The+wicked+Macbeths

=By the pricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes.....= (Act 4, Sc 1)


 * When we first hear of Macbeth, he has just cut an enemy open ("unseamed") from belly button ("nave") to throat ("chops"). The king shouts "Oh valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman!" Noice one, O noble Lord. He is a hero.
 * At their party, a witch shows her friends the chopped-off thumb of a ship's pilot wrecked on his way home. A witch who's angry with a lady who was munching chestnuts and wouldn't share them plans to get back at her by causing a nine-day storm to make her sailor husband miserable. If the ship hadn't been under divine protection, she'd kill everybody on board. Another witch offers to help with a bit of magical wind. The angry witch appreciates this and says, "You're such a nice person."
 * Lady Macbeth receives a letter from Macbeth sharing the good fortune he has had predicted. In a few words to herself (a soliloquy), she responds like any normal person when the read their partners stars - she prays to devils to possess her mind, turn the milk in her breasts into bile (!), and give her a man's ability to do whatever it takes to make her bloke's dreams come true.
 * Lady Macbeth b-tches at her husband and ridicules his masculinity in order to make him commit murder. She talks about a smiling baby she once nursed and what it would have been like to smash its brains out -- she would prefer this to having a husband who is unwilling to kill in cold blood. Find and read the passage and think about exactly what Lady Macbeth is saying. She is a woman on a mission.
 * Lady Macbeth keeps a strong sedative in the house. She doesn't mention this to her husband even when they are planning a murder. She just uses it. Attentive readers will suspect she has had to use on Macbeth in the past.
 * The Macbeths murder a sleeping man, their benefactor and guest, who also happends to be the King of Scotland, in cold blood, then launder their bloody clothes. They smear blood on the drugged guards, then slaughter them to complete the frame-up. The little Lady didn't realise what a messy business it was to try to clean up blood, especially from off your hands.
 * Horses go insane and devour each others' meat while they are still alive. Elizabethans knew that Regicide - killing a king - was more than just bad luck. It disturbs the natural order and puts the world in chaos. It just wan't done. I wonder what they would make of global warming?
 * Everybody knows Macbeth murdered Duncan, but they make him king anyway. Did anyone mention Robert Mugabe? Virtuous-talking Banquo, Macbeth's best mate ("Let's have a thorough investigation sometime") gets the drift and tries to have a chat with his buddy. Macbeth decides that it would be best if Banquo was removed from the problem. (In the Holinshed Chronicles,on which Shakespeare based his script), Banquo is Macbeth's accomplice. Since Banquo was supposed to be the ancestor of Shakespeare's own king James I, this wouldn't really do.) Lennox plays both sides, and probably others do as well. Its easier to stay out of trouble, 'don't rock the boat'.
 * Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost with twenty skull injuries, any one of which could be fatal. He goes loopy and screams "You can't prove I did it." He goes on about how he used to think that once somebody's brains were out, he'd stay dead. But now he'll need to keep people unburied until the crows eat the corpse like roadkill, etc., etc.
 * Witches deliver incantations ("Double, double, toil and trouble... bubble etc.") that can stand alongside any meaningless-inferential heavy-metal rock lyrics. They are on a roll with this dude - much more fun than just conjuring a storm.
 * Among the ingredients of a witches' brew are cut-off human lips and a baby's finger. It's not just any baby -- it was a child delivered by a prostitute in a ditch, and that she strangled right afterwards. (This kind of thing happens in our era, too. No one knows how often.)
 * Most of us are reasonably familiar with how human bodies decompose. To show Macbeth his future, the witches add to the brew "grease that's sweated from the murderer's gibbet." Would you like to know what that means? The bodies of executed murderers were left hanging on the gallows / gibbet, often caged so their friends couldn't take them away, until they were skeletonized, a process that takes weeks. At about ten days in suitable weather, there are enough weak points in the skin that the bodyfat, which has liquefied, can start dripping through. There will be a puddle of oil underneath the body. Mmmmm...mmmm.

> Once Macbeth realises his last prophecy is not going to help him, he acquieses to his own murder. Typical man, if only he had talked his problems out with the boys before hand he could have saved all the hassle.
 * Macduff's precocious little son jokes with his mother about how there are more bad than good people in the world, and adds some wisecracks at the expense of her own possible morals. Moments later, the bad guys break in and stab him to death.
 * "Who would have thought the old man would have so much blood in him?" Lady Macbeth goes nuts (definitely) and commits suicide (maybe). Hearing of this, Macbeth just says "She should have died hereafter", meaning "She should have picked a different time to die." He then launches into English literature's most famous statement of the meaninglessness of life. He considers suicide, which the Romans considered the dignified thing to do under such circumstances. But he decides it would be more satisfying to take as many people as possible with him. After all, he still had the witches prophecy on his side. The bit about him not being able to be killed by anyone born of a woman. Can't beat that!
 * Macduff recounts how he was cut out of his mother's uterus at the moment of her death. In a world without anesthesia or safe surgery (i.e., both Macbeth's and Shakespeare's), if a woman was unable to deliver a child due to its being too large to pass through the birth canal, both she and the child would die unless a "cesarean section" was performed. The mother's abdomen and uterus were cut open and the child removed. t also had to be done before the mother went into severe shock, so she would be fully conscious when it while it was being done. Of course she would die soon afterwards. Shakespeare's audience knew this.


 * Macbeth's head ends up on a stick. Elizabethan's (and Pirates ) all knew this was what happens to a traitor. In fact, a good day out was a family trip to Tower Hill to watch a few hangings and if you were lucky a beheading or two. The rotting heads decorated the gates to London as a reminder to folk to to remain law-abiding and god-faring citizens. Could this be a strategy to use to deter suspected terrorists?
 * [[image:http://www.pathguy.com/blood.gif align="center"]]

On line script of the Shakespeare play, Macbeth: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/mirror/classics.mit.edu/Shakespeare/macbeth/full.html