Macbeth Staging the character of Macbeth In theatre

Macbeth Staging the ‘character’ of Macbeth

• In theatre, we attend to the “paradox” of stage acting, to the contradiction between the actor’s ‘playing’ and what their role playing or acting represents. • Critic W. B. Worthen assigns this the name ‘double perspective. ’ This is where the audience’s attention is drawn to the actor’s person and the fictive or the dramatic role he engages and represents. Theatre and paradox

How does Shakespeare challenge our sense of what is real and imagined?

• The play opens with conflict, a sense of foreboding and ‘other. ’ All of these dramatic elements plunge the audience into a confused state. What is confusing and disorienting about Act Scene (i)? • The witches speech is paradoxical and contradictory; • When the hurly-burly’s done/ When the battle’s lost, and won • Fair is foul, and foul is fair • Thunder and lightening • What the audience is seeing…. the witches • What the audience is hearing …. strange rhymes and the name Macbeth. Theatre and Macbeth

• Beyond the sense of other and foreboding found in scene (i) most of Act 1 is taken up with representations of conflict and contradiction: • Scotland is at war with Norway • The Sergeants report of Macbeth on the battle field confronts the audience with the most bloody of conflicts Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’chaps And fixed his head upon our battlements • The royal court is threatened by the traitor - the conflict of interest from the Thane of Cawdor The opening – ruptures and conflict

The Audience is repeatedly faced with the unnatural on stage. A ‘triple perspective’? ? After a) the actor’s act of playing b) his dramatic (fictive) character and now c) rejection of audience’s natural world. Disorder and chaos are represented through… • Characters – the witches, Lady Macbeth and rejection of natural order (ie her female state “unsex me here”) • Events – regicide – against God’s will ‘the divine right of Kings” • Paradox – ‘fair is foul, ’ ‘lost and won’ and ‘lesser than Macbeth but greater’ • Disjointed syntax – witches non-iambic pentameter rhythms – are irregular. Macbeth’s soliloquy 1: 7 ‘if it were done’ Macbeth - disorder

How does clothing imagery draw the audience’s attention to theatre and acting? • Shakespeare uses this clever device to point to acting, roles and appearances. Find Quotes. • Seen with the witches as well: …you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret Borrowed robes

• Shakespeare uses verbal images to guide our critical interpretations of the play. Find as many of these verbal images as you can in Act 1. • Write a few sentences about what you think Shakespeare is drawing our attention to? Verbal Images in Act 1

• • After the witches meeting with Macbeth the audience starts to see the way his character begins to dramatise the ‘conflict’ and ‘paradox’. The audience becomes increasingly aware of his dual identity. On one hand his Royal duty is evident through his efforts in battle and speech to Duncan. The asides, however, draw the audience’s attention to the rising conflict in the play and his ambition for power. My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is, But what is not. • • The asides and soliloquies make the audience increasingly aware of an interior world for Macbeth. This is where stagecraft and theatricality or form reflect purpose. Shakespeare is trying to position the audience to “see” with Macbeth? What do we see when we are positioned in such a way? How do we feel? Macbeth - conflict

Why do you Shakespeare challenge us to think about ‘acting’ in this play?