Category: Shakespeare Geek

How Did Lady Macbeth Kill Herself?

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

We talk a lot about Macbeth in my house lately. My daughter’s kind of obsessed with it. So when Macbeth content appears on my radar, I play closer attention than perhaps I’d been doing. Today I saw a reference to her suicide, and I thought about Ophelia. Was Ophelia self-aware enough to have deliberately committed suicide, or was she one incapable of her own distress and thus not guilty of that sin? Does the same rule apply to Lady Macbeth?

Although it is sometimes overlooked in a quick read, we do find out what happens to Lady Macbeth. Right at the end of the play, Malcolm tells us that Macbeth’s queen, as ’tis thought, took her own life by “self and violent hands.” So in other words people thought it, I’m confirming it.

…his fiend-like queen,
Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands2560
Took off her life

– Macbeth Act V Scene viii
AI-generated sketch of Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth alone with her thoughts

I guess I don’t have an answer to the question any more than I have it for Ophelia. Is it really suicide in the same sense when a person is no longer in their right state of mind, does it? It could be argued that Ophelia almost has her moment of clarity – sending messages in the flowers she gives to everyone. So, you could try to make the case that she had consciously made the decision to end her life. I’m not sure Lady Macbeth gets that same benefit of the doubt, though. The only times we see her after her descent, she doesn’t look good.

But I have a more specific question here. I also don’t think it has an official answer, but it might be fun to speculate. We know how Ophelia met her end. What about Lady M? All we get is the above “by self and violent hands” comment. I’m taking that to mean she daggered herself (I’m just going to go ahead and make that a verb). But this could be just one of those redundant ways of saying the same thing — just a fancy “by her own hand”, which would leave everything open to interpretation.

What do people think? How did she do it? Do we know of any productions that show it? As I write that, I’m trying to remember if Marion Cotillard’s version (2015 with Michael Fassbender) put it on film. I wouldn’t be surprised.

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Morgan Freeman as Othello? No, Thank You

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AI-generated image of Morgan Freeman interviewing himself
Morgan Freeman interviewed by … Morgan Freeman (AI-generated)

If you start listing actors famous for their voices, two things are guaranteed to be true — Morgan Freeman will be on that list, and most of them have done Shakespeare. Patrick Stewart, Orson Welles, James Earl Jones, Alan Rickman …

… but wait, where exactly is Morgan Freeman on that list? I hadn’t stopped to consider that he’s done no filmed Shakespeare. There are plenty of clips from his recitation of Seven Ages of Man from As You Like It, but that’s not a stage performance. But as far as I can tell, that’s it. You can find clips of James Earl Jones’ King Lear, or even Alan Rickman as Tybalt. But I find no performances by Mr. Freeman.

He does have some history with Shakespeare, though:

In the late 1970s, the largely unknown actor played the title role in Coriolanus and lent support as Casca in a production of Julius Caesar before returning to the world of Shakespeare over a decade later for a run of The Taming of the Shrew in 1990 as Petruchio.

What are his thoughts on Othello, you may ask? Oh, he has thoughts:

Freeman didn’t hesitate when asked if he had a least favourite role from his lengthy and distinguished career: “Yeah. Othello. Played it on stage. Don’t like it.” Refusing to hold back, he even voiced his disdain for the work itself. “Don’t even like the play. I’ve seen it a number of times, but I hate it myself.”

Well ok then! Maybe we could get him as King Lear?

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/morgan-freeman-names-his-least-favourite-role/

Avenging Shakespeare: What If?

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AI-generated cartoon Loki peforming Hamlet
Poor Yorick is about to be used as a projectile.

I was a huge fan of Marvel’s movie efforts right through Infinity War / Endgame. I’m also one of the people who think that Disney’s switch to television series was their jump-the-shark moment. I haven’t really followed any of their Disney+ shows, and once you lose those, you start losing the Easter eggs in the movies, which makes you care less about the movies. It’s a slippery slope.

Then I discovered the Season 2, Episode 8 of the animated What If? series has the Avengers in Shakespearean England. I’m in!

I haven’t watched any episodes leading up to this one, but who cares? I get the general idea – it’s a multiverse thing where we see the characters we know in new roles. This one opens with Loki doing Hamlet, and I’d recognize Tom Hiddleston’s voice anywhere. Sold. Of course, it’s not long before some alien force attacks, and the fight scenes begin.

Unfortunately, that’s about all the Shakespeare we get. We don’t get a Shakespeare character (though Tony Stark looks much like him). There’s a two-second bit where Loki is talking about a new play he’s written called Iago. “There are other characters in it,” he says, “but really it’s about Iago.” I laughed.

I assume this is based on Neil Gaiman’s comic of the same name, but I’ve not read it. Maybe I should? I’m going to assume it has a lot more Shakespeare content.

The One Where Fleance Comes Back

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

So my daughter and I are working on a secret project (more soon!) that involves a deep reading and markup of Macbeth. For our purposes, I got the plain text, public domain copy from Project Gutenberg. I made her a copy, made myself one, and over the Christmas break we’ve been going about our business making our notes, periodically comparing.

Until yesterday, when we were driving to visit relatives, with the whole family in the car, discussing various things like college majors and literary theory and Shakespeare. “I thought you said Fleance doesn’t come back,” I hear her say.

“He doesn’t,” I say, driving. “Some adaptations insert a scene of him returning, to reinforce the prophecy about Banquo’s children. I think the Fassbender movie version does that.”

“No,” she continues, “he’s in the final scene.”

“No,” I insist, “he’s not.”

“When we get back home I’ll need to show you. He has lines. It’s in my copy.”

“If that’s true, that would be a giant mistake.”

Well, giant mistake confirmed.

I do what I always do in these situations – I call Bardfilm, my friendly neighborhood virtual Shakespeare resource library. While I’m waiting to hear back (he is traveling for the holidays as well), I start checking other versions. Everywhere I can find, this line is Ross’s. Ross has delivered the previous line, and Siward is in conversation with him. There is no indicator that this should be, or ever has been, Fleance’s line. Even if we imagine him in this scene (there is no stage direction to show him entering), why would he deliver that line?

I’ve written to Project Gutenberg with our correction. I’m sure in their world, this happens all the time; they have an actual address and ticket system set up for errata. But this isn’t a typo. Stuff like this bothers me. The stats say that almost 3000 people/month download that file. Presumably, mostly students. How many of them read that and just assume, no matter how confusing it is, that Fleance makes an appearance at the end? Arguably, it’s a trivial thing, but not to us. If you read Macbeth or any Shakespeare, and you have questions, you’re entitled to answers to those questions. It’s not fair for the answer to be, “Yeah, that’s just wrong, you got a bad copy. Ignore that.”

If anybody needs me, I’ll be re-reading my copy with a First Folio (and maybe an Arden) sitting in my lap.

Hamlet is Batman

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Ask a random person if they’ve seen Hamlet, and chances are, they’ll treat it like a yes or no question.

Ask that same person if they’ve seen Batman, and they’ll say, “Which one?”

In the time I’ve been alive, Batman has been portrayed by Adam West, Michael Keaton, George Clooney, Val Kilmer, Christian Bale, and Robert Patrick (did I miss any?) That’s not counting the animated or television versions. I know Adam West was tv Batman but they also did a full-length movie.

AI-generated image of Batman performing the Yorick speech from Hamlet.
Alas, poor Joker.

See where I’m going with this? Everybody knows “the Batman story”. Parents murdered when he was young. Grows up to be a crime-fighting billionaire, works at night, has lots of cool toys. Not only do we keep telling his story over and over again, but people keep going. We understand that we basically know the story. We want to see how it’s going to be told this time. We want to see how it’s going to be acted this time.

That is exactly how Shakespeare fans feel about Hamlet. I don’t feel the same way about Moby Dick or Catcher in the Rye. Those were checklist items, you read them and say ok, read that, I’m done. I suppose you could do this with Hamlet. You could read it and say, check, done, I can say I’ve read Hamlet. I know a lot of people make it their bucket list to read all of Shakespeare’s works.

But to see it, that’s a whole different story. Whose did you see? What do you think about Mel Gibson’s version versus David Tennant? Or Andrew Scott up against Benedict Cumberbatch? Thoughts on Kenneth Branagh, or Kevin Kline, or Derek Jacobi?

This is how I want us to explain our love of Shakespeare to our friends and family. Shakespeare’s not something you get through in high school just to get the grade and forget all about it. The text may not be changing, but our desire and opportunity to interpret it has continued to evolve over hundreds of years. A character like Hamlet should be as iconic as Batman. We all know the story. Everybody who’s seen Lion King knows the story. Uncle kills father, marries mother, son avenges father. We go to see how it’s going to be told this time and by whom. What insights will new voices bring? Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear … let them be our superheroes.