TIE - Part 8

In Starbuck's lesson, we looked at Act 2, Scene 2 of Macbeth. This scene occurs just after Macbeth has murdered Duncan - after the infamous dagger aside - and shows how Lady Macbeth maintains control over her husband by planting bloody daggers on the king's guards. It should be noted that there is a variety of ways as to how each character can be played in the scene, and indeed, we all came up with different variations as to how to play the characters - we were asked to perform the scene in a traditional style using the Shakespearean language. I'll write about these different interpretations beneath the video below, which shows mine and Bruce's version of the scene:

The Macbeth that Bruce was trying to portray was that of one still pumped up on the murder with adrenaline still rushing through him. This is why when he asks who is in the second chamber, he steps forward as if to go and murder the person sleeping there in case they heard Macbeth murdering Duncan. I do think that Macbeth should have more nerves about him and be more distraught than what Bruce was playing him as it does appear that at this point in the play, regicide is completely against Macbeth's nature and his description as a hero. This would have been played thus for an audience in the original performance context because of the Divine Right of Kings that had been ingrained into society - indeed, this is why Macbeth cannot say "Amen" after he murders Duncan. This fear and guilt should be such that Macbeth appears to already be going mad (as is shown in Act 3 and when he ultimately dies in battle in Act 5), seemingly making him 'less of a man' which links to Shakespeare's theme of Gender, but this guilt should not be so that he can't have the ruthlessness in later scenes to murder Banquo and to keep such things from Lady Macbeth.

The Lady Macbeth that I was trying to portray was that of slight manipulation but one who still cares about Macbeth - I hadn't decided whether that care was actual care or simply for her to manipulate him further as she has done previously. The interpretations of Lady Macbeth can be exaggerated either way for her to be really caring or for her to be really angry and manipulative. Personally, I think that Shakespeare wanted her to be overwhelmingly manipulative in this scene, using her guise of care to influence Macbeth further. Something that I wanted to experiment with was Lady Macbeth feeling afraid of the consequences which I showed in the scene by looking up every time there was a reference to knocking - in fact, every time this happened, Bruce and I looked to the same spot to allow for continuity - although I do feel that I was bringing too much of an element of naivety and innocence to the scene. Shakespeare may want her to show no guilt in this scene so that it juxtaposes with Act 5 Scene 1 where Lady Macbeth is having nightmares about the regicide. For an audience at the time to see Lady Macbeth taking control of the situation and for her to be manipulative would come as a huge shock and this is something we would need to get across to our TA.

After performing this, we split into 2 groups in order to investigate how to introduce a facilitator to the scene. The idea of pausing and stopping the scene to discuss lines is, in my opinion, too simplistic and will cause our TA to become bored. Chipp talked to us about potentially using a 'Character Mixing Desk' which would emphasise certain attributes such as making Lady Macbeth manipulative or Macbeth seem distraught. We could add some humour by having our framing device of 3 students whereby one student would 'have a go' at the mixing desk and make Macbeth a stoner or something of the like. The use of the Mixing Desk will highlight any differing interpretations of the characters which would help boost marks for our TA in their exams.