Macbeth: A New Translation

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.

The Lost Boys: A Study Guide

Kylo Ren in his teenage days...

The Lost Boys is a perfect companion to Dracula for use in the Preliminary English Extension 1 Text, Culture and Value module, in that it both parallels and offers alternatives to Bram Stoker's seminal text. Below is a study guide resource that can be used to support teaching The Lost Boys.

The first section of the guide provides a Cast of Characters that will assist students in establishing who's who in the film. There are essentially 9 characters of note (10 if you want to count the rest of David's gang as a single character).

• Michael: The protagonist.
• Sam: The deuteragonist (secondary protagonist) and Michael's younger brother.
• Lucy: Their mother. Note: her name has deliberately been borrowed from Dracula.
• Star: Michael's love interest.
• David: The antagonist and leader of the 'Lost Boys' gang.
• Grandpa: Lucy's father.
• Edgar and Alan Frog: Supporting characters; they are the film's equivalent of Dracula's 'Van Helsing' character.
• Max: Lucy's love interest and quite a significant character in the film's climactic scenes.
• The Lost Boys: David's gang of vampires.

Also featured in the film but not mentioned in the document are:

• Laddie: A boy vampire and companion to Star.
• The Surf Nazis: A local (non-vampire) gang that the Lost Boys feud with throughout the film.
• Nanook: Sam and Michael's dog.
• Thorn: Max's dog. 

The rest of the study guide looks at the film by providing a series of sample shots with accompanying analysis. I've arbitrarily broken the film into 8 sections (a prologue and seven 'chapters') to help students think of the plot elements in regards to the narrative. The analysis is unpacked in the following fashion:

• Example - a shot that can be analysed in reference to the module.
• Description, Techniques - describing what is happening in the shot and what techniques have bee used to communicate ideas to the audience.
• Context, Values - subsequent analysis linked to the film's context both in terms of the vampire myth (Dracula) and its own time/place. In addition, where possible, the film's communication of key values is identified as well.

Example 1

Description, Techniques: Camera pans up as David walks out of the mist between disaffected teenagers riding the merry-go-round. Note his scruffiness, swaggering body language, and the cigarette behind the ear.

Context, Values: David and the other Lost Boys move between the static horses on the merry-go-round, which establishes how they don't quite fit in with other teenagers. David stops at a girlfriend of another local hoodlum and caresses her, echoing the mesmeric effect that Count Dracula and the Weird Sisters have on characters in Dracula. This sequence (and his costume) also demonstrates that David is not bound by social conventions attached to other people.

Example 2

Description, Techniques: Michael struggles to wake up in the morning and now needs sunglasses to protect his eyes against the sunlight. To an outsider he seems hungover, and the idea of teenage surliness in the morning becomes an allegory for his transformation into a vampire.

Context, Values: Note that Michael now has his ear pierced - symbolising his rebellion against adult-enforced gender norms. Sam asks Michael, "Are you freebasing?", a reference to doing cocaine and an echo of the words that many anxious parents ask sullen teenage boys exhibiting drastic changes in behaviour. In this case, as with previous examples, Michael's anti-social behaviour is in reality a result of vampirism. This is exemplified further when Michael is rude to his grandfather.

Resource: the full Study Guide can be found here.

This Looper-created video above is also helpful for providing some analysis of the film's context and how this shaped its representation of the era's values. Not all of the video will be completely relevant but students may still find it of interest. 

That Bloodsucka Blackfella Dance!: A Study Guide for Chapters 1-3

I'll preface this post by saying that I think, without a doubt, that this might be the most obscure resource I've ever made and shared on this blog. 

The attached resources concern That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! by D. Bruno Starrs, a vampire text recommended by NSW English teacher Bernadette Therese (see here for a Youtube channel, and here for a Twitter account). The relevance of the text pertains to the Year 11 Extension English 1 module Texts, Culture and Value as a reiteration of Dracula's vampire myth that manages to parallel and challenge Stoker's narrative. Starrs is an academic writer of Aboriginal and European background, and he offers a contemporary Indigenous take on the vampire mythos. His irreverent novel That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! can be found in the usual places - Amazon, Bookdepository, etc. - and tracks the journey of complex gym junkie and would-be academic Sterling de Bortoli from the streets of Melbourne to the sweltering marketplaces of Morocco. The resources below concern the Prologue and first three chapters (this extract is all I covered with my class, hopefully leaving enough time to cover other texts in comparison to Dracula).

Resource 1

Here is a study guide. The analysis is broken into four columns: Example > Technique and Analysis > Cultural Value > Maintained or Changed?  

• Example: Quote or textual example that demonstrates the way the text reflects its context.
• Technique and Analysis: Some analysis of the example to show the way that Starrs has used language to construct his discussion of theme, cultural value, etc.
• Cultural Value: In what way does the example reflect the values of Starrs' context?
• Maintained or Changed?: How does it compare to the way Dracula deals with the same (or a comparable) contextual value?

Resource 2

Here is a comparison table. Students use their textual knowledge (plus the study guide) to write down their own observations of how That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! compares to Dracula. The table breaks student analysis into six themes that could be broadly linked to both texts, and would allow for the construction of six separate thesis statements based around said themes. These themes are:

• Non-White ethnic groups: I'm loath to characterise Aboriginality as one and the same as the 'foreign other' discussed in Dracula but, then again, that's kind of the point. These two texts deal with non-Anglo cultural groups in very different ways and the way these authors represent these groups can be used as a jumping off point for discussion of what mainstream Western society classifies as 'the other'.  
• The Canon: As a 'canon' text, Dracula commands a certain kind of power, and Starrs' novel deals directly with this through its direct referencing of Stoker's novel.
• Religion: This relates directly to the way That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! deals with Catholicism, as well as Dracula's integration of the Catholic Church into its narrative as the antithesis of vampirism.
• The Spiritual / Supernatural World: Compare Dracula's use of the supernatural through its depiction of superstition and vampiric lore, and Starrs' utilisation of the Dreaming to explore the Indigenous spirit world.
• Science: Stoker positions science as a reflection of the Victorian era's increasing trust in rationalism (note Dr Seward's use of the phonograph, and the blood transfusion technology Van Helsing uses to fight against Dracula's 'infecting' of Lucy and Mina). The theme of science is less obvious in That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! but still appears in figurative form as a motif that Starrs' frequently revisits to describe the world around his protagonist (note the use of terms like 'micro-organisms' to describe the Arabic plane passengers he encounters).

One more note before I go - watch out for the very last page of Chapter 3, which could prompt some challenging conversations. I've included some appropriate analysis in the study guide to help steer the conversation towards relevance.