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Esteban del Mal's Reviews > Macbeth
Macbeth (Bantam Classics)
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Esteban del Mal's review
bookshelves: my-books-can-beat-up-your-books, fiction, play
Sep 21, 2010
bookshelves: my-books-can-beat-up-your-books, fiction, play
Read 2 times. Last read September 21, 2010 to September 26, 2010.
Location: Central California coast. A beach.
ESTEBAN: [aside] Methinks that the cover art for this Bantam Classic edition makes Macbeth and Lady Macbeth looketh much alike.
Forsooth, gender is all over the place in this play: the bearded sisters are hermaphroditical, Macduff is some kind of übermensch because he has avoided the taint (heh) of natural birth. Is Macbeth some kind of frustrated homosexual? If so, it serves those gay bashing medieval Scottish bastards right! Burn it all down, Macbeth!
[Enter the Ghost of Banquo]
Lo! What have I to do with your untimely demise, poor Banquo?
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: Am I on to something with this gender soliloquy? I was actually going to say that Macbeth is some kind of special weenie. He falls short of the ultimate villainy, but then Lady Macbeth shows up and gives him a talking-to and he kills somebody. Maybe he's just whipped? Or maybe Shakespeare is some kind of misogynist?
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: Then again, maybe he hates Scotland and is pandering to his English audience. You know -- those kilted yokels to the north need the loving guidance of enlightened Hobbesian governance. They're butchering each other left and right and the only ones with a decent head on their shoulders come a-begging at the English Court.
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: You know, for a Shakespearean character, you don't say much.
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: Well. On a more personal note, let me just say that reading Shakespeare is even more beautiful after an afternoon of grading papers for a basic writing class�
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: Because his tragedies are a gorefest, man! Everybody dies! That's where I was going with that. See, I was saying Shakespeare is beautiful BECAUSE he scratches my itch to off everybody in the class! ZING!
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: Nevermind. Hey, you might be able to answer this -- is there such a thing as Fate? After reading Macbeth, I think it's really more of a question of Nature. I mean, lookit, the guy only needed a little push. Then he rationalizes all over the place, naively trusting his reason. How can a man not be born of a woman? How can a forest attack his castle? Of course, I'm a hopeless modern and see things in this sort of rational/irrational duality.
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: And with all the gender stuff going on, we see the irrational bleeding into the rational! There's all this layered stuff going on here! It's amazing!
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: You're really just here to make me feel shitty for all the people I've screwed over in my life, aren’t you?
BANQUO: Yup.
Flourish. Exeunt omnes.
***
And now,
ESTEBAN: [aside] Methinks that the cover art for this Bantam Classic edition makes Macbeth and Lady Macbeth looketh much alike.
Forsooth, gender is all over the place in this play: the bearded sisters are hermaphroditical, Macduff is some kind of übermensch because he has avoided the taint (heh) of natural birth. Is Macbeth some kind of frustrated homosexual? If so, it serves those gay bashing medieval Scottish bastards right! Burn it all down, Macbeth!
[Enter the Ghost of Banquo]
Lo! What have I to do with your untimely demise, poor Banquo?
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: Am I on to something with this gender soliloquy? I was actually going to say that Macbeth is some kind of special weenie. He falls short of the ultimate villainy, but then Lady Macbeth shows up and gives him a talking-to and he kills somebody. Maybe he's just whipped? Or maybe Shakespeare is some kind of misogynist?
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: Then again, maybe he hates Scotland and is pandering to his English audience. You know -- those kilted yokels to the north need the loving guidance of enlightened Hobbesian governance. They're butchering each other left and right and the only ones with a decent head on their shoulders come a-begging at the English Court.
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: You know, for a Shakespearean character, you don't say much.
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: Well. On a more personal note, let me just say that reading Shakespeare is even more beautiful after an afternoon of grading papers for a basic writing class�
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: Because his tragedies are a gorefest, man! Everybody dies! That's where I was going with that. See, I was saying Shakespeare is beautiful BECAUSE he scratches my itch to off everybody in the class! ZING!
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: Nevermind. Hey, you might be able to answer this -- is there such a thing as Fate? After reading Macbeth, I think it's really more of a question of Nature. I mean, lookit, the guy only needed a little push. Then he rationalizes all over the place, naively trusting his reason. How can a man not be born of a woman? How can a forest attack his castle? Of course, I'm a hopeless modern and see things in this sort of rational/irrational duality.
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: And with all the gender stuff going on, we see the irrational bleeding into the rational! There's all this layered stuff going on here! It's amazing!
µþ´¡±·²Ï±«°¿:â€�
ESTEBAN: You're really just here to make me feel shitty for all the people I've screwed over in my life, aren’t you?
BANQUO: Yup.
Flourish. Exeunt omnes.
***
And now,
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Esteban
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rated it 5 stars
Sep 22, 2010 09:27AM
I'm looking forward to the re-read. It was my first Shakespeare (because Romeo and Juliet doesn't count).
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I should qualify my previous: it doesn't count for me. Romeo and Juliet is so ingrained in our cultural ethos that I was already familiar with it before I ever read it. Macbeth was the first play of Shakespeare's I read that I was unfamiliar with (and I'm sentimental about it -- my high school English teacher made us remember the 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow' soliloquy, which gave me a lot of punk street cred).
I can dig it. But when I read R & J in 9th grade, I was more concerned with lodging pencils into ceiling tiles and hitting other kids with spitwads; when I read Macbeth in the 11th grade, I was starting to tune-in. Call it bias.
You people are all so objective around here...geesh!
Peggy Lee! Awesome. Have I told you about my favorite movie, ?For another time, perhaps.
Fun review. To make R&J even more fun, . But I agree--in general, Will doesn't need any help amping up the bloody. Titus is still the play that just boggles my mind, imagining the staging of all that mayhem.
Yeah, I'm with Mike on Peggy Lee (twss?). I was just about to type "Fun review" but see that Mike also beat me to that as well. Basically, Mike's comment x 2 = my comment.
For a sec I thought After Hours was in reference to this flick:
Ha! I like it. I had to memorize chunks of this in high school, and I can still remember most of the "unsex me here" soliloquy by Lady M. You're totally right: there is a lot of gender weirdness here.
Has anyone seen Scotland, PA? Freaking brilliant.
Has anyone seen Scotland, PA? Freaking brilliant.
Ceridwen wrote: "Has anyone seen Scotland, PA? Freaking brilliant."Yes. Agreed.
Thanks ladies and gents!Mike: "From the Playwright of The Merchant of Venice and the Director of The Toxic Avenger." There's nothing Motorhead can't spruce-up!
I've seen neither Afterhours nor Scotland, PA, but I'm adding the latter to the Netlflix queue and researching the former.
And Jon, it might be set in Bakersfield one of these days, maybe tomorrow, and/or tomorrow, and/or tomorrow.
"I've seen neither Afterhours nor Scotland, PA, but I'm adding the latter to the Netlflix queue and researching the former."And what, you're just gonna ignore the greatest flick ever co-starring Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton? I'm hurt, man.
MyFleshSingsOut wrote: "And what, you're just gonna ignore the greatest flick ever co-starring Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton? I'm hurt, man."I've seen that one. I like it when they flip-off the cops through the tinted window. Although, with one character a charismatic and the other one having a "head for numbers," I hadn't realized Scorsese re-made it:
