Macbeth Essays Example

Lady Macbeth is an interesting character, no matter how she is staged, or how she is read. The changes in the way she reacts – going from a seemingly confident woman who herself urges her husband to shore up his courage in the face of what he has to do, to someone who wavers more and more, until finally she kills herself – are a challenge to stage in a realistic manner.
The weird sisters are said to be the three fates which appear in Greek and Roman mythology, though how much they are so is up for debate. There is no doubt that the weird sisters are supernatural in nature, though to what degree is open to interpretation. Even if the supernatural aspect of the sisters is not played up in a production, it is clear that they have an immediate and ongoing effect on Macbeth. Indeed, it could be said that they are the catalyst for the entire play, given that they tell Macbeth their prophecies in the first act, thereby setting off the story. In a way, they function as emotion versus reason, where Macbeth is reason and the sisters are emotion – they keep Macbeth from truly thinking by their very existence, as is shown by his consulting of them again later in the play. When putting on my own production of Macbeth, I would ensure that the supernatural nature of the sisters was made clear to the audience, though I would not go so far as Gold has in pursuit of this goal. Instead of having them appear normal, yet act in a supernatural manner (their disappearances and reappearances of the movie are part of what I mean), I think I would focus on having them (and their surroundings) look and act as I believe the Fates would – the inclusion of the scenes involving Hecate would be a welcome addition as well, since it would solidify the sisters’ standing.
Different productions of Macbeth take liberties with the initial opening sequence of the film – Gold has his production set during the Great War, for example – but my own interpretation of the situation (and the one which I will use in my own production) which precedes the play is that Duncan and his men are in the process of quelling a rebellion in the West of Scotland, with the Captain’s mention of lands to the West apparently standing in for Ireland and the Hebrides.
The inciting incident is, of course, the meeting with the Weird Sisters, and in my opinion it most definitely alters Macbeth’s path, as I would attempt to show through the direction used in my own stage work. We have a glimpse of his brutality in the narrative of the Captain at the beginning of the play, and we might also get the sense that he is quite ambitious, but it seems unlikely that he would have made the moves he did had the sisters not put the idea into his head initially. On that note, it is interesting to see that Macbeth’s reason continues to war with his emotions throughout the play; first immediately after he has seen the sisters when he is initially struck by the predictions, second when Duncan has arrived at his home, and is showing him great honour, and for a third time when he has just committed murder. I would like to find a way to draw attention to these three speeches, maybe even linking them in some way through the use of blocking, or costuming. The climax of the play is when the predictions of the sisters come true again, and Birnam wood comes to Dunsinane Hill, to fight Macbeth for the throne of Scotland. However, the play is truly resolved once Macbeth fights Macduff, and is defeated by him.
The historical figure which most reminds me of Macbeth is Zhu Wen, a Chinese general who led a coup against the current emperor so he could himself be named emperor. The resemblance between how they went about assuming the throne is absolutely striking.
Gold has set his production of Macbeth during the Great War, and this works extremely well, particularly when it comes to the sets that are used. They do give a feeling of being hemmed in, which works well when characters are going through moral quandaries. However, I would set the play in the time it seems to be set – sometime during the 1400s, if Macbeth and Banquo appeared in a chronicle written some time later. My main reason for doing so would be because then I could emphasize the moral dilemma that Macbeths struggles with, by bringing in the aspect of murder under trust which existed at that time.
The scenes with Banquo as a ghost is a difficult one to stage – to use Gold as an example again, Banquo appears and disappears throughout the scene, leading audiences to never be entirely sure whether or not he is there, or Macbeth is simply hallucinating. In keeping with the murder under trust theme, it would make more sense for Banquo to be an invisible presence, to illustrate the guilt which Macbeth was feeling for committing such hideous crimes. Additionally, by showing a ghost scene with (from the perspective of the audience) no ghost, we are clarifying that the play is not being shown from Macbeth’s perspective. This is the way I would handle the scenes with the Ghost – have the actor playing Macbeth acting against thin air might be a challenge for the actor, but it will more adequately get across to the audience the sanity slippage which Macbeth is undergoing.