Macbeth: Stuff to Chew On

There's so much to talk about with each play that doesn't fit into the synopsis or into its own episode, so we've decided to cover several topics in this episode. In this episode, we discuss major thematic elements in Shakespeare's Macbeth as well as topics that are usually covered or talked about in reference to this play. 

Kourtney “Korey” Smith (KS): Good afternoon, Elyse.

Elyse Sharp (ES): Hi, Korey.

KS: All right, so today we are going to do something that we're calling a Stuff to Chew On episode. I'm going to let you tell why we're going to be doing this, kind of a part B of the Macbeth synopsis.

ES: As I was writing the synopsis, there's so much to talk about with Shakespeare plays. Obviously, that's how we're making an entire podcast. But some things are very relevant to a play. But also the synopsis script was getting really long, and I was like, I can't put this all in there. So I went to Korey and I said, can we do an episode where we just talk about things that when you are talking about this script, people generally talk about?

KS: Like when you're in an English class or before you're prepared to go see the play. Let's get into it.

ES: We thought it would be only right and fitting since the play starts with witches meeting on a heath to kick off with talking about all of the supernatural forces that are in this play. Obviously, the witches. They're also called the Weird Sisters, which references back to the Fates, because weird back then also didn't mean like odd or–

KS: Bizarre. 

ES: –Bizarre. It meant fate.

KS: And that concept of fate versus free will in one's life is one of the major themes in Macbeth. And when they see Macbeth, they give prophecy. It's something that is bound to happen. And a good question is like, when you have fate, does that mean mysterious forces are controlling what is happening in our lives? And if mysterious forces control our lives, then what happens to free will? This time period was a time period where humanism, as we said in our intro series, was emerging. So people, I mean, I feel like there must have been some sort of conflict between do we believe that we have free choice and free will versus the old medieval concepts of like the supernatural control, the supernatural forces of nature?

ES: Yeah. So if these are the sisters of fate, like in Greek mythology, then we're just dealing with fate and like a god, like a Greek god. However, if they are witches of the devil and demons, then we get into heaven versus hell. 

KS: Yes.

ES: And whether or not it starts out as a story of heaven versus hell, whether or not these weird sisters are actors of fate or actors of hell, when Macbeth takes matters into his own hands, he does commit a mortal sin. The Macbeths bring in the forces of hell by challenging fate. They ally themselves with the devil to get what they want, to move their fate along faster.

KS: Yes. Banquo, he heard the prophecy as well, and he knew that he would benefit from this prophecy. But Banquo did not kick things into action. He didn't give in to the forces of evil, and Macbeth did. So if you have two characters who are equally benefiting from this prophecy, but they both take different actions, what does that mean about Macbeth?

ES: Good question. Yeah. I think, especially when we look into the world that this is being written in, you know, we have a society where certain people are fated to be king. They are anointed by God. And that doesn't change. 

KS: You don't really climb outside of your social class. 

ES: It's not easy to change the status that you were born into. However, your day-to-day choices can make you a traitor, or a sinner, or someone who is virtuous and a good Englishman.

KS: I think that Shakespeare probably, I mean, he put all of this in for King James I. He felt like he was a white knight on a crusade for God. And he believed really heavily in the power of witchcraft and the threat of witchcraft.

ES: Yeah. The other supernatural forces are these reality versus these hallucinations. Are they there? Are they not?

KS: Right. Macbeth, he sees a dagger. It kind of gives him a cognitive dissonance of like, okay, well, this dagger that I'm seeing must be real. And so I'm going to take the dagger and I'm going to do what I have to do to move my fate forward. You know, was it really there? Or is it just something that he's executing in his mind to justify his behavior? And then when he does it, there's all of this hallucination of ghosts and apparitions and things that haunt him because he feels a certain way about what he did. This is a controversy because of the banquet scene. Nobody sees Banquo except for Macbeth. But is he also just crazy? I mean, I don't know if crazy is the right word, but...

ES: Is it, are these hallucinations, ghosts, you know, are they controlled by the witches, for example, or a supernatural force? Or are they a “false creation proceeding from the heat-oppresséd brain”?

KS: The internal paranoia and guilt is externalizing itself possibly into the form of hallucinations.

ES: Yeah. You know, we get Lady Macbeth sleepwalking and dreaming about blood on her hands that she can't get off. That's a dream and it's very much not real to us as the audience or the other characters in that scene, but she's described as having her eyes open. She looks, physically looks, the same as Macbeth did during all of his hallucinations.

KS: In addition to these supernatural elements that influence the plot and the action of the play, we also have our second major theme of time and time constructs.

ES: This is something that personally fascinates me with this play, is that by taking matters into his own hands, Macbeth alters, in a way, the timeline of the play. The Macbeths are talking about, you know, feeling the future in the instant and wanting the present and the future to be as one. In Howard Marcatello, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, the article “Speed and the Problem of Real Time in Macbeth,” he talks about absolute speed, which is supernatural, like not the speed of the time of everyone else in the play. Macbeths are trying to drive forward and get power as quickly as possible. We start having like massive time jumps and, you know, space jumps as the play goes faster and faster and faster. And Howard also talks about, you know, the play attempts to suture together something like the torn temporal edges of given duration, like from a scene in Scotland to, okay, well now like complete different location that you've never seen before in England. It's like jump cuts in a film back and forth and back and forth to the point where it starts to, you know, collapse on itself at the very end, where we call it in the previous episode the Scooby-Doo battle, where it's just in and out and in and out and in and out because time is starting, we're starting to get that like future in the instant as the battle comes to a climax.

KS: Comes to Macbeth's door much more faster, much more quickly.

ES: Yeah.

KS: When you read it and when you watch it, the way that the audience feels, like when I was reading it, the first act is very slow. And then it picks up. And so it's very effective because even if you don't really realize, consciously, this concept of time in Macbeth, you feel it.

ES: It's one of the things I love about the structure of the play, as well as, you know, all of the thematic implications of Macbeth's time being literally running out throughout the course of the play.

KS: Yeah. Does the Hecate scene kind of live in a place where maybe, like, you could see that as Hecate has come in and fixed what the Weird Sisters have done and really like sped up Macbeth's end of life. Like it could be attributed to fate as well? Or am I just guessing? Am I just making something up?

ES: If you decide to include Hecate, yes, Hecate is actively the one who is like, we gotta get rid of this guy. We gotta fix this. Let's wrap it up. If you remove Hecate, I would argue that it's like the entire show basically, whether or not you have Hecate, drives to the apparition scene. Then from the apparitions onward, it's the bullet train to death. 

KS: I like that. Macbeth's bullet train to death. 

ES: Either way, with including Hecate, you have a character who actively says that that is the purpose of the apparitions. Without Hecate, it still happens. “Why” just isn't there?

KS: Honestly, even if it's an insert that, you know, may or may not have been during Shakespeare's time with the Chamberlain's Men or the King's Men, Hecate's scene does make sense because she's telling the audience, like, most characters do tell. You don't have to try and infer as much. It's just like, oh yeah, Hecate told us that this is what's going to happen. So buckle up.

ES: Yes. If a production didn't have Hecate, I'd maybe back it up to the death of Banquo and the appearance of the ghost as the thing that gets the bullet train to death started. The intentions of fate, maybe. 

KS: Moving along.

ES: The next thematic thread we want to highlight is the political world of the play. You know, it starts off with witches. It also starts off with treason. Duncan actually isn't like this king who dwelled in peace and prosperity. There's just so much treason in this play, both for, you know, valiant reasons and for not so valiant reasons, which also gets into, you know, this idea of who's loyal to whom.

KS: Duncan's whole thing is loyalty. He has the first Thane of Cawdor executed, and then he rewards Macbeth because he views Macbeth as being so loyal. And then Lady–Lady Macbeth also expects loyalty from her husband, but then you have, like, loyalty towards Malcolm. Everyone is testing who's loyal to who, and it turns into a clusterf**k.

ES: Yeah. Yeah. It always bugs me when there's, like, not kind of like a slight political thriller vibe to some of these scenes. Which side are you on?

KS: And ambition is a huge, huge talking point when someone talks about Macbeth because ambition is what drives Macbeth. It leads him to perform great deeds of violence. And you see two different types of versions of ambition. You have self-ambition, Macbeth's version, which leads to his downfall. But then you also have the concept that ambition is not necessarily wholly bad because Macduff, his ambition is towards the betterment of Scotland. And Macduff is the one who ends up on top at the end. He's the Christ-like figure who slays the devil, and he returns Scotland back to its rightful ruler. So within this play, you know, Macbeth is the bad guy. Macbeth uses ambition in a way that's destructive, but I don't think that Shakespeare is trying to say that ambition is completely bad.

ES: Taking ambition to, like, better yourself with only thinking of yourself, that's bad. But Macduff, who you remember from our synopsis episode, is a Christ-like figure in the play, you know, sacrifices a lot, is basically kind of in it for maybe just revenge at some point. 

KS: At some point, yeah. 

ES: But he doesn't go to England with ambitions of revenge. It's all couched in this, I want to return Scotland to its former glory–

KS: Right

ES: –that restoring the rightful English allied king to the throne is the way to go.

KS: Yeah. So all of these factors, treason, loyalty, ambition, they lead certain characters to another theme in the play, which is guilt. Lady Macbeth shames Macbeth when he starts to feel such immense guilt and see hallucinations. And you know, his grasp on what's real and what's not real starts to crumble. And Lady Macbeth basically sh*ts all over him and, you know, tells him to not be shaken by these things. They're not real. And then, lo and behold, once we get into what is it, Act Four, these things all happen to her as well. So I mean, it might be inevitable that if you do something bad, you are going to feel such guilt and, you know, in her case, commit suicide. 

ES: Yeah. 

KS: So, I mean, both of the characters that used ambition in a way that was self-serving and implemented violence to get what they wanted, end up feeling such immense guilt that, you know, one of them makes terrible decisions and it leads to his death and the other one ends her own life.

ES: Both of those characters also, you know, they tread this fine line of our next theme we want to talk about, of equivocation, of, you know, not telling whole truths and not telling whole lies. Many, many characters do this, this not telling the whole truth. And the Porter even says that, like, one of the characters that the Porter welcomes into hell is an equivocator. And scholars believe that that's probably a reference to one of the members of the Gunpowder Plot that's a direct reference to Father Henry Garnet. So one, equivocators go to hell. But we also see Macbeth equivocate. Lennox asks, you know, “Goes the king hence today?” Macbeth goes, “He does. He did appoint so,” you know. Yes, he does leave this mortal plane. It's an answer that can mean that as well as, yeah, he did mean to leave this house today and he will, but, you know, alive? 

KS: Half truth. 

ES: Half truth. Equivocation is half truths. Saying things that mean two things, you know, the witches also in their prophecies towards Macbeth, they don't give enough information to truly act on, you know, thou shalt be king hereafter. You're this, you're going to get Cawdor, and then you're going to be king. They don't say ever when, and that leads to, well, the entire rest of the play. And then, you know, in the apparitions, there's, again, like just information that's left out–

KS: Yes

ES: –which allows for the misunderstanding of “none of woman born can harm Macbeth.” Macbeth takes that to mean, great, no one who was ever born, no man can hurt me, no person can hurt me.

KS: Yeah. He is in the clear. Totally in the clear.

ES: Yeah. But the witches, I mean, the witches don't give all of that information for a reason. They only tell the truth, but they tell it slant and, you know, so that there is that room for misinterpretation of being born of woman, because they're not wrong, you know? 

KS: No, no.

ES: They're not wrong. And then, you know, we have the scene with Ross where he, you know, is there to tell Macduff this horrible news. And he equivocates for the first half of it until he really is forced to say the horrible thing. He says, yeah, they were well, you know, like meaning they were at peace, like rest in peace, you know?

KS: But. Yeah. Not like, oh, they're hanging out, like, by the fire reading a book. That's not the peace that he means.

ES: Or the well that he means. But all of that duplicitousness. We see it throughout the play. And when things don't quite make sense, I think it's a thing to keep in mind of like, is this person, in this moment, do we find out later that they are equivocating?

KS: Well, and everyone has so much ambition, everyone, well, not everyone, but there's so many characters with ambition. There are so many characters with motives and, you know, a half-truth can serve you.

ES: If you think of it as a political thriller, equivocation is going to help some of these characters further what they need to do to survive or to achieve their end goals.

KS: Yes. Which partially could be how we, like, label Shakespeare plays, you know, like it's a tragedy. But I agree with you, Elyse, like, if you think about it as like a political thriller, then things make a little bit more sense to me. I mean, I know that the defining line between comedy and tragedy is such that it doesn't really mean genre, it means outcome of the play.

ES: Yeah, and I think that's something that, you know, we have a different concept of today than in Shakespeare's time. I don't think he would have necessarily been like, “Oh, yes, this is a political thriller.” You know, it's a genre we now can put these plays into.

KS: This is closer to, say, the Richard plays to me, but it's not a quote unquote history.

ES: Yeah.

KS: Why is it not labeled a history?

ES: I think that's a really good question because it's historical fiction. It's just like the Richards or the Henriad. My only guess would be it's not technically English history.

KS: Right. That's what I was going to guess as well. It's not lining up the Tudor dynasty as legitimate. It's lining up the Stuart dynasty 

ES: Legitimate

KS: –as legitimate.

ES: Now before we wrap up the episode, we have one last fun element of this play to discuss and that's the theatrical superstition that this play is cursed. 

KS: Dun dun dun! 

ES: Dun dun deh! For anyone who does not know, there are certain things that it is bad luck to do in a theater: say “good luck on opening night. You say break a leg instead. You also don't whistle backstage because once upon a time sailors apparently were the stage hands and they communicated

KS: through whistles

ES: Via whistles. Yeah Whistling could get you like a sandbag on your head. 

KS: Exactly. Actor down. 

ES: One big one is that you don't say the title of this play in a theater.

KS: Unless you are doing the play. That's the only exception.

ES: The play. Yea. And I even know some theater people who don't say it even outside of a theater. They’re like, I just don't say the title of that play.

KS: I call it “the Scottish play" whenever I'm in a theater. But do you know, Elyse, where this, where it started?

ES: With every theater superstition, there's possible, like, apocrypha. There's two big stories I hear. One, that it was a play that theaters would put on when they were running out of business because it's sure to sell well and then they could at least, like, pay their actors and pay off their debts and close the business. To do this show means like–

KS: You're about to go out.

ES: It will close everything down. The more supernatural story that I've heard is that Shakespeare actually stole or somehow got access to an actual witch's book of spells when researching this play and that a portion of the spells that the witches do, like the bubble, bubble, toil and trouble scene, is an actual spell from a witch's grimoire.

KS: I see. 

ES: Because of that desecration of something that is holy to a witch, the, you know, witches of Shakespeare's time saw it, were offended- 

KS: Like a bastardization of their- 

ES: –Off a ritual of theirs.

KS: Of a ritual of theirs. Yeah.

ES: Or very much like word for word, a ritual of theirs, like the equivalent of performing the rosary or mass on stage.

KS: Right. Something blasph- not blasphemous. 

ES: Something blasphemous. 

KS: Yeah.

ES: Yeah. And they then cursed the play. 

KS: Gotcha.

ES: The other version of that story that I've heard is that the spell he chose was one that is a curse.

KS: Got it. 

ES: Again, I don't know. I don't know. 

KS: Because it's all, it's all folklore. 

ES: Yeah. 

KS: I'm on the Royal Shakespeare Company's website and it said what you were saying, but then also I guess because of this then legend has it that the play's first performance in 1606 was riddled with disaster. The actor playing Lady Macbeth died suddenly, so Shakespeare himself had to take on the part. Other rumored mishaps include a real dagger being used in place of a stage prop for the murder of King Duncan, resulting in the actor's death. And in 1849, the famous Astor Place Riot in New York caused rivalry between an American and English actor, and that resulted in 20 deaths and over 100 injuries. And they were both playing Macbeth in opposing productions at the time.

ES: Wow.

KS: So those are a couple of things. 

ES: Yeah. 

KS: Other productions have been plagued with accidents, including actors falling off the stage, mysterious deaths, and narrow misses by falling stage weights, which, you know, that could play into like the whistling thing too. And I guess it happened to Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in 1937. 

ES: Wow. 

KS: There is a way to break the curse, apparently, according to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

ES: I've heard multiple. 

KS: You've heard multiple? 

ES: I have one that I prefer.

KS: Okay. 

ES: Definitely, like, as an actor. 

KS: Okay.

ES: Um, what do they say? 

KS: You can avoid the catastrophe if somebody utters the name in a theater. And the way to do that is exit the theater, spin around three times, spit, curse, and then knock on the theater door to be allowed back in.

ES: That is the one that I hear most often. I also heard, and I prefer this one because, like, it's more expeditious, to go in a doorway and say a line from a comedy.

KS: Oh, I like that one. 

ES: Yeah. 

KS: Yeah. Does that mean that you believe the curse to be true?

ES: Uhhhhhhhhhhhh, I think there's a lot of coincidences because there's a lot that can go wrong, right? 

KS: Right.

ES: Like, there's a lot of weapons, there's a lot of violence, there's, you know, I think there's just a lot that can go wrong with this play, safety-wise. Do I believe it's cursed? No. 

KS: Okay. 

ES: Um, I don't think it's invoked.

KS:  By saying the name. Mm-hmm.

ES: Yeah, I don't think it's invoked by saying the name, however, I think that there are, um, extenuating circumstances connected to the play that do make it seem cursed. You know, I don't say it in a theater. 

KS: I don't either.

ES: Some people do believe in it, and it can cause great anxiety for them to hear it. Therefore, out of respect for them, it is important to just respect the belief in it.

KS: I also think that, like, there is something to be said for energy being placed into a situation where you can manifest it through your thoughts, and you can manifest it through, like, the energy that you put forward. 

ES: Yes. 

KS: So if you go into a, uh, superstition, and you think, oh, there, I mean, I guess it could exist or not, you could unintentionally put that energy into the theater, and then more mishaps are likely to take place.

ES: If you are told to look for blue items in a room, and you go into a room, you're gonna find blue items. 

KS: Exactly. 

ES: It's respectful to just respect that this name does have some sort of power.

KS: Like a mental manifestation. 

ES: Yeah. 

KS: You know, kind of like what Macbeth goes through. Is it real? 

ES: Yes. 

KS: Is it not? Is it the internal externalizing?

ES: Wow. Mic drop. I think that's, I think that's worth wrapping up our stuff to chew on. 

KS: I think so, too. 

ES: And some of these we'll probably touch on as we dive into certain aspects a little bit deeper. So stay tuned.

Quote of the Episode

ES: From Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, Scene 1, said by Falstaff: “Let it alone, I'll make other shift. You'll be a fool still.”

Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp.

Note: When this episode was recorded, Kourtney Smith was using the stage name "Korey Leigh Smith".

Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander.

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Works Referenced:

“The Curse of the Scottish Play: Macbeth.” Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Shakespeare Company, 2020, www.rsc.org.uk/macbeth/about-the-play/the-scottish-play.

Lemon, Rebecca. “Scaffolds of Treason in ‘Macbeth.’” Theatre Journal, vol. 54, no. 1, 2002, pp. 25–43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25069019. Accessed 21 Dec. 2020.

LiteraryDevices Editors. Accessed 24 Oct. 2020, from “Themes in Macbeth with Examples and Analysis” https://literarydevices.net/macbeth-themes/

“Macbeth - Themes.” BBC Bitesize, BBC, Accessed 24 Oct. 2020, from www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zgv7hyc/revision/1

Marchitello, Howard. “Speed and the Problem of Real Time in ‘Macbeth.’” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 64, no. 4, 2013, pp. 425–448., www.jstor.org/stable/24778493. Accessed 21 Dec. 2020.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Arden Shakespeare, 2015.

SparkNotes Editors. (2005). “SparkNotes: Macbeth.” SparkNotes.com, SparkNotes LLC, 2005. Accessed 24 Oct. 2020, from https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/