Fantasies Collide, Volume 2 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Author:Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WMG Publishing
The Scottish Play
408 Years Agoâ¦as I usually picture it from my book-lined office in one of those pseudo-Gothic buildings at Yale. And no, Iâm not telling you which one. Iâm just sharing the way I think of these things when Iâm sitting at my antique desk, littered with books about The Theatre and The Theater, depending on the snob level and the side of the Pond the author lives on.
I am an Elizabethan scholar, among other things, and I know real magic too, and still, this vision comes in mixed clichés.
Just saying I know better, okay?
Soâ¦
408 Years Ago:
(Or maybe 421 or maybe even 418. I mean, really, how do you know when a man made a deal with the Devil. If, indeed, he did make a deal with the Devil. And not just the Devilâs helpers. Or his handmaidens, as the case may be. Anywayâ¦)
These three women are hanging out in their hovel in London. Because for some reason, witches canât afford more than a hovel, even though they have more magic than anyone else, which makes no sense to me and never has. Anyway, theyâre hanging out and some young playwright with the ear of the Queen shows up, believing they can give him magic powers. I mean, come on. Really?
But itâs my imagination, and itâs untamable, at least on this. Maybe because the images came into my head so young, before I knew about Elizabethan politics and Guy Fawkes and the Tower of London and beheadings andâ
Anyway:
Three women. Witches. Standing around a cauldron. There had to be a cauldron, because Shakespeare describes it later in the Scottish Play and everyone from Bugs Bunny to The Simpsons have parodied it. The women circle the cauldron and they give Shakespeare magic powers.
Or they donât give him any powers at all.
Iâm betting on donât, given what happens later.
He goes away with a sense of magic, the supernatural, and all of its dangers. He writes somewhat subversive plays about kings and abdications and strong women and hidden loves and even though he criticizes the monarchy, still the monarchy lets him perform.
Scholars believe the Scottish Playâs witches were added to flatter King James the First, Elizabethâs successor, who wrote a book on demonology, called, of all things Daemonology. But I know thereâs more to it than that. I know, because of family lore.
Because Iâm descended from those witches.
Because Iâm still carrying on their tradition.
I mess with the theater, but only in a good way.
Or so I would like to believe.
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