” I picked this quote – unconsciously, by the way! – because I think it is what we usually never acknowledge, and what TRAGEDY is about.

Half an hour ago, listening to my radio, I heard about another “tragedy” happening where sixteen people were burned – somewhere on a beach? I don’t know where, I don’t really listen, but I notice this inflation of “tragedy” on the media. And – sorry to say this! – sixteen people having been burned is NOT a tragedy – nor hundreds of people being drowned in the Mediterranean, by the way, even though this is horrible and outrageous, and won’t get any less outrageous when it happens for the hundredth time. But it will never be a tragedy because “tragedy” is the wrong category. It is not about the content of a “story” but about the FORM of storytelling. To call an event a “tragedy” as such is absurd, but makes sense as some kind of metaphor for the person telling the story to express their feelings about the event. Though, used in this inflationary way, it doesn’t really MEAN anything anymore.

Now - as I probably wrote a few times already - for me “Macbeth” is the purest example of a “modern” tragedy – as opposed to antique tragedy. As I inferred as well – investigating all these productions of the play and films about it – it is a textbook example WHY tragedy doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t because, for having this singular “tragic” experience, we need some kind of metaphysical connection, some kind of belief in something “above us”, to determine irreversible guilt. After having seen what I think I will ever see in “Macbeth”, I came to the preliminary conclusion that this probably REALLY doesn’t work anymore because “we” are not interested in metaphysical guilt any longer. So, no production emphasizing the religious/metaphysical implications will find favour with the audience. Nonetheless I haven’t given up on tragedy as this kind of FORMULA to make stories work in a certain way. As “gold standard” to, somehow, create this urgency and sense of inevitability that will lift the content above everyday experience. Of course, as I am fonder of “Macbeth” now than I have ever been, I HAVE to think this. And as the play IS this textbook tragedy it will not work with the tragedy taken out.

This means that the dilemma has to be dealt with in some way if we want “Macbeth” to succeed on the stage. And - as I have seen it succeed - I suppose that the evident solution is to find some kind of “crutch”, or – not so negative perhaps! – replacement for tragedy. Something that can stand in for metaphysical guilt. Ultimately, tragedy is just some kind of cultural technique for us to be able to confront what we CANNOT accept about our lives, to make us LOOK instead of looking away. I think this is what Greek tragedy was all about – though we cannot READ the formula anymore. Somehow to make the INACCEPTABLE will of the Gods acceptable even though we will never understand it. Obviously, VIOLENCE doesn’t do the trick. It was very convincing in the National Theatre’s production because they really achieved to jar our nerves with the psychological intensity of the murder scenes. But it doesn’t really trigger something “in us” because it doesn’t reach to where the “vortex” is supposed to be.

So violence didn’t do it, but, for me, TIME did. I just need this feeling of something inexorable OUTSIDE ME which would make me LOOK instead of looking away because it is interesting or exciting. It can provide this urgency as a state of affairs within which Christopher Eccleston could work and make Macbeth happen in a way that we would come to ask: What would I do if it was ME? - In former times they had the Gods, or the Three Fates, or the wheel of fortune, to explain the outrageous things that happen to us and which we try not to acknowledge or, if this isn’t possible, desperately try to deal with. Today we have TIME and CHANGE. Even though we cannot accept them, or change them - try as we might! - we can SPEAK about them, which makes a big difference! I assume that this is at the bottom of my ongoing fascination with tragedy and “Macbeth”.