Free Macbeth by William Shakespeare Page A

complexities of the Macbeths, the disintegration of the mind, and the usurpation of good by evil, which have proved the focal point for most modern productions. In a world dominated by the lust for power, Shakespeare gives us a case study of how simply and quickly the evil in man can spread like a virus. How can a person commit or order acts that by their nature deny any human feeling? As critic Stanley Wells points out: “The play’s framework of national destiny has proved less attractive to later ages than the personal tragedy of Macbeth played within it; many modern productions adjust the text to throw even more emphasis on Macbeth and his Lady.” 32
    Peter Hall’s 1967 production focused on the powerful degree to which
Macbeth
is a Christian play. He was led by the religious symbolism in such lines as:
    Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence
The life o’th’building.
    The murder of the king is seen as a sacrilegious act, and with it “nature seems dead.” In Hall’s opening scene, the weyard sisters were shown as huge silhouettes inverting a crucifix on which they poured blood; a cross was carried behind Duncan and, later, behind Malcolm; Duncan wore the white robes of consecrated kingship, and when later Macbeth appeared in the same robes, “the blasphemy was shocking.” The religious reading was carried through to the set, which “consisted of a dark, oak interior which looked like a cathedral.” 33 Before the dialogue began, there was
    a quite sensational statement of purity, virtue, innocence, snatched away to show the evil lying beneath. A great white sheet—an angel’s wing?—hung over the stage and, just beforethe appearance of the witches, fluttered away, flapping into extinction. Its disappearance revealed a blood-red carpet like a heath with clotted heather. One felt that if one pressed one’s hand in it blood would ooze out. It was backed by red granite-seeming cliffs and, at times during the action, sections of it were removed to show an arid bone-white expanse—as if it rested on a bleached skeleton. The witches seemed to emerge from beneath this bloody carpet, bearing an inverted crucifix …
Macbeth
for [Hall] was the ‘metaphysics of evil.’ 34
    To focus on this religious aspect of the play does help to overcome one of the main stumbling blocks for a production of
Macbeth
: its representation of the supernatural, the need to make a modern secular audience accept a world in which witches, ghosts, and apparitions are powerful forces.
    In 1982, by contrast, Howard Davies took religion out of the play and deliberately set out a “policy of demystification.” 35 His production
    completely jettisoned the atmosphere of blood and darkness in which so many Macbeths have floundered. Instead, he used a direct, clinical style which made no attempt to conceal its theatrical devices. The stage was dominated by two percussionists and their battery of equipment, brilliantly spotlit on an upper level, who punctuated and commented on the action, rather than providing atmosphere. 36
    In his depiction of the supernatural there was an “abandonment of any attempt to impersonate the witches as bearded, skinny-lipped hags, withered and wild in their attire”: 37
    The weird sisters were attractive young actresses who performed routines with whirling blankets, and who deliberately fragmented their speeches into ‘imperfect’ word-games, meaningless until meaning was given to them by Macbeth’s response … The apparitions were spoken clearly and directly by the watching company, with no attempt at theatrical illusion, and Birnam Wood was merely a forest of drawn swords. 38

    4. Peter Hall production, Stratford 1967: the Macbeths crowned. Sharp contrasts of darkness and light on the set emphasize a reading in terms of primal good and evil.
    Although heavily criticized by some, this production’s staging choices were