Foul is Fair

Well, I said that I wouldn't be able to post again until after my draft was due, but then I first made a lot of progress on that, and second realized that I cannot work constantly at one thing for two weeks, so I have slunk back to this blog, rather like Macbeth seeking out the witches on the heath for a second interview.

Also, I know that I won't be able to remember all my impressions if I put off writing about it until well after I have finished the reading and discussion.

Today was the second day of lecture devoted to the Scottish play, and the professor took us through a whirlwind tour of the political context in which it was written and first played in 1606, a time when plays about regicide and tyranicide and particularly powerful political significance. I had not realized how closely the November 5th plot (as in Guy Fawkes) fell to the play's premier. Not to mention the fact of a new Scottish king on the English throne who was trying to bring the kingdoms of England and Scotland into closer political alignment. Professor Shapiro then went on to say that one of the great ambiguities of the play, for him, was whether to read it as a political tragedy or a psychological one.

I was interested to hear that he thinks it is one of the most difficult of the plays (although I am beginning to think that he says that about all of them...) He professed horror at the numbers of high schools that make it assigned reading. I do think it's a hard play, but I'm afraid I have a high enough opinion of my high school English teacher (and of my high school self) to think that it was not a waste for me to read it then. It certainly meant that I retained a lot more when I read it this time. I had forgotten how creeeeepy it is, though. It should be a standard Halloween work, like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

One of the most difficult things, I think, about this play is the fact that you cannot properly understand your relationship, as the reader or spectator, to Macbeth. He is a villain as much as Iago was (maybe more so, since Iago didn't kill children), but he makes you see inside his soul in a way that you can't with Iago. You want to sympathize with him. You can see the dagger with its handle towards his hand just as he can. You want to see him as a victim of supernatural fate. Yet you also want to condemn him. What he does is terrible, and it merits the dark portents that riddle the play. It is this simultaneous attraction and repulsion that was the the hardest part about my reading of the play, on this go round.

Next we have Timon of Athens, about which the professor warned us, "This won't be your favorite. Just hold your breathe and push through it." Inhaling now...