During the second season of Slings & Arrows, they perform Macbeth.  The conversation is almost entirely around words like “evil” and “psychopaths.”  I get that they’re going over the top with it.  I understand that in producing this particular play, people really like to go nuts with the curse and the blood and the smoke and mirrors and all that good stuff.  But I’m left wondering if I’ve fundamentally misunderstood the ending to Macbeth all this time.  Is Macbeth a fundamentally good guy who has been corrupted by ambition this whole time, who realizes too late the error of his ways?  Or is he, right to the very end, just a demented psychopath who is too insane to realize that he’s already dead and just doesn’t know it yet? I’ve always thought it the former.  After all, we’ve gotten a glimpse into his character (and his descent) through the whole play, it’s not like we have another good guy to play off of where we get to say at the end “Hooray, the good guy won!”  I mean yeah, we do, but he just sort of shows up at the end, it’s not like the play was one big chase where the good guy is always one step behind.  Most of the play is about Macbeth going nuts, and only at the end do the good guys appear and win the day. I guess I’m pondering the essence of the tragedy in this one.  If Macbeth is indeed a psychotic monster (every time I say it like that I imagine an action movie ending where he keeps getting butchered and just keeps getting up and charging the hero, until finally his head is chopped off), then where is the tragedy exactly?  Doesn’t there have to be that moment of “Oh good, everything’s going to be ok….too late, too late!” for it to be tragic?  Doesn’t Macbeth have to have some awareness of his situation?  I’ve always preferred to think of the ending as Macbeth’s realization that he has not been his own man throughout this whole experience, and that even though Fate has been right so far, he’s going to take control and go down fighting.  He doesn’t expect to win but he doesn’t plan to roll over and let Fate have it’s way with him, either.  Or, that could also be the ravings of a lunatic who is beaten and refuses to realize it, too.  Now I want to go see a Macbeth. 🙂

As mentioned previously, the show on Boston Common this year will be As You Like It.  Truthfully, I know little to nothing about the play.  I’ve never studied it, and only ever really read it during a project I did to read all the plays.  It did not stick in my memory much. So, I’ll open it up.  Somebody tell me what it’s about, and if it’s any good?  Where does it rank, relatively, among the comedies?  Better/worse than Two Gents, Comedy of Errors, All’s Well? The wikipedia page reminds me that this play is the source of one of the more famous Shakespearean quotes, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…” and includes it with Much Ado and Twelfth Night among the “great comedies.” Who wants to enlighten us?

Does anybody know anything about this movie version of Macbeth directed by Geoffrey Wright?  It seems unstuck in time to me.  The site is Australian, which at first made me think “Ok, we just can’t get it in the US, I’ll stop worrying about it.”  But today over on Shakespeare Complete I saw reference to the DVD coming out, and a contest that ends April 30, 2008.  But, on the main site (first link), it says right on the top, “On DVD September 10.”  Even IMDB says that it’s been on DVD since May, 2007. What the heck?

Here’s a question that I hope can draw some discussion.  I try to post a wide variety of topics here – interesting links, news items, book/movie reviews, discussion of the plays.  What do you like to read the most? Are you here to discuss the plays?  Or hear news about the latest Shakespeare book or movie?  Do you follow the links when I post them?  Which stories are you most likely to comment on? Just curious.  I looked at my admin console today and saw that I’ve posted almost 600 entries here, but then I realized they spread across a wide spectrum of content, so I’m a bit curious about whether I should focus a little more on something over something else.

While listening to the In Our Time episode about King Lear, I started thinking about the emotional impact of the tragedies.  They are not created equal.  Which one “gets” you, the most?  Which one tears out your heart and stomps on it?  Has the answer changed for you in the past? For me, right now, King Lear would be the clear winner.  The whole “Daughter tries and fails to save the father, father tries and fails to save the daughter” storyline just crushes me.  And it’s easy to see why — I have daughters.  When I tell them the story I simply tell it as “And then Cordelia comes back to rescue her Daddy from the forest.”  And they are happy with that ending, it pleases them that the daughters can save the daddy.  So the fact that I know what comes next makes it that much more heart-wrenching.  I’ve been in the discussion with parents about when children should learn what happens to Bambi’s mother, but never at what age they should learn Cordelia’s fate ;). Fifteen or twenty years ago, I would have said Hamlet.  Because I was the typical angsty/emo college kid doing the whole “What does life really mean?” thing.  I had a fascination with last words, dying moments, and that idea of drawing a line between “Ok, here you’re alive, and then over here, you’re dead, and right now you’re standing on the line, what do you do?”  So if you’d asked me back then, I would have told you that it was the “Flights of angels sing thee sweetly to thy rest” line that did it for me. But you know what?  Life is better now :).  When you step back from Hamlet you have to admit that he pretty much put himself in that situation in the first place.  It’s sad that he died, of course, but it’s not tragic for me in the same sense as a Cordelia, who really tried to do the right thing from beginning to end and still ended up dead.  Or Ophelia, who never really stood a chance. The others just really don’t do much for me, emotion-wise.  Sure it’s sad that Romeo and Juliet couldn’t live happily ever after, but happily ever after is a thing for fairy tales.  Then again, much like the Hamlet -> King Lear thing, maybe if you’d caught me back as a teenager in love, maybe I would have said R&J.  Who knows? This topic makes me want to go read Anthony and Cleopatra again, I haven’t read that one in a long time and I’m thinking I might find it better now (being married, and far from a teenager) than I did when I was in high school. Who’s next?