Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard (22 page)

What must the idea of actual, real live witches have been like to the Elizabethans?

400 years ago, Shakespeare took his audience and put witches in front of them, which was a pretty ballsy thing to do. They would have found them very terrifying and very real.

And that’s how you have to think when you come into contact with Shakespeare. You have to think the way an Elizabethan would.

Shakespeare said everything. Brain to belly; every mood and minute of a man’s season. His language is starlight and fireflies and the sun and the moon. He wrote it with
tears and blood and beer, and his words march like heartbeats. He speaks to everyone and we all claim him, but it’s wise to remember, if we would really appreciate him, that he doesn’t properly belong to us but to another world that smelled assertively of columbine and gun powder and printer’s ink and was vigorously dominated by Elizabeth
.

Orson Welles,
Everybody’s Shakespeare
, 1934

Scene 7

A castle, Scotland, 11th century

I
’ve gone into the witches in depth, even though I’m not going to look at a witches’ scene. When we realise how horrifically, bone-shakingly fearsome the Elizabethans would have found the witches, their scenes begin to make sense, and it makes it easier to understand why Macbeth believes what they say: he’s told right at the beginning by the witches that he will be king; this starts a domino effect that leads to him killing his king. By listening to their predictions and following their advice, Macbeth is essentially selling his soul to the devil, and that, the Elizabethans knew in the core of their beings, was a surefire path to destruction.

Without any further ado, let’s look at the extract. It’s Act 2, Scene 2, and it begins with Lady Macbeth waiting nervously for her husband to return from killing the king …

Enter
L
ADY
M
ACBETH

L
ADY
M
ACBETH

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;

What hath quench’d them hath given me fire.

Hark! Peace!

It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman,

Which gives the stern’st good-night. He is about it:

The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms

Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg’d

their possets,

That death and nature do contend about them,

Whether they live or die.

M
ACBETH

[
Within
] Who’s there? what, ho!

L
ADY
M
ACBETH

Alack, I am afraid they have awaked,

And ’tis not done. The attempt and not the deed

Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers ready;

He could not miss ’em. Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done’t.

Enter
M
ACBETH

My husband!

M
ACBETH

I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?

L
ADY
M
ACBETH

I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.

Did not you speak?

M
ACBETH

When?

L
ADY
M
ACBETH

Now.

M
ACBETH

As I descended?

Actually, stop there. I don’t want to work from this edition of the text. There are hundreds of different editions of Shakespeare available, both online and in shops. This layout is from an online edition of the play that shall remain nameless, though it saddens me to say it’s touted for students and educators.

To be fair, after all my First Folio trumpet-blowing, the Folio text of
Macbeth
has the same layout. The Folio does have its faults, particularly that the space constraints in printing the book meant that the metre couldn’t always be laid out as the actors may have wanted.

Now take a look below at the way the text is laid out in the Penguin edition. You’ll find this layout (though not the spelling) in any one of the major publishing house editions of the plays. I’ve kept the spellings from the Folio, because I like them, but also because anything that helps to remember that this is an old story from an old time is a Good Thing:

[
Enter Lady
.]

La
.

That which hath made the[m] drunk, hath made me bold:

What hath quench’d them, hath giuen me fire.

Hearke, peace: it was the Owle that shriek’d,

The fatall Bell-man, which giues the stern’st good-night.

He is about it, the Doores are open:

And the surfeted Groomes doe mock their charge

With Snores. I haue drugg’d their Possets,

That Death and Nature doe contend about them,

Whether they liue, or dye.

[
Enter Macbeth
.]

Macb
.

Who’s there? what hoa?

Lady

Alack, I am afraid they haue awak’d,

And ’tis not done: th’ attempt, and not the deed,

Confounds vs: hearke: I lay’d their Daggers ready,

He could not misse ’em. Had he not resembled

My Father as he slept, I had don’t.

My Husband?

Macb
.

I haue done the deed:

Didst thou not heare a noyse?

Lady

I heard the Owle schreame, and the Crickets cry.

Did not you speake?

Macb
.

When?

Lady

Now.

Macb
.

As I descended?

Lady

I.

Macb
.

Hearke!

Who lyes i’th’ second Chamber?

Lady

Donalbaine
.

Macb
.

This is a sorry sight.

Lady

A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.

Macb
.

There’s one did laugh in’s sleepe,

And one cry’d Murther, that they did wake each other:

I stood, and heard them: But they did say their Prayers, And addrest them againe to sleepe.

Lady

There are two lodg’d together.

Macb
.

One cry’d God blesse vs, and Amen the other,

As they had seene me with these Hangmans hands:

Listning their feare, I could not say Amen,

When they did say God blesse vs.

Lady

Consider it not so deepely.

Macb
.

But wherefore could not I pronounce Amen?

I had most need of Blessing, and Amen

Stuck in my throat.

Lady

These deeds must not be thought

After these wayes: so, it will make vs mad.

You can see there are a number of differences between the two versions I’ve shown you. I’m not even going to start
talking about the number of extra exclamation marks there are in the online version, because I may begin to rant, and that will do no good.

Obviously the spellings in the second version are a little odd, but once you get used to the letter
u
printed as a
v
, the
j
printed as
i
, and the extra
e
scattered about, it isn’t so hard. This second version of the text is the one that Shakespeare’s actors would have authorised, had they the printing space.

They would want the text to be laid out as they remembered it, which is to say for the purposes of performing, and we can work out from the metre how that would look. As it’s unlikely there were directors in those days, Shakespeare would have had to write into the text his directions for his actors – actors he had worked with for years, whose strengths and weaknesses he knew he could write to.

Scene 8

221b Baker Street

T
here is, of course, no one interpretation of any piece. You can make your own, if you like. But first, I’m going to take you through mine.

The first clue is to examine the metre.

You’ll remember from Act 4 that Shakespeare wrote many of his plays almost entirely in verse, and that when he wrote in verse he wrote mostly in iambic pentameter, and that in iambic pentameter lines of verse have ten syllables in them. Supposedly.

So. Exercise Number One.

Let’s go through the scene from
Macbeth
and count how many syllables there are in each line. As this is supposed to be in iambic pentameter, we’d expect every line to have ten syllables.

When a line of metre is shared by two characters, I’ve marked the second half of the line to show how it makes up ten syllables (and so a complete line of pentameter), e.g. 7–10. I’ve also marked lines as 9/10 or 10/11, to show that depending on how you articulate a word in that line, the number of syllables can change slightly:

When a scene is written in metre, and the words don’t start
on the far left of the page underneath the character name, like in the lines ‘When?/Now./As I descended?’, then they are not new lines of metre, but
shared lines
, which we looked at briefly in Act 4 – one line of metre broken up and shared across two or more characters: