A Thousand Times More Fair by Kenji Yoshino

Author:Kenji Yoshino
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

The Natural World

Macbeth

Macbeth has a distinctive reputation not just among Shakespeare’s plays, but among all plays. As stage historian Richard Huggett notes: “There is one superstition so old, so all-consuming, so intimidating, that just about everyone in theater believes it, no matter how cynical, how materialistic, or hard boiled he is.” This is the superstition that Macbeth is cursed. A long stage history of deaths, injuries, technical malfunctions, and acting fiascoes has been adduced to support the curse’s existence. Actors avoid saying “Macbeth” or quoting lines from the play outside rehearsal or performance, referring to it as the “Scottish play” and its protagonists as “Mr. and Mrs. M.” They often refuse to wear a cloak or helmet if they learn it was used in a production of that play. In the days of traveling repertory companies, when props and scenery for productions were intermingled, the furniture, costumes, and settings for Macbeth were scrupulously quarantined.

Special purification rituals exist for those who slip. If an actor speaks the word “Macbeth,” or a line from the play, he or she must “go out of the dressing room, turn around three times, spit, knock on the door three times, and beg humbly for readmission.” Alternatively, the actor can quote one of two Shakespearean lines. The first is “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” (Hamlet, 1.4.39), which Hamlet utters to protect himself from his father’s ghost. The other is Lorenzo’s line from Merchant: “Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you!” (Merchant, 3.4.41). While less on point, it draws on Merchant’s general reputation as a lucky play.

Given this history, I was struck on rereading Macbeth by how oddly comforting the play is about the justice of the universe. The Macbeths’ undeniable evil, which trails like squid ink behind them, dissipates by the play’s end. The Macbeths die miserably, Duncan’s virginally pure son Malcolm takes the throne, and the bright side of the witches’ prophecy—that the virtuous Banquo’s issue will claim the crown—is imaginatively fulfilled in the watching King James I, for whom the play was written.

Most important, the evil in the play often seems to call “naturally” for its own correction. In act 1, Macbeth almost decides to spare Duncan because he fears “[b]loody instructions, which, being taught, return / To plague th’inventor” (1.7.9–10). He continues: “this even-handed Justice / Commends th’ingredience of our poison’d chalice / To our own lips” (1.7.10–12). Lady Macbeth talks him out of this belief, but stages its truth at the other end of the play. When the doctor watches the tormented, sleepwalking Lady Macbeth, he diagnoses: “Unnatural deeds / Do breed unnatural troubles” (5.1.68–69). If the play has a moral, this is it.

Merchant and Macbeth pair well not only because Merchant is deemed lucky and Macbeth is deemed unlucky, but also because Merchant is not as lucky, and Macbeth is not as unlucky, as each seems. Merchant is often designated a “problem comedy” because its happy ending is stained with troubling implications. Macbeth is the opposite—a “solution tragedy,” if you will.

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