Text Stage and Screen

¶ … Screen

Shakespeare's rhetoric has always astounded his contemporary audiences through his almost supernatural ability to perceive and present the universality of human nature on stage, regardless of the time his characters lived in.

The three different types of techniques used in rendering the play to the public are different, but related art forms: literature, theater and film. They reflect their author's or directors' vision of the story originally presented by Shakespeare on stage at the Globe, in London, at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Kings of Scotland, England, and later Great Britain, had always been challenged in keeping their place on the throne and Shakespeare himself lived through times that were still full of intrigue and plotting against the sovereign. Mary Stuart, accused of plotting against the queen of England, Elisabeth I, had been executed in 1587, still a vivid memory for many who attended the shows put on stage at the Globe.

The Londoners in Shakespeare's time were thus no strangers to the intrigues at the royal courts. The way kings feared for their lives, while princes or any of those who could raise a claim to the throne were wowing their nets, making allies in order to reach the final goal: get the throne and make sure they had a valid line of descendants, often appears depicted in Shakespearean plays. From this point-of-view, the history of Scotland and England was a little different than the history of the rest of the world ever since there was something to be shared between two or several lines of royal descendants.

Faulkner once said that the best literature comes out of the conflicts of the human heart with itself. Shakespeare's rhetoric masters the human tragedy at all levels: the inner world of the human mind and the human heart as well as the exterior consequences of the human acts and the development of the relationships between those caught by history in the same boat by fateful circumstances. Willingly or unknowingly, people pay the price for their vices and their virtues. Macbeth the play illustrates the lesson us humans learn too late: everything comes with a price. Polansky's film, Macbeth, takes this lesson a step further and puts things into the perspective of the randomness and thus frailty of the human life. The absurd in the human life, illustrated by a history of bloodshed, is splattered on Polansky's screen.

Macbeth was written in an age when superstition was second nature, people accused of witchcraft were in danger of a dreadful death and natural disasters were usually explained by the intervention of supernatural forces. Death was a constant and the Globe was in fact the second stage, while the first known to Englanders was the scaffold, or any place destined for an execution. Moreover, the executions of those considered unworthy of a dignified death were disemboweled and their corpses were dismembered and exposed in public places. Life was short in Elizabethan England and manmade causes made it even shorter.

Shakepeare's Macbeth explores what happens behind those actions, inside the tormented souls that aspire greatness and shed the blood of their human fellows with disrespect for the intrinsic value of the human life. Everyone appears to be replaceable, humanity looses what had distinguished it from the animal world where everything is settled with a fight and the death of the adversary means the triumph of another one's genes. But even in the animal world there are rules even if animals don't have a conscience.

Macbeth's world seems to be reigned by the spirits of evil, no one escapes their spell and not even Macbeth's death does not succeed to wash all the sins in order to make place for a better world, free of the dominating powers of every conceivable human vice. Some scholars have reached the conclusion that Macbeth's death and his subsequent beheading are placed behind the scenes because Shakespeare wanted to suggest his character was not worthy of a dignified scene of death, in the open. He had Macbeth slain instead in a hidden place, a king who lost the right to die with honor.

Beside Shakespeare's intentions to punish his main character in more than one way, there are also technical conditions to be considered when analyzing the scene of Macbeth's beheading. The technical conditions at the Globe in the seventeenth century, as developed as they may have been compared to those other theaters in the country had at the time, were less likely to allow a director to create a credible beheading scene. Moreover, people were making distinctions between the real world and the world of entertainment. On the other hand, fake blood was also used on stage in Shakespeare's time, thus Shakespeare's choice of spearing the public of both Macbeth's death and beheading scene could be partially explained by his wish to punish him with a hidden death, in the spirit of all the deaths Macbeth inflicted upon those who became his victims.

In the scene of the fight, Macduff is asking his opponent to give up all pretense of kingly dignity and reveal his real identity: "Then yield thee, coward, / And live to be the show and gaze o' the time: / We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, / Painted on a pole, and underwrit, / 'Here may you see the tyrant" (Shakespeare, Macbeth). During the next scene, Macduff produces Macbeths head as the necessary condition to be met before Duncan's successor, Malcom, could be crowned as king of Scotland.

Macbeth's death is not the symbol of evil confronted and vanquished by the forces of good. Ross, the companion of kings, regardless of their entitlement to their throne, the messenger who brings news of death, the man who does not hesitate to turn on his cousin's innocent family and become accomplice in the murder of children and women, is present in the final scene of Malcom's coronation. Macduff himself is having the blood of his offspring and wife on his hands since he fled the country leaving them in the hands of his enemies. As long as Shakespeare leaves Ross and Macduff to participate in the new order and stand at the side of the new king, there is a sign that evil has not been vanquished. One tyrant had perished, but others might be born.

The ephemerid human life is in Shakespeare's plays generally and in Macbeth in particular a constant on stage, reflection of the thoughts of the audiences return to their own stage, to confront the precariousness of their own reality after the theater doors had closed. According to Ivo Strecker and Steven Tyler, the novelty in Shakespeare's plays comes precisely from his art of rhetoric, his ability to draw the audience onto the stage, compared to the mediaeval plays or the ones that will follow in the baroque period: "there is however a difference: medieval comments on life as an unreal show were always extra-dramatic; Shakespeare's are made within the framework of the drama, and spoken with vividly imagined spoken personae. So they open up for the audience potential dimensions of reality rather than shutting the world off and turning away from it" (Strecker, Tyler, 2009, p. 104). The audience is thus actively participating in the story intended to unfold on stage and Shakespeare is as always counting on a highly active and intelligent audience with a keen sense of perception. The brilliant lines in his plays are not wasted on people who are unable to understand those experiences and use their own imagination, reflection, torments and dreams in order to be able to relate to those who are tormented, dream and suffer on stage. "In the wooden O. Of the Elisabethan public theaters, the spectators were in a close and delicate relation with the drama, neither themselves part of it, like medieval audiences, nor entirely separate, but held in an "equilibrium of involvement and distance" (Righter 1962, 1967: 184) that was gradually lost after Shakespeare's death in 1616"(Strecker, Tyler, 2009, 105).

Shakespeare's audience received a different kind of speech and representation on stage, according to the evolution society had made from the medieval thinking to that of the Renaissance. Londoners, smart city people, were more motivated by all the advances of science and technology to start to question the old order of things and to change their views of their own place in relation to the rest of the world as well as with God.

The aforementioned technical difficulties of staging a beheading during Shakespeare's life and the conventions of the stage might have had a contribution to the author's choice not to present the actual beheading on the stage. On the other side, the fact that the audience does not even see Macbeth hurt or killed is also an indicator of the fact that Shakespeare wanted to keep his death in the shadow where he belonged due to all his previous murders. Ross' dialogue with his father in the play is punctuated by reflections on the dark side of the world: "Ah, good father, / Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act, / Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock, 'tis day, / And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp: / Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame, /

That darkness does the face of earth entomb, / When living light should kiss it?" (Shakespeare, Scene IV). The scruples, hypocrite and cynical Ross has his own fears and questions regarding the order of things. As much as he lacked all traces of humanity, he was able to see that those whom he accompanies in their evil doings are doomed themselves. Even the animal world seems superior to the human race as it is represented by Macbeth, his wife and those who support them. Ross remarks to his father that even the animals are acting strange and go mad following these cruelties inflicted by humans upon their fellow humans: "And Duncan's horses -- a thing most strange and certain-- / Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, / Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, / Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make / War with mankind" (idem), while his father goes further and answers: "Tis said they eat each other" (idem). This is the place where Shakespeare conceives a world going mad, void of its laws, pray to the randomness of erratic human behavior, led by supernatural forces that feed upon the souls of those who are obsessed with power.

Some scholars have questioned the dramatic characters of Macbeth and his wife as characters suitable for a tragedy. Russell Jackson considers Macbeth a predominantly "political play," written for James I who was no different than his ancestors: afraid for his place on the throne, preoccupied by supernatural forces, human being who believed to have a divine right to be the king, but had also the weaknesses and vices of a man obsessed with power and sometimes overridden by fear for his own life and destiny.

The staging of Macbeth is surrounded by a sense of mystery up until today. The superstitions that were in their natural setting in the seventeenth century have dwelled into the twenty-first century and as long as people will be inclined to listen to stories related to the past productions of Macbeth onstage, they will be surprised to find out about misfortunes that occurred during the staging off the play, starting with the times Shakespeare himself was directing his plays.

Macbeth became the indisputable symbol for the dark side of the world and it appears to create a fascination for the human as well as supernatural forces that united created a medium suitable for hell rather than this earth.

The translation from paper and respectively stage to the screen made Shakespeare's universal play suitable for the audiences of the twentieth century. Orson Wells' Macbeth came on screen after two world wars had ravaged the world and challenged people's ability to comprehend the immensity of human suffering at the hand of other fellow humans. The unspeakable acts of cruelty and the new concept of genocide gave a hard blow on the Europeans who thought they had entered the twentieth century as people free of the cruelties of a world left behind by modernity.

Personalities of the twentieth century obsessed with power and their role as nothing less than the center of the universe, offered their features to match Macbeth's own obsessions and Wells blended them into a character that dominates the whole film: "The film contains some five hundred shots, and the majority focus directly on Wells as Macbeth or include him in the mis-en-scene. Frequently low-angle or high-angle shots or deep focus close up distort his size in comparison to the other figures. It is Wells' face and voice, directly and voice-over, that dominate the film. The rest belong to the faceless masses" (Jackson, 2007, p. 129). The main character that Shakespeare has let unpunished in spite of his own evil doings, Ross, the symbol of evil dwelling into the new world, is dismissed entirely from Wells' film. He chose instead to focus on Macbeth as the symbol of everything that went wrong with the human race.

Jackson points out Wells' choice of leaving Macbeth's destruction entirely to the witches instead of letting the army, Macduff and Malcom give him the final blow, as presented in the original play. This role of unleashing the dark forces trapped in Macbeth' soul and then letting him perish by his own dark forces is also obvious in Shakespeare's play, especially in the case of Lady Macbeth's death. Her husband is effectively killed by the hand of those who are the avengers of their families' death, but he reaches this point because of his own vices and obsessions. The witches only bring him to the point of no return, they seize his devilish side and play on the tune they know it will take him to his destruction. The final blow in the play will be given by a human hand though. In Well's film they represent the bad side of the human race that remains a constant even if its human representatives are physically removed from the stage. The witches continue in their existence in Wells' film, just as Ross continues to serve the mighty in Shakespeare's play.

Shakespeare's lesson that comes at a cost is best taught in Polansky's film made after Macbeth. He accentuates symbols that Shakespeare only suggested where he finds it appropriate, making the audience aware of the struggles of the human heart in fight with itself and the human mind trapped in its own cellar, in impossibility to see clear and detach itself from the madness that is slowly but surely taking it hostage. Polansky also gives his viewers a partial explanation for the madness that will conquer the two Macbeth: their lack of heirs. They will eventually hate and wish to destroy every one that has what they will never beget: children. They also loose all hopes for being physically able to enjoy their marriage since their madness makes them incapable of tenderness even towards each other.

Polansky is very careful with the details revealing the Macbeths' inner world: "From the outset we are included in their conspiracy, wayfarers on heir self-imposed psychological journey into emotional isolation and self-imprisonment. By the end lady Macbeth has cast off crown and robes[…] to become a restless sleepwalker, vulnerable in her nakedness […] and her fragile corpse barely warrants a comment in passing from Macbeth" (Jackson, 2007, p. 132).

In Polansky's screen version of Macbeth, Ross becomes one of the characters that are crucial to the message of the play, compared to his absence from Wells version. He hands to Malcom the crown which stood on the head of the man he served a short while ago, a man that in the end looses his head. The final scene of the fight between Macbeth and Macduff is taking advantage of the film techniques and keeps the tension up to the very end. Polansky develops it as a scene that may have a different outcome. Macbeth is still very confident and even when he finds out that the prophecies will be fulfilled, he is still fighting as if he had a chance to overcome his adversary. The viewer knows that even if he would kill Macduff, he will be lynched by the mob cheering for his opponent. He is nevertheless permitted an honorable fight that indicates he might finish in dignity he is not worthy of. At some point, Macduff is dropping his sword and in a desperate attempt to replace it, he takes a log and uses it as a sword, symbolism of the woods that came to the castle and fulfilled the witches' prophecies. Macbeth never stood a chance and the witches intentionally left that part out when they announced him that he would become king, in the introductory scene.

Ewa Mazierka considers the high degree of subjectivity in Polansky's choices to adapt the play for the screen. She underlines the heavy accent the director places on Macbeth's inner voice and the elements of the film that support the argument that the world is presented in this film mainly through Macbeth's eyes. However, compared to Wells' version, Polansky's is more generous with the rest of the world, even if it appears as presented through the main character's eyes. While Wells' Macbeth is indifferent to everything that does not concern him, Polansky's is able to perceive and analyze characters and places outside his inner world. An additional argument to that theory is "the fact that we accompany Macbeth even after his beheading [which] also testifies to Polansky's interpretation of Macbeth not so much as a tale about Macbeth, but as Macbeth's own story, his autobiography" (Mazierka, 2007, p. 149).

Everything is about brutality in this film and the scene Macbeth' beheading is continuing in this spirit. On stage, in Shakespeare's time, such a scene would have asked a lot of indulgence from the audience since the theatrical techniques were very limited and optical illusions were pretty much limited as well. Polansky finally gives his public the response to its thirst for blood. Revenge was the main course on the menu of this play and the film is paying tribute to the natural inclination of the human race to ask an eye for an eye. Witnessing the cold-blooded murders ordered by Macbeth makes the public expect to see his punishment in order to enjoy the end of the film. We see him stabbed, climbing the stairs as if he still had a chance to save himself and finally falling with his head hanged above the wall, as if he presented himself to his executioner. Macduff's sword cuts clean, his head falls to the ground leaving a thick trace of his blood on the wall. We see the head that so dearly kept the crown on, rolling in the on the dirty floor. Instead of the symbolism of a head on a spear presented to the crowd, as the indications in the play are, Polansky's public got what it had wanted all along: the actual scene of the execution and the blood, the head rolling on the floor and the corpse falling from the stairs it climbed moments ago.

James Kendrik makes an analysis of the escalation of violence in the American film during the seventies, compared to the old cinema school: "the new Hollywood filmmakers reimagined screen violence by bringing it to the force of their most important films in ways that both highlighted and subverted the established and understood narrative and thematic tropes of violence in Hollywood filmmaking; at the same time they gave it a brash visual intensity and level of gut-churning graphic realism that had, with only a few exceptions, never bee seen before" (Kendrik, 2008, p. 23). POlansky's use of naturalism in the scene where Macduff cuts off Macbeth's head is in exactly what Kendrik noticed as the added element of novelty to the language tools of the original script. Kendrik underlines that the change of expression did not mean that Hollywood productions became more violent, but that they became more explicit. Considering the fact that some horror films barely show any graphic violence and yet they are able to raise the intensity to extreme levels, Kendrik's point may be true up to a point.

Polansky had created his Macbeth for a certain audience and there are several factors that could have led him to adopt the idea of showing Macbeth's execution to the public. As Kendrik points out, the new economic conditions that affected the film industry by the end of the sixties in America had demanded the new filmmakers to look for new audiences and thus to change and adapt their language, depending on the audience they had in mind. The new film directors that started to show their creations in the early seventies were also willing to make a brand of their name and thus, scenes like that of Macbeth' beheading were carrying a personalized message to the public and braded the name of its director on the viewer's retina. The public cannot certainly be accused of lack of imagination and the addition of graphic image represented a new film technique in Polansky's case, rather that a drop in his trust in the intellectual capabilities of the public. Since, unlike Shakespeare's contemporaries, those who saw the film in 1971 were certainly strangers to scenes of such violence as a beheading, the message contained in this violent scene becomes more powerful than the mere suggestion of it. People who were attending executions as any other show at the Globe in the sixteenth and seventeenth century were surrounded by violence and they did not necessarily need its graphic depiction on stage. Polansky's contemporaries, living in a world and an age that made real shows of executions impossible to comprehend, needed the final scene where Macbeth' head falls to the ground as a reassurance that no one is invincible and at the same time that Macbeth was human and not the devil himself. His blood proves his humanity while it helps the public gasp in a sigh of relief that he is finally gone.