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Macbeth by William Shakespeare by Rodger Burnich © 1995
"Macbeth, Macbeth, you bore me to death." My wife is fond of saying that every time I begin the study of the "Scottish Play." I don't know why. The play has everything a modern audience could wish for: witches, treachery, murder, and enough blood to satisfy the most ghoulish of audiences. The themes are certainly current--faithlessness, deception, ambition--and they still play well in current film and books. So it must be the language that turns people off. To try and help the lost and confused I hope this approach makes the play more accessible.
ACT I, scene i
Three witches plan to meet with Macbeth upon a heath (maybe Macbeth should be pronounced Macbeeth to rhyme with heath?). They announce the major theme of the play: appearances are deceiving. That's the foul is fair stuff. You know, what's good will be bad, what's bad will be good. This will be repeated until you are sick of it. The scene ends with Macbeth riding off to ready his castle (and wife) to greet the king who has decided to spend the night in Macbeth's charming home. This is sarcasm.
For the other scenes go to Rodger Burnich © 1995
scene vi
Short scene. Duncan comments on how nice and peaceful Macbeth's castle is. More irony as we know what's going on. And then butter melts in Lady M's mouth (sort of like m and m's) as she "welcomes" Duncan to her home. Burr!
scene vii
Long first act isn't it? Now Macbeth is having some second thoughts. Maybe it's not good to kill a king who has honored him, who is a cousin, who is a guest in his house, and who has been a good king. Besides, if he kills Duncan doesn't that sort of set a pattern for others to follow: "we but teach / Bloody instructions, which being taught, return / To plague th' inventor." Some strong stuff here, enough to convince Macbeth that he shouldn't go along with his wife.
Lady M, however, isn't pleased with this turn around. What sort of a coward has she married, one who is brave only when drunk perhaps. She knows how to make a vow. She says she knows how pleasant it is to nurse a child but "while it was smiling in my face, / Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this." No mother of the year candidate here. (Sounds like a Mommy, Dearest book in the making) And she has a plan. Get the guards drunk, kill the king, and smear the guards with blood (and guilt).
Macbeth is impressed. Probably more afraid of his wife than anything. Tells her she's so tough that she should have sons only. (Can you imagine how scary her daughters might be if she had them?) He agrees that the king will die and "False face must hide what the false heart doth know." See how cleverly Shakespeare gets Macbeth's last line to echo not only the first words he spoke in the play but reinforce the theme of appearances being deceptive. Don't you wish you could write like that? Aren't you glad ACT I is over? Only four more to go.
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