Macbeth is a masterpiece of Shakespearean tragedy that explores themes of ambition, power, and morality. The play follows the story of the eponymous character, a Scottish nobleman who becomes consumed by his own ambition and resorts to murder to gain and maintain power. Macbeth’s story is a cautionary tale of what can happen when unchecked ambition leads to the corruption of the soul. The play also explores the consequences of moral choices, as Macbeth’s actions have devastating consequences not just for himself, but for those around him. The play’s characters are some of the most iconic in all of literature, from the scheming Lady Macbeth to the tragic hero Macbeth himself. With its powerful storytelling, memorable language, and timeless themes, Macbeth remains a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the darker aspects of human nature.
If you’re going to refer to Shakespeare in the clue, it’s only reasonable to expect that the answer will be something Shakespeare-specific. I feel cheated.
Coworker: “Shakespeare was clue in my crossword this morning.”
I love a good Shakespeare crossword clue. I love it when Shakespeare is the Jeopardy category. It’s a chance to test my knowledge on the fly. I love the ones that I don’t know the answer to, because it means I get to go seek out and learn something new about my favorite subject. In this case, though, I thought I could predict the future.
The New York Times put this clue in a puzzle once and put this blog on the map. I woke up one morning to see that literally tens of thousands of people had hit my site. It was just a coincidence that I had a page up titled “Romeo’s Last Words,” and google had caught it. So when thousands of NY Times crossword solvers suddenly searched “Romeo’s last words”, there I was. It comes back around again every few years, too. I can tell by the spike my traffic.
Oh, well. But like I said, I like when I don’t know the answer, I get to make more guesses. I had a sudden epiphany. I thought I for sure had this one.
Me: “Wyrd.”
Coworker: “Nope.”
Drat. I admitted I was stumped. What else could you say that was specific to Macbeth’s witches in only four letters? Toil? Fire? Burn? Rain?
Coworker: “They wanted ‘trio’.”
Me: “Well that’s just … that’s annoying. There’s nothing Shakespeare about that answer.”
Coworker: “I know, but sometimes they’re like that. Don’t feel bad, I had the t and the o and I still didn’t get it.”
Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth obviously threw me off because that one had four witches. 🙂
I admit it, this post is a complete advertisement for my latest merchandise. I think I honestly do a pretty reasonable job of not spamming you folks every time I put up a new t-shirt design, don’t I? So surely you won’t begrudge me a Friday afternoon commercial.
When I’m working at night, chances are Netflix is on in the background. I’m one of those folks that just likes the noise. I would love to churn through all the new original shows they’re making, but then I have to pay attention to what’s on, rather than letting it just drone in the background. So instead I turn to old series that I know I like, that have a lot of episodes (that will auto play, you see). You see where I’m going with this.
The entire ten season run of Friends has graced my television so often I think I’ve memorized all the episodes. But it wasn’t until recently that the idea hit me … that opening font of theirs is absolutely iconic. If you do “Skip Intro” you may never even notice it, but when you see it that classic scribble font with the little colored dots you’re definitely thinking, “I recognize that!”
Shakespeare and Friends
I wasn’t even sure Amazon would let these up, so I didn’t go crazy with the “Look! It’s Friends!” keywords. But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell the real story here. To get started I made a bunch of versions of Shakespeare’s most iconic characters – Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio. All are available in both t-shirt and hoodie. The t-shirts are available in men’s, women’s and youth sizes (the hoodies are unisex). All the images below are clickable, where you can see the colors available for each.
What do you think? Did I miss your favorite character? What do you think looks better, character names or play names? For those first couple it doesn’t matter 🙂 but I soon ran out of 5-7 character single words. 🙂 Should I make Prospero and Malvolio and Viola and some other more lesser known characters?
I’m always torn when people offer to send me books for possible review. If it’s not an audiobook or ebook, it goes on the bottom of the “get to when neither of those is available” list. That’s just the way my schedule works. As such, it takes me forever. Such is the case with Cindy Brown’s Macdeath, which I’ve had so long I can’t remember when I got my copy. But I’m happy to say I finished it!
Book one of a series, Macdeath introduces us to Ivy Meadows, a struggling actress / part-time detective (thanks to her Uncle Bob, a full-time detective). Ivy’s been cast as one of the witches in Macbeth, and we all know that the Scottish play is cursed. Sure enough, somebody winds up dead. Now Ivy can’t seem to stop investigating whodunnit, despite the pleas and flat-out demands of her coworkers, the police, and her detective uncle.
Maybe if I was a backstage theatre geek I would have liked this one more, since that’s where most of the action takes place. I just couldn’t get into any of the characters. None of them are around long enough or described deeply enough to care about. Which, granted, is part of the point of a murder mystery because you need to keep guessing about who the murderer is. But without that, I was stuck in the head of our narrator, and as a 50yr old husband and father with stuff on my to-do list, I felt exactly as comfortable with that as I would have hanging out in real life with a 20something struggling actress :). Oh, your costume is too tight in the crotch? You’re not sure if you have enough money to get your car out of the parking lot? The struggle is real, people.
There’s plenty of twists to the story, a couple of dead ends, and a reasonably satisfying ending (as these things go). A cast of characters has been introduced, and there’s obvious room for a series.
Know what it reminded me of? Once upon a time, there was a golden age of television where it seems like everything was a detective show. Magnum P.I., Murder She Wrote, Matlock, Remington Steele, Hart to Hart, Miami Vice, Charlie’s Angels, Simon and Simon … This book reminded me a great deal of those. Imagine a Charlie’s Angels episode where one of the girls has to go undercover in a production of Macbeth. You get a very brief glimpse at the cast of characters, she runs around trying to uncover clues even though everybody tells her not to (because she can’t blow her cover), and all the while she still has to remember her lines and go perform when her cue comes. Then when their allotted hour of tv time is up the bad guy is revealed, the day is saved, and everything wraps up nicely until next week.
That’s not a bad thing. There’s a reason why they made so many of those shows, and some of them did very well (Murder She Wrote went for 12 seasons!) But the strength of each of those shows was in the main character, and finding an audience that connected with that character. Just because I’m not the audience for Ivy Meadows doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
P.S. Just one more thing before I go? We all know that Shakespeare was a master of the dirty double entendre, whether Hamlet’s putting his head in Ophelia’s lap or Mercutio’s got his hands upon the very prick of noon. I’ve got people regularly telling me that Shakespeare itself is a euphemism for something (as is “will”, come to think of it). The author chose to have one of her characters named … are you ready for this? Detective Pinkstaff. Yikes. Every time that character was in the scene I couldn’t take him seriously, not because he was a bad character, but because he was a walking phallic joke. At least she didn’t make him the love interest.
With Easter approaching, what do you say we go hunting for eggs in Shakespeare’s work? I’m not going to list them all here (since it’s easy to hunt them down with a search engine where’s the fun in that?) but I’ll hit the most famous ones. Add more in the comments!
“Give me an egg, nuncle, and I’ll give thee two crowns.”
Why, after I have cut the egg i’ th’ middle and eat up the
meat, the two crowns of the egg.
When I first tried to read King Lear I couldn’t understand Fool at all. After many readings and watchings, I think the scenes with Lear, Fool and Kent are my favorite (even if I don’t always understand what he’s saying). He’s one of the few people (perhaps the only one?) who can say to the king, “Hey genius, how smart was it to split your kingdom down the middle and then give away both parts?”
Falstaff
Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of
sack finely.
Bardolph
With eggs, sir?
Falstaff
Simple of itself; I’ll no pullet-sperm in my brewage.
Ok Falstaff, eww. How am I supposed to look at my kids’ Easter eggs the same way ever again? (Courtesy Merry Wives of Windsor, for those that don’t remember this charming lesson in animal husbandry showing up in the Henry plays.) I actually googled this to see if I was missing something and saw it turn up in a list entitled “Why Aren’t These Shakespeare Quotes Famous Too?”
What, you egg! [Stabbing him]
Young fry of treachery!
Students love this quote, I regularly see it posted when people reading Macbeth for the first time stumble across it. There are web pages and apps and even books dedicated to Shakespearean Insults, but calling somebody an egg just has a special sort of “What did he just call me?” flare to it.
My favorite part is the second line, where he calls him a young fry of treachery. You know why, don’t you?
Because now he’s a fried egg.
On that note, I’m out of here before anybody gets the pitchforks. What other egg references have you found?
Can I still call my kids geeklets now that they’re all teenagers?
So I’ve got driving duty this weekend for my daughter’s volleyball practice. Scene : A Honda Pilot with four 16yr old girls jammed into it. They are discussing the recent walkout, how it went with various teachers, etc… and one of them clearly says “…we were listening to Macbeth and we just left.”
Fast forward through the fifteen or twenty minute ride, waiting for a break in their conversation, but it never comes. Instead there is a steady discussion about parties, school events, math homework (oh, sure, you bring your math homework with you in the car ride but not your Shakespeare?) and general kinds of things teenage girls discuss, peppered with too many “likes” for my liking.
But then, when we’re about a minute from practice, there’s a lull. I can tell they’ve run out of things to say because one of them is singing along to the music on the radio.
“Did one of you say you walked out of Macbeth?” I ask. I look in the rearview mirror. Three sets of eyes are staring back at me as if to say, “Wait, is the adult talking to us? Who ordered this Uber? Two stars.”
My daughter in the front seat, shrinking rapidly, says, “None of them know about your obsession with Shakespeare.”
“I’ve run a Shakespeare website for ten years,” I continue. Now they do. “And if you thought I was going to let that pass by unnoticed you’re sadly mistaken. Which production were you listening to? Do you remember?”
She did not. I did not expect her to, but that’s ok. I would have been annoyed with myself if I hadn’t mentioned it. You never know. Could have spurred a whole conversation. She might actually *like* the class. If not, I could maybe even convince them that it’s more interesting than their teacher is making it sound. She said they were reading along as they listened to the play. Not a horrible technique, but man, GET UP AND READ IT YOURSELVES.
Maybe if the topic came up faster we could have found more to talk about, or maybe I’m just overly optimistic when it comes to my favorite subject. In reality we got to practice and they jumped out of the car, although they did at least wait for it to stop.
I have no idea who was more embarrassed, the girl I tried to talk to, or my daughter. Eh, they’ll live.
