The Scottish Play

According to an article I read*, it is bad luck to say, "Macbeth" if you are around a stage production of, well, Macbeth. Instead, they call it "The Scottish Play" so that nothing bad will happen during the performance. I find this mildly amusing. Theater arts folks are usually liberal minded people--why are so many of them so superstitious? People can't say "Good luck", can't say "Macbeth"--give me a break. I also read that "Break a leg" comes from Shakespeare's time. Actors were told to "Bend their leg" which meant to take a deep bow, which means, "Have a good performance so that at the end you can take a bow and soak in the applause." Obviously, there is a great deal to learn about the theater and Shakespeare and Macbeth. Wish us luck!

Reading Macbeth

I am looking forward to posting my observations as I read Shakespeare's MacBeth. Last year, I encouraged my students to post often, but they mostly waited until they were nearly finished reading the whole play before they posted. This is contrary to the purpose of a blog, I feel. I want to encourage them to use a blog as a place to react to the text in real time. To encourage this, we will focus more on what I will call, "significant moments"--short instances that can be examined more closely.

One can take a single moment or line from Shakespeare and react to it out of its context. For instance, in Act 1 scene 1 a witch says, "When the hurly-burly's done, / When the battle's lost and won." Hurly-burly means busy or boisterous activity. She is referring to the battle going on down below where they are flying. Hurly-burly makes light of the fact that men are dying in a violent manner. I don't think the soldiers would consider what they are doing as a hurly-burly, but to the witches it is just a bunch of men throwing stuff around. Hurly comes from "hurl" which means throw. So the soldiers are truly hurling, throwing spears and other weaponry. I think this means that war is both dangerous and unnecessary business--lots of wasted energy and trouble, which is possibly the witches' business.