Macbeth is, for many teachers, the gateway point for attempting to get students to love Shakespeare. Many schools teach it in Stage 5 English as an introductory point for students because of its accessibility and relative brevity. It has witches in it, lots of medieval violence, and that weird stuff about Lady Macbeth's milk ducts turning into bile. How could that not be interesting? It also happens to be one of Shakespeare's major Tragedy plays, and it works well as an access point for this genre if you're a teacher preparing students for Advanced English later in their schooling. Whether it's Hamlet, Othello, or King Lear, all of these plays make use of the Ancient Greek dramatic concept of hamartia (a fatal flaw that brings down a heroic character) and this is something that can be introduced with much discussion when teaching Macbeth.
This year is my fifth time teaching Macbeth to Year 10. I've taught it to a wide variety of classes - from the high achieving to those who would rather see the play sacrificed to Hecate herself, and each time I've found the biggest challenge to be the language. Even the most literate and classically-minded student will struggle with decoding a lot of Shakespeare's highly stylised use of blank verse. This has often left me in a bit of a quandary; do I focus on Shakespeare's language and finding ways for students to come to a better understanding of the way he wrote? Or do I focus on Shakespeare's sophisticated use of plotting, characterisation, and concepts to create timeless works of universal worth?
Sometimes these two things aren't always compatible, especially when there's also Johnny McRandom, age 15, smearing pen ink all over his table, asking to go to the bathroom for the third time in the space of an hour, and asking me repeatedly which football team I go for while I try to teach the class about the wonder of iambic pentameter.
In the past I've used No Fear's version of Macbeth with students but I haven't always found a lot of success with the No Fear editions. So this year I decided instead to create a fresh translation of the text that could be used with my class. Reasons for this are as follows:
- No Fear makes use of two columns for each page - showing the original text side-by-side with the modern translation. Some students tend to find this both distracting and confusing.
- I wanted the dialogue to be a little bit more naturalistic and less stilted. I don't think I necessarily succeeded at this in the earlier scenes but I felt like I got into the swing of it a bit more as the play went on.
- Shakespeare's plays are notoriously light on stage direction when compared to their modern counterparts - I wanted to layer an interpretation of the characters' actions into the text so that students could visualise the energy of the play a little bit more.
- I found that, by working through the original text and translating it piece by piece, I also personally arrived at a much better understanding of the play.
The last reason given here is driven more by self-interest than the others. Just because I'd taught Macbeth several times that didn't mean that I'd really read it properly that many times. Sometimes I would just work through a couple of key scenes with particular classes and then give them plot summaries - but I found that this was becoming a carbon-copy version of understanding the play. I knew the essence of it, but I couldn't always answer with the complete confidence why certain characters did what they did. By reading through the entire play really carefully, and having to consider how I would translate each and every line for an audience made up of 15-year-olds, I was able to arrive at a whole new sense of clarity in regards to the text.
For instance, here are some things I realised for the first time (no judgement please!)
- Ross and Macduff are cousins.
- There's an 'unseen' scene between Act 1, Scene 6 and Act 1, Scene 7 where Macbeth entertains King Duncan at his dinner table.
- I was finally able to pinpoint the exact parts of the play that obliquely refer to Lady Macbeth having once had a child.
- The 'bell' that Macbeth refers to at the end of his soliloquy in Act 2, Scene 1 is an actual bell that Lady Macbeth rings off-stage to signify that the poisoned drinks are ready for the servants.
- There are several references to owls throughout the play - this motif is symbolic of the fact that this bird of prey hunts under cover of night and, therefore, is somewhat representative of Macbeth's duplicity and subterfuge.
- There is a rivalry between Macbeth and Macduff long before Macduff actually suspects Macbeth of murdering the King. You can see this in Act 2, Scene 3 when Macduff and Macbeth both compete to be the one to wake the King up. Yes, Macbeth is hoping to control the flow of events here as he has just murdered Duncan, but Macduff is unaware of that at this point and is quite insistent on being the first person the King sees in the morning, suggesting that Macduff is not willing to defer to Macbeth in any situation.
- Macbeth starts using the collective pronoun 'we' in Act 3, Scene 1. This royal pronoun is used to expressed the monarch's collective grouping with God, and demonstrates a subtle shift in how Macbeth presents himself after assuming the throne.
- The 'Murderers' that Macbeth sets onto Banquo aren't actually hired killers but are apparently just really angry peasants. Macbeth has somehow convinced them that Banquo is responsible for every piece of bad luck in their lives (we aren't actually told how Banquo is supposed to have done this, Macbeth just tells the peasants this and they buy it almost immediately).
- During the banquet scene, Lady Macbeth tells the other guests that Macbeth suffers from seizures (to cover up for his seeing Banquo's ghost). What isn't clear here is whether Macbeth truly did suffer seizures at some point prior to the narrative of the play or whether Lady Macbeth has made this up on the spot.
- Also in the banquet scene, Macbeth makes a reference to nature moving the trees in order to enact revenge on the guilty (foreshadowing the apparition's premonition about Birnam Wood in Act 4).
- Hecate, the evil spirit that rules over the witches, actually seems to think that Macbeth isn't a good target for the witches. Is this because he is unsuited to the demands of evil? She also mentions Macbeth's destiny, which implies that he was always meant to become King - perhaps the witches haven't actually manipulated him into this position as much as we might think?
- When Macbeth threatens the witches in Act 4, Scene 1, he says that he is willing to destroy churches in order to get more information - a symbolic threat that indicates the full extent of his tyranny and his new alignment with evil.
- The witches refer to the apparitions as their 'masters' and reprimand Macbeth for talking directly to them. Previously I had believed these apparitions to be a conjuring trick, but now I see them more as spirits that the witches are servants to.
- The King of England, Edward, is described but not seen in Act 4, Scene 3. He provides a point of contrast with Macbeth in that he is a Christian and good King, and has inherited the power to heal people through his family line - illustrating the idea that God works His power through official royal lines of succession such as Edward's (rather than those who have established themselves as King through unholy means, such as Macbeth). Another interesting aspect of Edward is that he is said to have the power of seeing into the future - like the witches!
- The whole bit with Macbeth killing Young Siward makes a bit more sense after reading the part where the older Siward, who presides over Northumberland (the land between Scotland and England), is introduced. Siward-the-elder is said to control a large army populated by teenage boys who will prove themselves in the battle to come. This harkens to the values of the time in which violence is seen as the test of true manhood. Compare old Siward's introductory scene here with his final scene in the play, where he hears that his son died fighting Macbeth and is quite cheerful about the death provided that his son died with battle wounds in the front of his body (rather than the back). There is also a line prior to this where the older Siward remarks that you can't win a battle without a few losses (a fine example of dramatic irony as the audience is already aware here that his son has died, even though old Siward is yet to be informed).
Anyway, here's the play itself: the play's the thing.
