Ethan Hawke on Macbeth Shakespeare Uncovered

'When you think of violent murders,

'brutal crimes and nightmarish horrors,

'you might think of a big city, you might think of Manhattan.'

Or, if you're like me, you might think a little bit past that,

to about a 400-year-old play named Macbeth.

This is the story of one man who will kill his way

to win the Scottish throne.

'Macbeth is a play that you're not even supposed to say the name of it'

because even the name of it is supposed to conjure witches

and the dregs of the universe.

This tale of mass murder is among the darkest

and strangest of all Shakespeare's plays.

The play may be 400 years old,

but anybody paying attention can recognise everybody in it.

They recognise the evil in the heart of man.

It's probably never drawn a more beautiful portrait

of a broken, greedy heart than the bloody heart of Macbeth.

Maybe foolishly, it's a part I've always wanted to play.

I feel like if you're going to play one of these parts,

you have to seek out some truth about it.

'When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth,

'he explored the darker side of the human psyche.

'Macbeth will become a traitor, a butcher, a serial killer

'and yet, what's so powerful

'is that Shakespeare hasn't written a play about a monster,

'he has written a play about a man.

'Macbeth explores our capacity for violence and evil.

'For an actor, that can be scary.'

I never wanted to play it.

When I was younger, I was petrified of the play,

because, to be honest, I thought I might go crazy if I did it.

But now, for some reason, I'm not as scared of it as I was.

I'm not saying that I'm braver,

it's just I realise that there is that aspect to life

and it isn't worthwhile to pretend it's not there.

'Playing this part would mean asking myself some tough questions,

'so the essential thing for me

'would be to work out how to prepare for it.'

I think, and this is something that nobody really wants to say,

but the best way I can ever prepare for a part

is to surround myself with really smart people.

'I'd seek advice and wisdom from historians, scholars, directors,

'who have their own knowledge and experience.'

The other thing I would do, to begin work on this,

is watch as many as I could find.

'You can watch Polanski's Macbeth, Orson Welles's Macbeth'

and of course the trick is then you have to forget all that

and live it and make it real for yourself.

-It isn't often one gets the chance to do these plays.

-This is great.

I've done this one and through my long career,

I've played it on both sides of the Atlantic.

I've done a textbook on it.

I don't know what I haven't done about this play,

except do it as well as I'd like to.

It's a great feeling to be dealing with material

which is better than yourself,

that you know that you can never live up to.

It's weird to see such ego and such humility at the same time.

What a bizarre guy Orson Welles is!

'However you play Macbeth, this is the story.'

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

'Macbeth starts out as a warrior, rewarded by the king for bravery.'

The king hath heavily received, Macbeth, the news of thy success.

We are sent to bring thee from our royal master thanks...

'Then three witches, or weird sisters, as Shakespeare calls them,

'prophesy that he himself will be king.'

All hail Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter.

'Macbeth and his wife decide to make it happen.

'He murders the king himself and then all other possible rivals.

'There is so much violent gore in the play,

'but it's the supernatural element, these witches or weird sisters

'that trigger Macbeth's dark descent into murder.

'Their prophecies will fire his ambition.'

When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

When the hurly-burly's done. When the battle's lost and won.

That will be ere the set of sun.

-Where the place?

-Upon the heath.

There to meet with Macbeth.

The funny thing about the witches is it's just the most

genius piece of writing.

The language is so evocative and strange.

The role the witches play is mysterious.

Do they cause the events that follow, or just predict them?

'I think that's why Shakespeare has Macbeth meet them

'in a strange no man's land.

'But never far away from the real world.

'This play all takes place in a kind of shadowland.'

Right now we are in Central Park, and Central Park to me

is a great example of kind of a border.

A transitional place.

It almost feels like you're in the country here,

but just a stone's throw away is the taxis and the madness of Manhattan.

It's kind of an invisible scrim that happens.

You enter from one world to another.

Sometimes the park is scary, sometimes the park is inviting.

I think these witches are trying to conjure that up.

They're conjuring up the scrim and they're making it dark.

Macbeth will murder to satisfy his ambition,

but the evil inspiration comes from the witches.

They tell him he will be king so the current king must die.

That fatal decision is the pivot of the drama of Macbeth.

When shall we three meet again...?

At the Globe in London,

a replica of the theatre Shakespeare actually worked in,

they are running the opening scene.

-Where the place?

-Upon the heath.

-There to meet with Macbeth.

-Fair is foul.

-ALL: And foul is fair.

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Most of this scene here you don't speak.

So if you do turn back...

'Now, Macbeth and his close comrade, Banquo,

'encounter the witches for the first time.'

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

How far is't call'd to Forres...?

'The witches deliver their prophecy.

'Macbeth's reaction will drive the action for the rest of the play.

'But had he always desired the crown?

'Or have the witches planted that idea?'

All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Glamis!

All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!

All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!

It's like reading a horoscope, which I never do.

And the horoscope is saying this is going to happen to you.

And however sensible you might be,

and however much you might not believe in horoscopes,

this thing has been planted in your head.

And we are quite susceptible to that, I think.

'What's so unsettling about this play is that the one characteristic

'that undoes Macbeth is simply ambition.'

What's scary about it is what lives inside each one of us.

Yeah, not all of us want to be king,

but there's a ton of actors out there that would lie, cheat,

kill their mother for an Oscar, an Olivier Award, whatever it is.

We have these ambitions, and we want to set ourselves apart

so much that we are willing to forego all kindness and all

the best parts of ourselves in the name of achieving the goal.

'As we've seen, the trigger for Macbeth comes from witches.

'Today, everyone's going to react to that differently.

'But I'd like to know

what Shakespeare's audience would have made of witches.'

This is an age, in one sense, of witchcraft.

Everyday lives are injected

with the spiritual war between the devil and God.

The historian Justin Champion is an expert in the 17th-century world.

For the early modern audience, witches are everywhere.

They would have read about it, they would have sung about it,

discussed it with their neighbours in the alehouses.

She may not have been caught or she may have been executed,

but you would know about a witch.

So the magic and the witchcraft

and the ghosts in Shakespeare are not sort of frilly extras

making it all a little bit more exotic.

These are very powerful languages that the audience would have

connected with almost straight away.

In Shakespeare's time,

writing about witchcraft had major political implications.

Witches were taken seriously by almost everyone,

even by the king himself.

In 1597, King James I had written a book on demonology,

correcting and reworking some passages.

He did so because he was convinced that witches

could bring down the divinely ordained monarchy.

So this play about killing a king was clearly a dangerous idea.

The great anxiety that dominates

16th and 17th-century political history is that the devil,

normally through the agency of the Pope and the Antichrist,

is going to somehow topple Protestant government in England.

So this is again a very, very sensitive play.

Shakespeare is dealing with affairs of state

in a delicate way that, if he gets it wrong,

he could be regarded as being seditious and treasonous himself.

'The play questions where precisely dark forces come from.

'Why does Macbeth commit horrific acts?

'Is it really because of witches,

'or is the darkness and evil already there in the man?

'Even scholars aren't sure.'

The real question that they raise, of course,

is to what extent they plant or only see

the evil that's in him.

That's the question that the play really asks about the supernatural.

Does the supernatural CAUSE anything in the play

or does it simply forecast what is already going to happen?

This is really a play about the danger of interpretation,

about the human desire to interpret, to find certainty, to find meaning.

Part of the cunning of Macbeth lies in the difficulty that

everyone has in determining what it is that these creatures are doing

and how much responsibility they have for what you see unfolding.

In other words, is the driving force supernatural and external,

or the human character of Macbeth?

'The first question I would have is who is he in the beginning?'

How noble is he when it starts?

You know, the strongest choice would be that he's a very noble person

but then the witches come on and he just unravels.

That might be it, but it doesn't sound true to me.

'Exactly what turns Macbeth from a merely ambitious warrior

'into a conspiratorial murderer

'seems to me a tricky question to answer.

'Shakespeare's wonderfully ambiguous and it's up to the actor to decide.

'So, to make up my mind,

'I thought it would help to know who Shakespeare based him on.

'Who was the real Macbeth? Because there was a real Macbeth.'

Macbeth is known to have lived in Scotland

in Perthshire nearly 1,000 years ago.

No-one knows for sure exactly where,

but Dunsinane is the most likely spot.

Let's see, what's this thing?

'I've heard that name so often

'but I've never actually seen an image of it.

'The historian Justin Champion has gone there.'

Ethan, I'm in Scotland and as you'll know from the play, behind me here

is Dunsinane Hill, somewhere that's connected very much with Macbeth.

Macbeth, of course, was a real figure

and very closely associated with this area,

so if I turn and let you have a look, over there is Dunsinane Hill.

It's exactly like I pictured it.

I'm right at the top of Dunsinane Hill now,

which is a pretty dramatic sort of panorama

and this is the site of a fortress.

We know from archaeological records that it wasn't a castle.

They didn't have a castle 1,000 years ago,

but the top of this would have been fortified.

This would have been an absolutely almost impregnable defensive point.

From the top here, we can see right over to the North Sea.

We can look that way to Birnam Wood,

so it's an incredibly brilliant natural place to fortify.

It's the perfect place to see some witches, that's for sure.

Even the moon out in the daytime, it's kind of creepy.

So that's the place where Macbeth probably lived.

But what about the actual man, Macbeth,

and the reigning King Duncan that he kills in the play?

In Shakespeare's account of Duncan's death,

Macbeth is very much the tyrant.

The deceitful host who murders his godly king in his sleep.

In fact, we know that Macbeth defeated Duncan on the battlefield.

It's more than likely that, in that particular episode,

Duncan was the aggressor.

So he was invading Macbeth's kingdom and Macbeth did as all good kings

of their own land would do - defend his own rights and privileges.

So in one sense, Duncan's death was just a casualty of war.

Macbeth does not display the sort of deceit and traitorous treason

that Shakespeare delivers to us in the play.

The question I wonder about is how much of a historian was Shakespeare?

Did he just kind of know a few names and make this stuff up,

or did he study it and deliberately do it?

Is this what he kind of thought happened,

did somebody tell him a story about how Macbeth was actually a bad guy

and so he just ran with it? That, I'd be curious to know.

It's true Shakespeare had a reputation for adapting

and embroidering historical facts,

but here it seems the historical facts

had already been adapted and embroidered.

So why?

I think we have to blame the historians.

We need to think about how history is always written by the victors

and Macbeth lost. He was executed.

Malcolm took over the reign of Scotland.

Almost straight away, as the loser, Macbeth is invented as a tyrant.

That's the material that Shakespeare has to work with.

Ruling kings were determined to show their claim to the throne

was better than that of any rivals.

The historians were expected to help.

We have historians who deliberately set out to invent tradition.

Many of the accounts of Scottish history are recognisably,

even to contemporaries, based on fictions and fake documents.

But as long as they work, as long as they suit the powers that be,

they are regarded as as credible as any other history that you might encounter.

Scottish history may not reflect the real Macbeth, but it does show

the brutal cut-throat world that kings lived in - and their queens.

'I also need to understand Macbeth's soulmate, Lady Macbeth,

'who is as notorious as her husband.'

She is his partner in crime, so how an actor might play Macbeth

will depend a lot on who he thinks she is

and on the influence she wields.

She first enters reading a letter from Macbeth where

he can't contain his excitement about the witches' prophecy.

"When I burned in desire to question them further,

"they made themselves air..."

The crucial question is, is he prepared to act on it alone

or will his wife have to force him

to do what has to be done to succeed?

And shalt be what thou art promised.

'The nature of Lady Macbeth's role in their crimes

'has sparked a fierce debate.'

So this is the evil vampire, Judith Anderson.

They called her Judith Vampire!

'I'm meeting with a performance historian to talk about

'the variety of different Lady Macbeths.'

Ellen Terry here, in a famous Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Some of the really successful Lady Macbeths

that the public has loved have been incredibly powerful and assertive

and have really bullied their husbands into action.

One of the most popular in the 19th century, Charlotte Cushman,

was a woman who was famous for towering over her Macbeths.

In fact, I do have a picture of that.

She's quite powerful and you can imagine her playing this role...

She tells you to go kill somebody, you're going to kill them.

-You're going to do it.

-Or she's going to kill you!

Edwin Booth, who played Macbeth to her,

apparently complained that he felt like saying,

"Why don't you just kill him yourself? You're a great deal bigger than I am!"

But she was a colourful woman. She lived openly as a lesbian,

which was not entirely typical at that time.

She played the role tough. People were scared of her,

but people were also impressed by her,

because she knew what she wanted, she knew how to get there,

she knew how to get her husband there.

Apparently, an alternative approach was Sarah Bernhardt's.

She played up the inherent sexuality in the play.

Sarah Bernhardt was seen very much as a sex symbol,

and she really played that in Lady Macbeth to the hilt,

to the point where some people found it distasteful.

They thought, "No, this woman's evil, don't make her so appealing.

"Don't make us feel so allured by her."

And theirs was a very lusty relationship,

which I think is in the text.

I think that works really well.

Ironically, it's one of the happiest marriages

that we see in a Shakespeare play.

I know, that's so true.

It's the only really happily married couple we get.

We get people falling in love and breaking up a lot,

but rarely a portrait of a steady couple.

But whether you play her bullying or seductive,

this idea of a manipulative woman

pushing her man to excess has become iconic.

You might remember in the 1990s

there was an article written about Hillary Clinton

titled The Lady Macbeth Of Little Rock,

and there's been a long tradition...

-People saw her as Lady Macbeth a lot.

-Absolutely.

As always manipulating him and bullying him.

People want to be able to use her to explain away

what they see as the failings or the drive

or the mistakes made by a powerful man.

There's a way that she can become an excuse

for a man that you want to forgive, I think.

Men particularly like the idea of, "I wouldn't have done anything wrong

-"if it wasn't for that Eve."

-Absolutely.

'As we've seen, however Lady Macbeth is cast,

'the one big question that has to be answered is

'does she make him a killer?

'Who wields the power in this relationship?'

How now. What news?

He has almost supp'd. Why have you left the chamber?

-Hath he ask'd for me?

-Know you not he has?

Just to see that change...

Back at the Globe in London,

they are working on the scene in which this question is most central.

Who is in control?

-I think you've got to come right back at him, physically.

-Yep, yep.

After the witches' prophecy,

the couple had plotted to kill the king themselves.

But then Macbeth has a complete change of heart

and rejects the plan.

His wife is furious.

She knows him to be an ambitious man and she's more, in a way,

more realistic about what it will take to achieve what they both want

and that's really what Shakespeare's written here.

He's written this couple

that both want the same thing at a certain point.

We will proceed no further in this business.

He hath honour'd me of late, and I have bought

golden opinions from all sorts of people

that would be worn now in their newest gloss,

not cast aside so soon.

Was the hope drunk wherein you dress'd yourself?

Hath it slept since?

And wakes it now, to look so green and pale

at what it did so freely?

Art thou afeard

to be the same in thine own act and valour

as thou art in desire?

We see her identify strongly with his ambition

and her fear that he might fail to realise it,

and therefore what is she going to have to do

in order to make him the king that he would like to become?

Lady Macbeth raised the question of what a man is

and is a man someone who dares to take what he is promised,

who dares to challenge authority, who dares to kill the king?

I dare do all that may become a man, who dares do more is none.

What beast was't, then,

that made you break this enterprise to me?

When you durst do it,

THEN you were a man.

And, to be more than what you were,

you would be so much more the man.

He's really poised at that moment of possibility.

He might go forward with it, he might not go forward with it,

and yet it's the sense that if he doesn't do it

he will be shamed in the eyes of his wife forever.

-If we should fail?

-We fail.

But screw your courage to the sticking-place

and we'll not fail.

Well, it certainly feels that she's dominant.

That she sets the power in the relationship in the beginning

and that in many ways...

..you can feel her manipulating him.

But I think he's a person who wants to be manipulated.

And mean, it's easy to say that she talks him into it,

but it's also he's not such a hard sell.

'Fired up by his wife, Macbeth is on the brink of doing the deed.

'His thoughts are racing. He's hallucinating.

'He's about to give us one of the most famous speeches in the play -

'the dagger scene.

'So how would I play that?'

Is this a dagger that I see before me?

I see thee still, I see thee STILL.

HE LAUGHS

'One of my good friends, actor Richard Easton,

'has played Macbeth and is going to help.'

All right, so I'll read this and you teach me about it as we do it.

-Just help me with it.

-Impertinent.

Is this a dagger which I see before me?

The handle toward my hand?

-Come, let me clutch thee...

-I think that's an advance.

You know, is this a dagger that I see before me?

The handle toward my hand.

-That means it's being offered for you to use.

-Right.

It's not just a thing floating in the air.

'I think that one of the things that somebody needs to do

'if you really are going to play any of these roles

'is not only break down all the language,'

not only need to understand how it was meant to be played,

you need to really understand all the rules

that Shakespeare was setting up before you can break them.

'Part of the challenge is always just understanding the words.'

What does that mean? "Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain."

-Because the heat-oppressed brain...

-Because my brain's so hot.

I'm sweating, and feverish, right, right, right.

It's not fancy poetical, it's actually...

It's actually his head's hot. Yeah, right, OK. I get it, OK.

"And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood." Is that right? Gouts?

-"Which was not... Which was not so before. Hectates..."

-Hecates.

Hecate's. "Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murther." What's murther?

-Murder.

-Oh, OK.

Will you read it for me?

There's always a certain magic that happens

when you start to say the lines out loud that you can't anticipate.

It feels like a spell.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

the handle toward my hand?

Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision,

sensible to feeling as to sight?

Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation,

proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet...

I go, and it is done -

the bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell

that summons thee to heaven

or to hell.

See, what I find amazing is whenever I first start reading these

it does seem...

It seems so hard to reach.

You know, when you first start studying him -

I don't know what martiallist means,

or I don't know what murther means and it cuts me off from it,

but then listening to you do it, it's so obvious.

When you know what you're playing, it's so clear.

-Yes, but also I have played it.

-I know you have.

So when you have played it, even when you've rehearsed it,

you'll know that this is the beginning of act two.

You know, there are three more acts to go, so it can be...

He hasn't done it yet. He hasn't been there yet.

'Up until this point in the play, Macbeth is still an innocent man.

'He's thought about killing, but he hasn't done it.

'The next time we see him, he's a murderer

'emerging bloody-handed from the scene of the crime.'

I have done the deed.

-Didst thou not hear a noise?

-I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.

-Did not you speak?

-When?

-Now.

-As I descended?

-Aye.

-Hark.

-Who lies in the second chamber?

-Donalbain.

This is a sorry sight.

'Shock and numbness and denial'

are the first stages of human response after a massive trauma.

Gwen Adshead has spent years

working with people who have committed murder,

listening first-hand to their experiences.

The fascinating thing about this

is that Shakespeare demonstrates this in the language.

If you look at the language of Macbeth,

the language falls apart into these staccato half-sentences

and Shakespeare is really showing us through the language,

in exactly the way that it happens in real life,

because people's language does fall apart

when they're agitated or distressed.

Go get some water

and wash this filthy witness from your hand.

Why did you bring these daggers from the place?

They must lie there!

Go, carry them, and smear the sleepy grooms with blood.

I'll go no more.

I am afraid to think what I have done, look on't again I dare not.

In his panic, Macbeth has emerged

clutching the incriminating murder weapons and is frozen.

Lady Macbeth steps in, returning them to the scene of the crime -

and now they're both covered in blood.

You can never go back, and that, I think, for me,

rings very true in terms of working therapeutically

with people who have killed, is the absolute finality of this act,

the fact that you've changed the universe

and you can't ever go back to how it was before.

And that is so profound.

This scene is not just a watershed for the character Macbeth.

Shakespeare was writing in the wake of a devastating political crisis

in British history -

the Gunpowder Plot.

Roman Catholics had planted barrels of gunpowder

right under the House Of Commons.

They had planned to blow up the ministers and King James himself.

The parallel with Macbeth was obvious

and, for Shakespeare, risky.

Any audience watching Macbeth in the early 17th century

would have had that in the back of their minds, absolutely,

so the threat of rebellion, the threat of treason, sedition,

is the great, sort of, white noise of politics at this time,

so we need to think about an audience incredibly sensitised

to anything to do with rebellion, treason, deceit, conspiracy,

and that's what this play is about - it's about a canker

right at the heart of government and the threat of murdering a king.

And the consequences if you were caught were terrifying.

Killing kings has catastrophic consequences

for those who are discovered trying to do so,

so the consequences of brutal, brutal torture

and then death, execution and dismemberment

would have been in the audience's mind straightaway,

so all of that blood is not only likely to have been Duncan's blood,

but, potentially, the blood of Macbeth as well if he is discovered.

So that fear of discovery for an audience is absolutely key, I think.

The act of killing changes everything.

Something Macbeth must now face.

The problem for Macbeth, I always think,

is that he gets caught up in this idea

of whether to do it or not to do it

and feels like once he does it, it'll be done.

But of course it's not done.

It's actually just beginning,

and I think that's what hits him after the murder's over.

He realises he's entered some new part of his life,

that he can never return to the old one,

and he has no idea what's coming now.

Movement and dance are not what we immediately think of

with Shakespeare.

We think about words, but here in New York,

they are rehearsing a version of Macbeth

that relies on dance, movement and mime.

'I want to see how these performers

'portray the huge change that Macbeth has to undergo

'without the help of language.'

Yeah, amazing. Unbelievable job.

I will challenge myself, if I ever get to play...

-Do the Scottish play, to get buck naked...

-THEY LAUGH

..because I think that there's something so scary and...

I mean, if you're really trying to clean yourself, it's really great.

You know, that was the most moving thing

I found about watching you guys play it out,

was there's certain things that you can express non-verbally

that get lost when you put too much language in it.

It would be an amazing thing

if you were actually going to act Shakespeare's text,

-to make yourself do what you guys are doing.

-Take the words away.

Yeah, take the words away, because you'd find moments.

You guys have these moments that are more powerful

than I've ever seen the play acted out in words,

because you're forced to look and be with each other.

It's more innate, I think.

I think physicality is something that people can all relate to.

I think there's something that can be taken

from watching this interpretation.

Macbeth had done the deed, but he and his wife were in this together.

I think love is the focal point of this choice that they've made.

Without it, they would never be able to go down this path so far.

He does it for her, in a way,

but not because he's manipulated by her,

but because he wants to make her happy

and she wants something great for him.

The Macbeths do something together

that it seems neither of them would ever do alone.

Shakespeare's tapped into something that psychologists recognise.

I think homicide often does involve creating a type of fantasy world

and it may be easier to do that sometimes with another person.

The process of justifying to yourself becomes crucial,

and that's where the other person comes in.

I think a key phrase that people can sometimes use on each other,

"This is the courageous thing to do,"

and, in fact, Lady Macbeth says this, you know.

"Nail your courage to the sticking-point and we will not fail."

The couple had been united in their joint plot,

but now, after the murder,

they start to respond differently to what they've done.

Even though Macbeth has become king, he doesn't feel secure.

Without confiding in his wife,

he orders the murder of his friend, but potential rival, Banquo.

In a show of normality, Macbeth hosts a royal banquet

and pretends to expect the murdered man to appear.

Both sides are even.

But Banquo's place at the table is filled...

..by his ghost.

What is't that moves your highness?

Which of you have done this?

What, my good lord?

-Thou canst not say I did it!

-Gentlemen, rise...

Macbeth is the only one who sees the ghost,

so the power of the scene hinges

on how real the actor makes his illusion.

Anthony Sher found his own key to playing the scene.

As part of my research for playing the part,

I met two real-life murderers.

And, although they were very different men,

they both answered the same way to one of my questions, which was,

"Do you ever dream of your victims?"

And both, phrasing it differently, answered,

"Only when I'm awake."

And I thought, well, this is perfect,

because I now know how to play Banquo's ghost.

See there!

Behold! Look!

Lo!

While Macbeth is horrified to see Banquo's ghost,

Lady Macbeth is desperately trying to cover for him.

What? Quite unmann'd in folly?

She sees he's in danger of revealing a terrible secret,

even though she knows nothing about Banquo's death.

He's going berserk cos he's seeing Banquo's ghost and she's going,

"What are you doing? Behave yourself, don't let it show!"

Why do you make such faces?

When all's done, you look but on a stool.

She still doesn't know why he's going quite so mad.

Because he hasn't told her what's going on.

Avaunt! And quit my sight!

Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless. Thy blood is cold.

Thou hast no speculation in those eyes!

Think of this, good peers, but as a thing of custom for 'tis no other.

Ultimately, all she can do is chase the horrified guests away.

At once, good night.

Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once.

Publicly, the scene has been dangerous for the Macbeths.

But privately, it's a very intimate moment.

Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.

At the end of the banquet, she says,

"You lack the season of all natures, sleep."

As though saying, "Look, darling, we've had a terrible dinner.

"You probably just need a good sleep."

HE LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY

'What you need is a good night's sleep.'

All you need is a cup of tea, you know?

And we just, we just both spontaneously burst

into rather hysterical, maniacal, not very comfortable giggles.

Come, we'll to sleep.

THEY LAUGH HYSTERICALLY

They've had the dinner party from hell. It's been a complete disaster.

And they just sit there laughing like a couple might who, you know,

the only thing left to do is to laugh.

SHE WHIMPERS

It's a desperate moment.

Lady Macbeth has struggled to stop her husband

from revealing a terrible secret.

And the experience seems to divide them.

The couple drifts further apart.

Macbeth goes off alone to the witches for solace,

but this just provokes him into the frenzied killing

of even more potential rivals.

He's becoming a solitary tyrant.

'The Macbeths are never seen on the stage together again.'

The only good thing that ever happened in the play

was Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's love for each other,

which somehow just slowly peters out.

It's an interesting, sad element of the play

that there isn't the big "I hate you," scene,

"You've betrayed me," scene, "I don't love you anymore," scene.

They just kind of fade out and dial down

and go to their separate corners.

There's something kind of truthful about that to me.

People who have a big secret, they start to not want to see each other,

because when they see the other one, they're looking at their own shame.

The couple are no longer connected.

However, what we don't expect, is that, now alone,

Lady Macbeth will completely break down.

In one of the most famous scenes of the play,

we see Lady Macbeth driven to sleepwalking,

obsessively acting out her part in the original crime.

Her terrified maid has brought a doctor

to observe this wild behaviour.

Look, how she rubs her hands.

Yet here's a spot.

Out, damned spot!

Out, I say!

One, two.

Why, then, 'tis time to do it.

Hell is murky.

The sleepwalking scene is one of the most

horrifying scenes in literature, I think.

It's a deeply distressing portrait of a broken woman.

Lady Macbeth at the beginning of the play seems steely,

calculating, cool...

..able to handle anything.

And in the course of the play, you watch her unravel.

She has been the strong one, and then,

you don't expect her to have any kind of a breakdown

or a moment in which what she's been keeping in

comes out again at night and with visions and so forth.

Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.

Do you mark that?

What? Will these hands ne'er be clean?

SHE WHIMPERS

While Lady Macbeth is finally overwhelmed by her emotions

and loses her mind,

Macbeth seems to do the opposite.

He seems to suppress all feeling and somehow just ploughs on.

There's a very hurt but numb side in him now.

"I'm covered in so much blood, it's not worth washing it off.

"I just might as well carry on."

He has no option but to continue along this murderous path,

and it becomes, erm...

..something he has to do.

He has to plough his way on, having gained the throne.

She loses her grip on him, and he becomes...

it's almost, she's let loose this creature

who then she looks at and thinks, "What have I let loose?

He's more of a murderer, he's more of a maniac than she ever envisaged.

He's gone past the point when they could enjoy their power.

He's just not ever going to be content.

'It's at this point,

'when he's almost blindly hacking away at his enemies,

'when he seems almost numb to all feeling,

'that Shakespeare gives Macbeth a speech

'of extraordinary beauty and utter isolation.

'How does an actor prepare for that?

'I'm going to see a copy of the earliest printed edition of Macbeth,

'known as the First Folio.'

I have never seen a First Folio,

and I've always wanted to, and so,

it's kind of like diving back into time.

There's such a romanticism to the idea

of Shakespeare staying up all night, you know,

Romeo and Juliet pouring out of his soul,

Macbeth pouring out of his soul,

and you somehow want to touch that lightning.

'What's extraordinary is that the play Macbeth

'was not printed until 1623, seven years after its author's death.

'If it wasn't for his fellow actors publishing it,

'this play could have been lost forever.'

Here we go.

The book is in the Morgan Library in New York.

It's over 400 years old and probably worth millions.

But for many of us, it's priceless.

Curator John Bidwell has retrieved it from the vault.

Ah, my favourite speech. Let's find it.

Awfully near the end there but here we are already into Hamlet.

God, can you imagine?

Imagine a body of work like this?

You turn one page, Macbeth finishes and then Hamlet begins.

It kind of suits the end of the Scottish Play -

there's a slight burn on the final page of Macbeth.

Somebody was upset. This cigarette fell as Macbeth fell.

Only one page? How does that happen in the book?

Hmm.

'The speech I'm looking for

'comes just after Macbeth has heard his wife is dead.

'She's committed suicide, and yet he seems unable to respond.'

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

creeps in this petty pace from day to day.

To the last syllable of recorded time.

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.

Out, out brief candle.

Life's but a walking shadow,

a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

and then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

signifying nothing.

You've heard of words to live by. Those are words to die by.

His vision of life at that point is so nihilistic

that even the loss of the woman whom he clearly had loved

so much no longer means anything to him, because he can no longer feel.

He can no longer feel.

And I think that's... At the end of the day,

that is Shakespeare's deepest insight

about what it is to be able to commit murder, without remorse.

And that is that you lose the capacity to feel.

'Macbeth seems almost empty of emotion and yet, as the climax

'of the play approaches, he will surely know fear.

'And now he's learned

'that the witches' promises of safety were just dangerous riddles.

'And other forces have assembled to confront him in battle.

'He will have to face his enemies.'

That's where Macbeth is at that point.

He has nothing left to live for so why not bring it all with him?

Ring the alarm bell! Blow wind!

It truly is a portrait of an animal trapped in a corner

that's going to die.

That is still fighting in an instinctive but weary way.

It's still trying to defend itself, but it knows that it's lost.

HE GROANS AND GASPS

At last, Macbeth's brutal regime is over, but what really created it?

Can we finally answer that question?

Was it the witches that corrupted Macbeth? Or his own ambition?

The fantastic idea of Macbeth is that there are things out there.

There really are.

There are monsters, disgusting and disturbing.

But they are also in here.

It is like the horror movie in which the character being chased

locks the door, double locks it, triple locks it,

retreats to the bedroom, locks that, and then discovers

that whatever it is that he's most afraid of is already inside.

'After travelling with Macbeth on this darkest of journeys,

'what do we feel about it?'

I do feel sorry for Macbeth, although sorry is too minor a feeling.

I feel empathy for him, deep distress for him.

I don't want him not to be captured, but there is a sense in which

he still has a claim upon my human feelings.

It is a tragedy because there were so many points

at which he might have pulled back. And he doesn't.

And he ends up destroying the things that were most valuable.

Shakespeare's great gift as a writer

is that he never holds people at arm's length.

He never says look at this person, isn't he disgraceful,

or isn't he ridiculous?

Shakespeare always says it's me, it's you, it's us. He always does that.

It is his great gift.

This powerful sense of our shared humanity is in the text of the play.

'And it would just have to be the core

'of what I would draw on to play the part.

'To my mind, the greatest challenge in playing Macbeth

'is not that dissimilar to a movie like Raging Bull.'

What he's doing is so horrible, but why should the audience care?

You can't do that by trying to be likeable, or something.

You have to do it by being a human being.

While you may not forgive them, or anything,

you would at least have empathy for their humanity and the crisis

they have gotten themselves into, and relate to it on some level.

And that, that's the big magic trick, I think.

'It's at the end of the play, when all the horrors are done,

'that Shakespeare turns to offer

'some compassionate words for the survivors.

'And they can still be a comfort to us today.'

They were our neighbours, our friends, our husbands, wives,

brothers, sisters, children and parents.

'The mayor of New York, at the 10th anniversary

'of the World Trade Center bombing, what's he going to say?'

How do words do it? What does he turn to? He's a smart guy.

He turns to Shakespeare.

At the end of Macbeth, Shakespeare says, try not to grieve with

the same intensity that you loved, for then it would be unbearable.

Let us recall the words of Shakespeare.

"Let us not measure our sorrow by their worth.

"For then it will have no end."

When they lose a loved one, when words fail,

Shakespeare provides us with the insight that we need

to understand so many parts of our lives.

Somebody said once, current events stay exactly the same.

'There's always wars and there's always people desperate.'

If you really want to change any of all that, then you need

to change it in your heart, and that's where poetry comes.

That's where Shakespeare's most valuable.

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