Macbeth and His Problems

Still from "Macbeth," directed by Justin Kurzel. Source: IMDB. If you’ve never seen a bad production of Macbeth, you’ve probably never seen a production of Macbeth. Famously cursed, the play has inspired perhaps the gravest superstition in the superstitious demimonde of Western theater: Every actor, director, stage manager, set designer, tech, and seamstress knows that one must never speak the name of Shakespeare’s Scottish play inside a theater. Partly this is derived from the story itself, brimful as it is with witchcraft, wickedness, and the violation of sacred bonds. Partly it is inspired by the misfortunes visited upon numerous historical productions. Those involved with various stagings across the centuries have suffered breaks, burns, falls, riots, and heart attacks. There have been a startling number of deaths, onstage and off, going back—as legend has it—to the boy playing Lady Macbeth in the very first production. And partly the superstition arises from the difficulties of the play’s script. Among playwrights, certain scripts are considered “actor-proof”—dialogical contraptions so tightly paced, dramatically propulsive, and self-evidently motivated that even a lackluster performance, direction, or design cannot snuff out the narrative power of the writing. The truly actor-proof play, like the truly unsinkable ship, may not exist, but if there is such a thing as a script that can’t help but succeed in production, the Scottish play might be its opposite. Should every element of a production come together just right, Macbeth can be electrifying. But if even one bit goes awry, the whole thing falls to pieces. What makes Macbeth so hard to stage well? Setting aside the challenges of producing any four-hundred-year-old play, there are several problems built into the script. First, it’s filled with magic. It opens on a coven of witches who speak in riddles and spells and in so doing set a semi-supernatural frame around all of the play’s events, which include Macbeth’s vision of a floating dagger, Lady Macbeth’s vision of blood that won’t wash out, the ghost of Banquo, and an elaborate sequence of prophetic symbols, spirits, and harbingers conjured for Macbeth’s edification in the witch’s lair. There is also the matter of the witches’ prophecies, delivered throughout the play, all of which come true, though often in ways that leave ambiguous their meanings. Precisely how the audience is meant to receive all of this magic is unclear. Some instances, such as Lady Macbeth’s vision, seem to be mere hallucination, while others, such as the procession of Banquo’s line of future kings, are presented as objectively perceptible manifestations meant to be accepted by both characters and audience. That no one but Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost and the “air-drawn dagger” might suggest that these are psychological rather than spiritual phenomena. The characters themselves disagree, however, about what counts as magic and whether any of it should be believed, which complicates the problem of the intended audience response. Too much ambiguity regarding diegetic onionskins might try the audience’s patience, especially when the production is tasked with the additional work of preserving the suspension of disbelief with regard to onstage special effects. The delicate orchestration of these interlocking variables in a theatrical production is possible, but only barely. The second major challenge for any production of Macbeth is the play’s tone. The script is among Shakespeare’s shortest, and the scope and complexity of the story give the audience little chance to digest all of the plot developments. The abruptness with which characters shiftfrom unshakeable loyalty to blackhearted villainy or from cynical realism to hallucinatory ecstasy can risk producing a comic effect in the midst of what might otherwise be a scene of terrible gravity. And when the characters display ambivalence about their choices, the wobbliness of their commitments can seem less tortured than incompetent. When Macbeth returns from Duncan’s murder to confess the crime to his wife, Lady Macbeth is appalled to find her absent-minded husband still in possession of the bloody daggers. The many references to drinking that appear between Duncan’s arrival at Inverness and the discovery of his body invite suspicion that the Macbeths might even have been drunk when they committed the murder. Much has been made of the Porter’s comic soliloquy, coming as it does in the midst of one of the play’s darkest moments, but that darkness has already been confused by a series of mishaps and half-measures on the part of the murderers. The script itself does not specify the proper tone with which to present such moments to the audience. The third and perhaps greatest problem presented by Macbeth is that of motivation. Within the play’s first few scenes, we are introduced to Macbeth by other characters who speak enthusiastically about his incomparable virtue, but we’ve scarcely met the man himself before he starts to contemplate the murder of his king and benefactor. While Macbeth is still in the company of the messengers who bring him news of Duncan’s gratitude, he is already agonizing over the prospect of dispatching his royal cousin: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is But what is not. He doesn’t bother considering any means by which he might become king other than killing Duncan. That the king might die some other way, that Malcolm might inherit the throne and die or be deposed himself, that another Scotsman might take up the former Thane of Cawdor’s treachery, or that the witches’ “shalt be king” might in fact mean anything other than snatching the crown from Duncan’s head: None of these possibilities cross Macbeth’s mind. The only future he imagines is a bloody one. For her part, Lady Macbeth seems to have been thinking of regicide before she even steps onstage. The first lines she speaks are from a letter sent by her husband, in which he tells her what the witches said but not where his mind went afterward. It doesn’t matter. All on her own, she concludes that her husband must kill Duncan and seize the throne. The only obstacle she can anticipate is Macbeth’s bothersome good character: Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature. It is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it . . . As a question of playwriting, this perfect alignment between husband and wife could almost be seen as overdetermination—a kind of moral coincidence. Even if one of the Macbeths were to think immediately of murder upon hearing that Macbeth might be king, the logic of narrative causality would seem to dictate that the other one should have to be convinced before proceeding to the act. Of course, Lady Macbeth does have to do some persuading, and, unlike her husband, she never falters in her resolve—at least where Duncan is concerned. But their dialogue in later scenes is not so much the working out of a gradual persuasion as it is a chronicle of second-guessing in the face of a decision that both of them had already come to separately: Macbeth I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none. Lady Macbeth What beast was’t then That made you break this enterprise to me? Indeed, Macbeth displays more fealty to Duncan when speaking with his wife than he does when contemplating the matter on his own. If one function of tragedy is to render the unspeakable understandable, then Macbeth leaves this work in the hands of the individual production. Having supplied a timeless subject, a gripping plot, a wealth of unforgettable figures and phrases, and hundreds of lines of breathtaking dialogue, Shakespeare chose not to furnish a motivation for his protagonist. Macbeth’s motive for killing Duncan is clearly to become king. But a motivation is a psychological force that makes the benefit seem worth the commission of the act. Without this, a character exposes himself to the audience’s disgust or—more fatally—disregard. If the tragedy is to remain a tragedy, Macbeth must retain the audience’s emotional investment, and for this, he needs—and yet he lacks—a credible motivation for the murder. Playmaking is a collaborative process. In his soulful defense of Macbeth—in contrast to his cerebral disparagement of Hamlet—T. S. Eliot reveals that his reckoning of the play’s effect on the audience takes into account only the operation of the words as read: “You will find that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated to you by a skillful accumulation of imagined sensory impressions.” While this may be true for a reader of the play, for someone taking in a live production, it’s more likely that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep will be communicated by a skilful accumulation of non-imagined sensory impressions. That is, regardless of the poetic images included in her speeches, the most striking impressions will be those of her actions and her appearance and the sound of her voice. And the fact that Shakespeare relied on productions of Macbeth to provide convincing choices for casting, blocking, set-dressing, atmosphere, tone, and even script adjustments is neither a sign of weakness nor evidence of authorial resignation. Macbeth might not be actor-proof, but one problem with an actor-proof script is that it doesn’t leave much room for the production to contribute to the final effect on the audience. Macbeth provides the recipe for a rich and brilliant night of theater, but unlike, say, Glengarry Glen Ross or The Importance of Being Earnest or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it requires the production to do more than break an egg and stir.