PREVIEW： Chronicles #37 ｜ Macbeth： Part I with Harry Robinson
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Summary
In this episode of Chronicles, we discuss the Scottish play, Macbeth, by William Shakespeare. In this episode, we explore the themes and ideas explored in this classic tale of betrayal, blood and woe, written in Scottish Gaelic.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to this episode of Chronicles where today we're going to be talking all about
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Macbeth by William Shakespeare and here to talk about this tale of betrayal, blood and woe is
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Harry. Thank you for joining me. Hello there. Thank you very much for having me on Luca. Now
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I will have to say I'm something of a pleb when it comes to Shakespeare. As such you will likely
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have to guide me through some of the reading of this beyond just pure surface level takes because
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I, unlike some of your previous esteemed guests, I'm not a Shakespeare scholar. I read some Shakespeare
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in secondary school. I read The Tempest in A-levels. I really angered my A-level instructor because
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during The Tempest I put my hand up and said, so if Prospero could just make a big like wave come
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along and wash people up on shore and like using magic, why didn't you do that like 12 years before
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when they first got stranded? She got very angry at me for this question because she didn't have an
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answer, even though it's actually a very easy question to answer upon reflection.
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Well, that is part of the mission for when we discuss Shakespeare on Chronicles, of course. We had
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a very early conversation in general discussion about Shakespeare with AA and then I've done after
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that a two-parter looking at Romeo and Juliet and now to do Macbeth is fantastic. And a large part of
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this was absolutely like you. When I was at school, I actually didn't work very well with Shakespeare at
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all. It was taught by dull teachers with no passion for the material and no patience for,
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you know, getting us younger students to actually learn to appreciate it either. It all felt too
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distant, too detached from modern day. But actually, of course, there is something eternal about the
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themes that Shakespeare speaks to and obviously many of those are in the Scottish play. Well, yes,
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and there's something kind of, not necessarily revolutionary, but something certainly very bold
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and daring going on in Shakespeare's plays in that with a play like Macbeth, you have a primary
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character, a protagonist who, one, morphs from being a protagonist to a villain through the course of
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the story. And secondly, as well, demonstrates endless self-doubt throughout the story. Somebody who is
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constantly questioning his morals, questioning his decisions, questioning his values, being pushed on by
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external forces, but who still recognizes his own agency within the story and recognizes by the end that
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it's his choices that he's standing by. Now, I spoke recently with a gentleman called Dr. Ricardo Duchesne
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about his book Greatness in Ruin, which traces what he deems to be the European discovery of the mind,
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the sense of self outside of a pure communal thinking. And he takes the Iliad and the Odyssey as a kind of
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prototype version of this self-reflective thinking that we now see as being quite second nature within
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literature. We get books and stories constantly where the characters are self-doubting, they're
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conflicted on their decisions, they recognize that they're always being dealt multiple choices of what
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they can do and go down. Whereas previously stories were very, very one note in that characters were guided
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by the decisions of the gods and their own thoughts and feelings on the matters had very little to do
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with it. And Duchesne in his book does recognize Shakespeare's works as being a next step along that
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path. Obviously there are other developments prior to it, but Shakespeare, especially in Macbeth, really
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puts front and center that Macbeth is a very conflicted character. He's somebody with a deep internal voice
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that he goes back to again and again and again. And so that you as the audience can truly understand
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Macbeth's thinking and how this is affecting him. And you can really see the transformation
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by the end of it. So yeah, I mean, I agree with you that Shakespeare does have a lot of value today.
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He works with themes and narratives which have an almost archetypal value to them that can be passed down
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the generations. And you also have to recognize the value of him as just somebody who innovated
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in the English language. Part of the joy of Shakespeare is the use of the language itself,
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even outside of just the way in which he uses it to tell the story. It's very playful, you can say,
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not to be all punny on everybody. But yeah, I had similar things where my teachers didn't really relay
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any of this value to me. It was just kind of expected that, well, you're an English kid taking an
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English class. So you have to like Shakespeare. You have to at least read Romeo and Juliet. We
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also read Othello. Again, A-levels, we did The Tempest. But then when you get somebody like me,
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who's a bit more inquisitive and isn't just trying to get through the class and scrape up a grade
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and ask a legitimate question about it, they almost just get annoyed at you for it because they've not
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actually thought it through. And this is just like concrete plot points. Whereas in The Tempest,
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of course you can make the argument Prospero was waiting for the right time and the right people
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to enact his revenge and also wanted to raise his daughter away from the influence of the court.
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And he thought that this was the perfect place to do it so that he would be able to
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imprint himself on his daughter with that outside influence. That's all very interesting and that's
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in the story. But like the sort of teachers that I got, they just shrug their shoulders and go,
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the answer I got was, oh, I guess Shakespeare didn't think of that.
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Well, congratulations. No, he did. You just didn't think of it.
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Yeah. And that's not to say that Shakespeare is in all ways a perfect writer. For example,
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there are a few parts of Othello in terms of the chronology and his timekeeping
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that is a little bit clumsy. But on the whole, the characters, especially in his tragedies,
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are so vivid. They give you so much to work with, particularly because of when they always get
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their famous moments where they give their soliloquy. And so they're actually just,
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their speech is totally undisturbed by having to think about social cues and interactions with other
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people. And they're able to relay just a pure undistilled feelings and thoughts to the audience.
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And you get the absolute sharpest window into the mind of this character. And then Macbeth,
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you get that in spades, as you say, because there is an enormous amount of conflict in the character
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itself, but also as differs with other tragedies, such as King Lear or Hamlet. Macbeth is quite unusual
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in how short and focused it is. There are no subplots, there are no side quests. It is a story of this one
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man and his quest to become king and the consequences of what fall from that. And so that ends up bringing
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the play to being one that's about 2,500 lines, which is quite neat compared to Hamlet, which is over 4,000.
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Yes. I mean, it's something that I noticed when I got the full collection of Shakespeare that I have,
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and remembering back to reading through The Tempest that there are a number of dance masks
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throughout that story, which was all influenced by outside factors. Because of course, Shakespeare
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was not always just writing for the sake of writing a story that he wanted to tell. A lot of the time
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he was writing for a court as well. And the audience, so he's having to appeal to them. I forget the story,
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but there was one story that he wrote, I believe, basically just to give the audience a proper
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fill of bloodlust. Oh, Titus Andronicus. Yes, Titus Andronicus, which is quite notorious as being
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just his bloody, gory play where everybody dies, kind of pointlessly and brutally. But the audiences
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at the time supposedly lapped it up, because that's what they were going for. Similarly with The Tempest,
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he inserts all of those masks throughout the story from what I was taught at the time,
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because the court that he was writing for really liked masks in plays. Sure.
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They liked the big extravagant ballroom dance scenes and all of the feast scenes and such.
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And so he basically has to go, and there's a bunch of spirits on this island that like to throw big
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dances and dinners every so often. And I'm just going to have to insert those at regular intervals
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throughout the story so that my audience can stay involved in it. Like you say,
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Macbeth doesn't have any of that. No. There's not really any moment where
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a character external to the plot, soliloquies to the audience about something unrelated. There's no
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The Porter, kind of. That, frankly, earlier on, I watched the Royal Shakespeare performance from 1979
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with Ian McKellen as Macbeth. McKellen gave a fantastic performance, as you would expect.
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And I believe it was Ian McDermott, of all people, features quite prominently in that performance.
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And he plays the Porter at one point. Oh, really?
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And he's... But he also plays multiple characters, because it's a limited theater production.
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I think it's for BBC Broadcast. And he's just there, topless, rambling about nothing in particular
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related to the story. It felt like a completely bizarre interlude compared to the rest of the
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narrative, which is just laser-focused. But again, to finish my point, this story feels like one of his
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least influenced by outside factors in that way.
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Okay. So before... Yeah, I absolutely agree. Before we go into the real meat of the play,
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the sequence of events, the characters and everything, I would be remiss not to just say
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something about the curse that is the play. Oh, yeah. I know about it through Blackadder.
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Right. Of course. Everyone knows the Blackadder bit, where Prince George wants to, you know,
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become a better rhetorician and know how to do public speaking, so he hires the actors.
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The heroin-addicted actors from the local cafe. Yeah, and every time Blackadder says Macbeth,
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it's, oh, hot potato. I have to make a mint. And you're tweaking the nose and everything.
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And this is a time-honoured tradition, right? The idea that to say the name of the play,
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Macbeth, in the theatre, actually brings with it a curse. And the reason for this,
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the folklore traces back, obviously, no way of knowing this, and it's very, very unlikely to be
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true. But the lore behind it is that in the dialogue of the witches, particularly when they're
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actually casting their spells and making their potions, that Shakespeare actually managed to get
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the recipes from some actual witchcraft books, and actually managed to find some witches' spells
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to use in the play itself. And as a result of that, because Shakespeare had managed to write in
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the actual secrets of witchcraft, the witches cursed this play for all time. Now,
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superstition. So this will be such like the very famous, I believe it, what is it? Double Double
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Boil and Trouble? Yes. Yes. Yeah, cauldron, something burning, cauldron bubble. But there is actually,
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now that would be one thing, if it was just to say, oh, there's this story of it being cursed.
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But of course, such things need evidence. And my God, when it comes to Macbeth, there has been a lot
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of evidence. Are there quite a few disastrous runs of the play? Actors have died, actors have fallen off
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the stage, shows have been cancelled. Oh dear. There is a kind of insinuation that because it's the
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shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies. It's quite an easy play to put on. And it's very famous. And it's
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kind of a guaranteed seat filler. And so invariably, when people, when you see theatre clubs putting on
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Macbeth, it's kind of saying, these guys really need a hit right now. Their theatre is struggling.
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There's that aspect to it as well. And one of the most amazing stories that I found was that,
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so there was a, in New York in 1847, there was a famous riot at Astor Place at one of the theatres
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because of an intense rivalry between an American actor called Edwin Forrest and an English actor
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called William Charles McCready. And they had an intense rivalry over who was the best actor. And
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essentially what happened is a bunch of Forrest's supporters went over to McCready's performance of
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Macbeth and sabotaged the performance. And this created a riot in which over 20 people died.
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Oh bloody hell. So there is actually a track record attached to this curse. Yes.
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I mean, obviously people died and all, but I've got to say that there is something quite fantastic
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about the fact that it does actually have, there is a curse following this play.
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It brings a real richness to the myth. Yeah. And then one thing as well, just to say,
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before we start going into the play wholeheartedly, is to draw on something else that you were saying
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earlier about the different inspirations and the different courts that Shakespeare would write for,
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the different people who employed him. Obviously Macbeth is coming out at a very transformative
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period of Shakespeare's career because the play was published in 1605, 1606, likely 1606. I'll explain
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why we're able to pinpoint that a little bit later. But one thing...
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That must be coming up near the end of his writing career, isn't it?
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I think he wrote The Tempest, which was his last play in... I'm trying to think if it was like the late
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Sorry, 16. Yeah, 1620s. It's one of those. But yeah, so we are, we're over halfway through
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really at this point, or about halfway through. But obviously it's been very transformative because
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in 1603, Elizabeth I passed away and England and Scotland now have a joint king, of course, in James
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I. And for the longest time, Shakespeare and his company had been the Lord Chamberlain's men,
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and now their company had been rebranded simply as the King's Men. And so Macbeth is very much,
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you can tell it's very focused on the particularisms and tastes of the new monarch, James I.
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Well, it's set in Scotland all around the Scottish monarchy. It is also quite interesting that it's
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all about the changing of the hands of the monarchy, all of the backstabbing and stuff,
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and it was written only a few short decades prior to the English Civil War.
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Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that comes across in a lot of Shakespeare's tragedies,
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and particularly in his histories as well, this constant theme of order. Because we have to
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consider, of course, the time that Shakespeare was writing in, obviously he couldn't see until the
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future, but he was always very, very weary of a lack of order. And he actually always has,
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this is something that AA talked about when we had the conversation, Shakespeare's sympathies tend to
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always lie with the old elite, the old aristocracy, and against the more Machiavellian, less trustworthy
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merchant class who were coming in during the time of the late Tudor period and the early 1600s. And so
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you see this... Well, I mean, you can understand why, because merchants, by virtue of being merchants,
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their allegiances are up for sale, whereas the aristocracy is much more tied down. Even within
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Macbeth, Macbeth being a usurper to the throne is shown to be deceitful, untrustworthy, and also
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irresponsible and uncontrolled. He can't control himself. It's that same sort of unpredictability
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that is completely against the old order, which was much more predictable and much more settled.
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And Shakespeare living between the periods of the 1400s where we had the War of the Roses and the
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great instability that all of that brought around, and of course his history plays deal with, and the
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upcoming three civil wars and one glorious revolution that will define the 1600s. Of course, all of those
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themes that come across are very genuinely meant and should be seriously heeded by the Shakespearean
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audience of the time, basically saying, live virtuous lives, be on your best behaviour, treat one another
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with benevolence and charity, and don't fall into Machiavellianism. All of the Machiavellian, Iago and
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Othello, Edmund or Edgar, I can't remember which it is, and King Lear, these Shylock and Merchant of
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Venice, all the Machiavellian characters are always dealt with very, very harshly. And Macbeth is one
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So our play begins, of course, as you say, in Scotland. And one of the interesting points
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about this, of course, is that it takes place quite far back. It's set in the 11th century,
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so we're actually in the time Macbeth, Banquo, Duncan. There are contemporaries of Edward the
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Confessor in England, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. Well, second to last.
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Second, penultimate. I'm still not over it, ladies and gentlemen.
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My heart believes, but one cannot ponder Hastings all night, so let us continue.
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The other point, of course, is that Macbeth, the character, is based on a real king. Macbeth was
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a real king of Scotland who lived after the time of a King Duncan and before Malcolm III,
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who will assume the throne at the end of this play. And the entire thing exists as a kind of pseudo
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history. And one of the things that Shakespeare does very, very often is he borrows from a very
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famous book around at the time. I believe it was published in 1587 by Raphael Hollingshed,
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who was an English author, and he published a book called The Chronicles of England, Scotland and
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Wales. And so he's drawing heavily from the Scottish part of that tome in order to create this play.
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However, he changes many things about it because you have Macbeth, who indeed does
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overthrow Duncan in the history that Hollingshed wrote, but so does Banquo. Banquo is complicit in
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it too. But Banquo, this semi-legendary figure, was supposed to have been an ancestor of James I.
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And so all of this has changed to basically just make this one man's drive and all of the character
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growth and the push gets put on. So Banquo is turned from a co-conspirator
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into someone absolved of any responsibility. Exactly.
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And it's a big plot point in the play as well that his progeny are going to be the ones who
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eventually take the throne. Which will end up being the very king that the play is now being
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performed for as James I. Yes. So it all makes sense. So we have the witches coming in. And
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obviously this would have been very, very popular. Witchcraft and witch burning's popular topic
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of the Jacobean and Elizabethan period. Although the witches get no comeuppance
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whatsoever in this plot. They exist as an evil outside force to influence events and push Macbeth onto
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the path. And then they just get away with it. Macbeth and everybody else suffers the consequences.
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They're able to just go off scot-free. It's an interesting point and we'll definitely get to
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that towards the end. But for the time being, so obviously these witches bring with them a great
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amount of danger. They're physically repulsive. And you've seen it played many ways in the past. Some
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go in for sheer grotesque horror and others try to give the witches a bit more of a haggish,
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comical spin. But I think that the intention behind it, of course, is to really suggest absolute
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danger and that there is something truly demonic about these witches. I don't think that's a
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controversial point. It leads Macbeth to committing untold amounts of evil. But one thing that's interesting
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as well is that they immediately say that it's time for them to meet Macbeth. And so they clearly
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have a mission to sow this idea straight into Macbeth's mind. And this brings about so many
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questions in terms of the divine will of God versus the sort of the supernatural, you know,
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sort of the pagan supernatural. Again, where Macbeth's agency actually exists within the play,
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how he is being guided along, or if it is still ultimately his decisions which take responsibility
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for the plot. Now, I will say that, especially given, as I mentioned, that the witches don't
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really get any comeuppance in this. And Macbeth, I do think that my interpretation will be that the
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play is ultimately falling down on the side of Macbeth is responsible for his own actions.
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Yeah, I could strongly agree with that. And one of the things as well is that we get to
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Act 1, Scene 2, and we're introduced to Duncan, the King of Scotland, and many of his bannermen.
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And there has just been a battle, and they've defeated, there were some rebels, there was Donenwald,
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and there was the Thane of... Norway? No, no, sorry, what was the name of it? The Thane of Cawdor?
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Cawdor, thank you. I believe they were working in collaboration with the Norwegians.
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And the Irish as well. Of course. So they were very, very busy traders.
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Those sketchy Irish. Yeah, and never changes. But thanks to the heroism,
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and the battle-hardened fury of Macbeth, the tide was turned. And so when Duncan comes,
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this is all relayed to him by the sergeant, and there's this grand account of Macbeth's valour,
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and how bravely he and Banquo fought on the battlefield. And so we immediately get this
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impression of Macbeth as someone who is not a turncloak, who fights on the side of the king,
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who is very much honoured by the king. And Duncan is really appreciative of the loyalty and honour
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with which his bannermen distinguished themselves with in defence of the common good of the realm.
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Because of course, what are these random traitors doing inviting in pagan Norwegians and the Irish?
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Right. It's just a bit of a no-no. It's not good for the defence of the realm.
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And so we see all of this. And one of the things as well that gets pointed to
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in the sergeant's monologue is he uses the word fortune. Now, this is really interesting because
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the F on fortune is capitalised. And so it's not fortune just simply as a description. It's
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fortune as in a name. It's fortune in the Boethian sense of the wheel of fortune, that sense of rise
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and fall. And we see he says something along the lines of Macbeth scorned fortune. He wasn't willing
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to simply remain passive and wait to see which way things were going. He got his sword out and he
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stuck himself in and went straight for the traitor.
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