The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - March 14, 2026


PREVIEW： Chronicles #38 ｜ Macbeth： Part 2 with Harry Robinson


Episode Stats

Length

15 minutes

Words per Minute

166.59238

Word Count

2,616

Sentence Count

69

Misogynist Sentences

16

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we continue our discussion of the first act of Shakespeare's Macbeth, where we see the introduction of the witches and the supernatural. We also discuss Lady MacBeth's manipulation of her husband, King Duncan, and how she attempts to get him to do what she wants.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to part two of my discussion with Harry, all about Macbeth.
00:00:19.400 Last time we ended off, we were actually just concluding talking about the first act of this
00:00:24.860 five-part play. One of Shakespeare's shortest. Yeah, one of Shakespeare's
00:00:29.680 shortest tragedy, because, well, there was simply so much to say about it. And, you know, a lot of
00:00:34.560 the historical context with James I as well, a lot to say about just the introduction of the witches
00:00:39.920 and the supernatural. And I believe the discussion where we last left off, we were talking about the
00:00:45.060 fact that King Duncan is now in Macbeth's castle. He now has the king in his midst. And despite all
00:00:54.640 of the uh you know macbeth goes through it and he rationalizes in his head he weighs up the pros and
00:01:00.060 cons of both of the things and it's like you know well he's a very gracious king he gives he gives
00:01:06.140 to me very generously i'm in his trust uh he's also a guest under my roof and you know all these
00:01:12.120 sorts of things however i am an ambitious man and my wife really likes it when i'm an ambitious man
00:01:20.160 if I'm not an ambitious man
00:01:22.440 then she threatens my
00:01:24.300 she makes jokes about my manhood
00:01:26.840 Stephen Greenblatt
00:01:28.500 actually in the Norton
00:01:30.380 completed edition that sits on my desk
00:01:32.480 he had a wonderful way of describing
00:01:34.440 Lady Macbeth's tactics which was just
00:01:36.540 to say she employs
00:01:38.580 sexual terrorism
00:01:39.980 against Macbeth
00:01:41.780 as many women do
00:01:43.060 well that's interesting because I want to bring up something
00:01:45.400 so since the last discussion that we had
00:01:47.480 on it I have since watched
00:01:49.300 a film that came highly recommended which was the 2015 um macbeth adaptation starring michael
00:01:56.540 fassbender as macbeth now it was a very interesting adaptation and we will come into some of the other
00:02:03.380 aspects of the adaptation as we go along in the story sure um i would actually recommend it just
00:02:09.900 to start off with i thought it was a good film but it does really lean quite heavily in the first
00:02:17.140 third the first act of the film on that sexual element that she is trying to manipulate him
00:02:23.640 with her sexuality by just having it so that the discussion that they have in the play where he
00:02:30.220 comes to her with the idea after he's already sent the letter and she's trying to convince him
00:02:34.820 she basically like gets him to have sex with her right and delivers her reasoning for why he should
00:02:42.320 go ahead with it whilst they're in the middle of sex very persuasive uh it really does do a number
00:02:48.660 on him yeah it really does do a number on him uh but there there's a number of other
00:02:53.720 recontextualizations and kind of reordering of some of the scenes and a lot of culling of scenes
00:03:00.060 that goes on in that film that made it a very interesting adaptation but i'll get on to that
00:03:04.180 as it becomes relevant so macbeth uh decides that he's not going to go through with this he
00:03:09.280 weighs up all of the moral considerations. He knows that what he's going to be doing is evil
00:03:14.860 and that there's no justification for it beyond his own ambition. And so he tells his wife.
00:03:19.740 And his wife, Lady Macbeth, instantly compares him to someone who's been out drinking all night,
00:03:25.540 woken up from a hangover and forgotten the thing that they were supposed to have done.
00:03:30.660 Right. She's like, are you hungover? And Macbeth basically says, well, look,
00:03:36.180 Like, my opinions are very high of me right now.
00:03:40.500 Everyone likes me.
00:03:41.600 I'm doing very well.
00:03:43.020 I'm a Thane now.
00:03:43.680 There's no need to rock the boat.
00:03:45.240 You know, I've already had a bigger title bestowed on me.
00:03:48.660 Like, what more could you want, dear?
00:03:50.420 Yes.
00:03:50.820 But as ever, it's never enough.
00:03:52.340 It's never enough.
00:03:54.740 But it's interesting as well, because then when she goes to him
00:03:57.620 and she starts to prey down on him further,
00:03:59.960 all he actually comes back with is, what if we should fail?
00:04:03.560 right that's all he really has to say in response to um to her attacks on him and she simply says
00:04:10.960 well then we won't fail you know it's interesting that he's not presenting a principled or moral
00:04:16.480 argument given that he's just thought of one literally two pages prior yes like he like it
00:04:22.420 becomes almost that he was hoping that she would present the moral argument why he shouldn't do it
00:04:29.620 he was expecting her to take a kind of like a very feminine role
00:04:33.940 of trying to pull him back from the edge,
00:04:36.560 whereas instead she's willing to just push him straight off
00:04:39.560 in absence of that kind of mitigating factor.
00:04:43.960 He's just like, well, you know, I might get caught.
00:04:47.680 I might get caught.
00:04:49.340 And it kind of shows that he, for all of the internal conflict
00:04:53.080 that Macbeth is known for, his overriding passion,
00:04:56.980 his desire was to go for it.
00:04:59.420 Absolutely. And I think there's also an element of Lady Macbeth's character as well that definitely harkens back to a character from ancient Greece of Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon, which is a character that Stelios and I talked a lot about when we did Leora Staya.
00:05:15.480 and one of her things is just a clear resentment of her own femininity that she wants to be the
00:05:22.500 one carrying the knife she wants when she says my battlements she wants to be the man in this
00:05:28.460 situation and she wants to kill her own femininity and so from her point of view she's more and more
00:05:34.040 frustrated seeing her husband not live up to the ideal of what she thinks a man is in her own head
00:05:40.940 yeah i think we mentioned this in the last discussion but just to reiterate if i did
00:05:45.420 There is an interesting parallel with modern sexual dynamics that we see today. I've seen it
00:05:51.860 suggested that one of the reasons that women have become less feminine and become more masculine is
00:05:59.400 not only due to the overwhelming force of propaganda and feminism on them, this idea that
00:06:04.900 they should become the man of their own life and the man of their own relationship, but also because
00:06:10.240 of the overwhelming feminization of men as well, which we see in a number of factors. Biologically
00:06:14.860 we see it biologically we see it with reducing levels of testosterone generation on generation
00:06:20.300 but with men occupying less of a masculine space it seems that one of the psychological effects
00:06:27.080 of that is unconsciously women are trying to fulfill that role themselves and one of the
00:06:32.980 reasons that they may behave so brazenly in doing so is almost trying to goad the men around them
00:06:38.960 into like are you going to step up and be a man or am i going to have to keep doing this job for
00:06:45.100 you yeah and and it's sort of shit test yeah so it's a massive shit test and lady macbeth seems
00:06:50.840 and going back to um agamemnon's wife as well there seems to be a recognition throughout history
00:06:57.380 in these tales that we tell about tell that femininity can be corrupted in that way if the
00:07:05.680 roles, if the sexual roles are overlapping too much, if there is not enough sexual divergence
00:07:11.840 between the way that men and women are and the way that they behave, women can assume this kind
00:07:17.300 of pastiche of masculinity. Yeah. I mean, honestly, one of the absolute darkest passages
00:07:23.300 from the entire text comes from this particular scene as well at the end of Act One, where Lady
00:07:28.040 Macbeth says, I have given suck and know how tender it is to love the babe that milks me.
00:07:33.280 I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from its boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have just done to this.
00:07:45.020 And so there's a lot in there.
00:07:47.540 First of all, there is a revelation that Lady Macbeth has actually been a mother at some point in her life.
00:07:54.380 Now, what's very interesting about this, and this is the first thing to explore, later on, it's commented on that Macbeth himself does not have any children.
00:08:03.460 Macduff says it explicitly after the revelation of his own children and the family being murdered.
00:08:08.460 So what are we to take away from this?
00:08:10.080 Are we supposed to assume that the shared child that they once had has since passed away
00:08:15.700 and therefore Macbeth has no children?
00:08:17.860 Or is this perhaps a child that Lady Macbeth had from a previous marriage?
00:08:23.720 Well, I mean, again, it's up to interpretation.
00:08:26.680 the interpretation that the 2015 adaptation presents
00:08:30.380 is the film starts with a huge recontextualization
00:08:35.120 of the whole plot.
00:08:37.380 Right.
00:08:37.880 By having the opening scene not be King Duncan
00:08:42.060 having it relayed to him the events of the battle
00:08:44.920 that Macbeth and Banquo were able to overcome
00:08:50.340 the usurpers from Norway and the Than of Kordor on.
00:08:54.320 Instead, it starts with what appears to be a flashback to a funeral being held by Lady Macbeth and Macbeth himself,
00:09:04.340 where they appear to be doing the last rites of their son, who is shown to be maybe a toddler, maybe three or four years old at most.
00:09:14.820 Very, very young.
00:09:15.820 So it does seem to recontextualize everything that happens afterwards as potentially them trying to fulfill a void within their own life that has been left with the absence of this child passing.
00:09:28.940 Now within the play, outside of this adaptation, that is an interpretation that you could bring perhaps in the absence of anything grander, anything more transcendent, this passing of generation to generation to occupy themselves with.
00:09:45.820 on the trauma that resulted from losing their child perhaps that's what's motivating them to
00:09:51.040 do this they can't have they're not having any more children they're not passing a legacy down
00:09:55.140 this is mcbeth's big chance to have a legacy and lady mcbeth is riding at his side because of that
00:10:01.220 because she feels that same drive yeah that is that that is interesting i don't know necessarily
00:10:05.900 how much it would add if it was her kind of sneakily admitting to having an affair in the
00:10:14.060 past, except just emphasizing what an awful devilish schemer she is.
00:10:20.800 Yeah, well, absolutely that.
00:10:23.000 And obviously the idea of her saying that she could take this babe who's just been at
00:10:29.620 her nipple, see it smiling, and dash its brains out, if that's what it took to do this, again,
00:10:35.540 just speaks to what a deplorable monster she wants to be.
00:10:40.320 right that she wants she's choosing actively to be the monster but can she follow through with it
00:10:46.440 yes uh and there's there's interesting tells actually throughout the text that perhaps she
00:10:50.880 couldn't have followed through with it at all and actually macbeth did something that she wouldn't
00:10:56.320 have been able to do uh when the time came to it so we get to the start of act two and uh night
00:11:02.320 descends and we know it because banquo declares that it is night at the beginning which i imagine
00:11:07.260 would have been very helpful to a Jacobean audience
00:11:10.820 sitting in the middle of the day in the Globe.
00:11:12.640 You've got to say a lot of things that the audience isn't going to pick up on,
00:11:17.260 unless you say it.
00:11:18.520 Yeah, so it's nighttime now.
00:11:20.280 And one of the interesting things here is this is where we're introduced
00:11:23.060 to Banquo's son of Fliance as well.
00:11:26.280 And we see that they have a very, very close relationship with one another,
00:11:30.480 you know, a very fatherly father-son.
00:11:34.080 And Banquo immediately gives his sword to Fleance
00:11:38.960 because he's like, I'm done with this for the day.
00:11:41.200 Take it away from me.
00:11:43.160 But upon hearing Stirrings and seeing Macbeth enter the stage,
00:11:48.700 Banquo says, oh, give me my sword back.
00:11:50.900 Oh, yeah.
00:11:51.740 As soon as the confirmation of, oh, you were promised to be Thane
00:11:56.380 and you got that title,
00:11:58.400 Banquo can immediately see
00:12:02.000 that this might go wrong
00:12:03.560 Macbeth might be consumed by
00:12:06.060 his passions and his
00:12:08.020 desires, his ambition
00:12:09.680 and again there's that theme
00:12:12.080 isn't there? Everybody
00:12:13.300 that Macbeth draws himself up
00:12:16.020 against and betrays
00:12:17.840 and attacks is a family
00:12:19.900 man. Duncan has his children
00:12:22.080 Malcolm and Donald Bane
00:12:23.280 Banquo has Fleance
00:12:25.300 Macduff has his
00:12:27.840 large family and again it is explicitly stated that macbeth does not have any children whether
00:12:34.280 through uh lady macbeth having an affair and then not having children or through them already having
00:12:39.280 a child and that child dying from unknown causes um it's a pointed theme this idea that perhaps
00:12:47.460 someone who isn't a family man can be overcome with dark like his ambitions can be twisted and
00:12:55.280 made dark. Absolutely. And actually, and to go back to something that you were saying in part
00:13:01.360 one as well, that Macduff's quest to avenge his family is seen as a moral crusade, something
00:13:09.900 actually justifiable. And you talked about this a lot as well with Amleth. Amleth and the Northmen.
00:13:16.120 The quest for avenging your own family members who have been betrayed is always portrayed as
00:13:23.060 this kind of virtuous bringing of cosmic justice you're taking the cosmic transcendent godly order
00:13:31.500 and putting it right whereas what Macbeth does what Amleth's uncle does and Hamlet's uncle does
00:13:39.240 these are all seen as treacherous they're done for nothing grander than human ambition they take the
00:13:45.740 natural godly order and put it out of sorts. Whereas Macduff and Amleth and other similar
00:13:53.800 characters are always seen as making things right. Yeah. And so we get to that very, very famous
00:14:00.520 monologue, you know, is this a dagger that I see before me? Or is it but a dagger of the mind? And
00:14:07.160 you know, he goes through that. And you can tell in the way that he's giving this language,
00:14:10.240 he's psyching himself up you know he's absolutely psyching himself up so that he can go ahead and
00:14:16.340 do this so just to say as well his wife Lady Macbeth has given some wines some very strong
00:14:22.880 wine to the servants outside of King Duncan's door so they won't be disturbing anything and
00:14:28.540 of course they're going to pin the murder onto those poor two unassuming drunken boys as well
00:14:34.200 bad night out on the drink I'd say
00:14:36.920 and Macbeth goes
00:14:38.900 in there and of course does the deed
00:14:40.980 now one thing to say of course about this
00:14:42.940 as well is that
00:14:44.660 Lady Macbeth's
00:14:47.440 entire framing of this
00:14:48.980 is that this is the manliest
00:14:51.360 thing that her husband
00:14:53.260 can possibly do
00:14:54.560 is it though?
00:14:56.960 I mean murdering an old
00:14:59.020 man in his sleep when he
00:15:01.120 can't fight back
00:15:02.380 and yeah who trusted you who trusted who is in your own home the most cowardly the most sniveling
00:15:09.120 yeah it's what is what a pathetic coward does a man of no honor yes uh yeah it's nothing manly
00:15:16.020 about it it'd be like if you're out on the lash and your missus is there and some guy insults you
00:15:21.640 and instead of you going up and like confronting him and saying like i want you to apologize and
00:15:27.600 say it to my face your missus is just like sucker punching when his back's turned no that's cowardly
00:15:32.960 yeah absolutely it's just it's not cool bro yeah it's just not on if you enjoyed this piece of
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