http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7230683.stm If you’re wondering where you’ve heard the name Fletcher, he’s thought to have collaborated with Shakespeare on Cardenio, as well as Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen. The painting completes the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of writers that includes Shakespeare, Ben Johnson and John Donne.

Watching Season 2 of Slings & Arrows, the episode where they’re doing Macbeth and Romeo&Juliet basically simultaneously. Can I just say?  Every time somebody speaks a line of the dialogue, shivers go right up my spine.  Every single time.   And I wouldn’t have it any other way.   I can only imagine what you people who act and direct this stuff feel.   P.S. I did NOT love the final Macbeth they ended up with.  The stage combat was good, but most of the rest didn’t do it for me, what with all the build up.  Oh well.

Yesterday’s conversation about Macbeth was fun.  While talking it over with a coworker, I realize I contradicted myself.  I took the position that “I don’t believe in characters as inherently evil.  Well….except Iago.  He’s just a nasty bastard.” So, let’s talk about Iago relative to what we were saying about Macbeth.  Is Iago just a regular guy who lets his demons get the better of him?  Is it really all about getting passed over for a promotion, or some underlying racism?  Or is Iago just a sociopath who really and truly chooses to destroy people’s lives just because he can, and never through the entire thing feels a bit of doubt or remorse about it?  For the record, I believe the latter.  Macbeth is the tragic hero.  He needs some degree of redemption at the end, we need to feel something for him.  But Iago is the villain.  We don’t necessarily need to look at him with the same eyes.    So what is he?  Just a man who wants revenge?  Or a monster?

Ok, posting about As You Like It reminded me of this.  Why the excitement over the crossdressing?  I mean, sure, I get the whole thing with Shakespeare and boys playing girls pretending to be boys.  I’m not talking about that.  I’m talking about the response from the ladies who seem positively thrilled over it.  I hope they don’t mind my quoting them, but in the AYLI thread, Ren Girl says you “can’t go wrong” with cross-dressing, and Angela is “all for any play that involves a pants-role for a female.”  But I’ve seen similar responses at other times which often come down to a near-giddy “Hooray, a girl gets to play a boy!” excitement. What’s up with that, exactly?  Maybe I’m stupid but I would have thought the exact opposite, that the ladies in the audience would not be so supportive of strong female characters who have to play men for half the story.  Lady Macbeth may say “unsex me here”, but she stays a woman for the whole play.  Somebody want to enlighten me?

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. 🙂