Macbeth
I’m looking forward to seeing the new movie version of Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender. Readers of Mice will know it’s an important play for me. It seems the director, Justin Kurzel (Snowtown), has made some interesting interpolations to the text – particularly the idea that the Macbeths are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder following the death of their baby. This nicely solves the old conundrum in the text which tells us, on the one hand, that Lady Macbeth has had a baby (‘I have given suck…’) and then later states that Macbeth ‘has no children’.
I think interpolations like this can bring a lot to the play. I’d be interested to see a version of Macbeth that began with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth acting out the murder of the King in a sort of erotic dumb show, almost like a sexual fantasy they share. This would prepare the audience for Macbeth’s shocked reaction when the witches prophesy that he will be king (‘why do you start and seem to fear/things that do sound so fair?’). Macbeth could have waited to become king in the fullness of time if it was so destined, but his first thought is of murder (as is Lady Macbeth’s when she hears the news) as if he has long harboured the desire to kill Duncan.
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