MacBeth hath Murdered Sleep

It was a dark and stormy night. 

We walked the gray streets of Chelsea under a steady drizzle of rain as we gazed upon the generic building fronts hoping to arrive at our destined address sooner rather than later.  It was just cold enough for the rain to be unwelcomely chilly, like little specks of recently-melted ice oozing upon us.

We arrived at a warehouse attended by two men clad all in black.  “Are you looking for the McKittrick hotel?”

Upstairs, a gay lounge decorated with an eye towards thirties glamour is hopping.  A four-piece jazz band plays while a singer lovingly croons period music, a bartender dressed in spats serves up cocktails, and a woman in a blue sequined gown slinks around from table to table asking if you are ready to join the party yet.

By now, anyone even remotely connected to the theatre has likely at least heard about the Punchdrunk theatre company’s immersive theatre experience “Sleep No More”.  The New York revival (currently playing at the McKittrick Hotel on W. 27^th street) is a re-make of the phenomenon which hit Boston in October of 2009 (ran Oct. 8, 2009 – Feb. 7, 2010 at The Old Lincoln School in Brookline).  To support the sheer amount of space required for the endeavor, Punchdrunk has taken over three conjoined Chelsea warehouses.  According to the New York Times, 200 unpaid volunteers spent approximately four months meticulously putting the over-100 rooms in the hotel together.  And believe you me it shows.

As you enter the hotel, you are given a white Venetian mask which you are asked to keep on during the duration of the production (my comrades with glasses reported that this made things a little difficult for them).  You are asked not to speak, and (as usual) to silence your cell phones.

You are then ushered into a large freight elevator where a porter randomly assigns chunks of the party to begin their journey at different floors.  We held hands to keep from getting separated (by the by, if you do go, go with a very small group or decide that you will get separated and agree to meet at the bar afterwards – it’s difficult to keep track of people in the dark when everyone’s wearing the same white mask and nobody is allowed to speak). 

You enter a veritable labyrinth of rooms (environments really) where you are permitted to touch, move, examine and explore.  We found everything from a foggy London street, to a taxidermist’s shop, an apothecary with dried herbs hanging from every available surface, a hedge maze, a ballroom, a Victorian hospital, a Victorian asylum, Macduff’s children’s rooms, to a large room with a bathtub filled with bloody water (I take this to be the Macbeths’ room).  In every room there is something to discover (some of my favorite discoveries were hand-written letters strewn about the place including the famous letter which MacB writes his Lady Wife – “They met me on the eve of ascension…”). 

As though the living museum aspect of this weren’t enough to sate the rampant voyeur, there is a human aspect as well.  Actors dash about around you (easy to spot – they’re the ones without the masks) and you can choose to follow them and watch them meet up with other actors to portray wordless scenes in various environments of the hotel.  Amongst some of the scenes we saw were the famous Macbeth banquet, a couple dancing in the ballroom, the Witches’ first encounter with Macbeth (complete with shot roulette), and the murder of Duncan.

I really can’t describe to you how wonderfully creepy the entire experience was.  Imagine floating about darkened rooms, not knowing where you will end up when you turn a corner, constantly meeting with white-masked individuals who are somehow comforting rather than terrifying, and occasionally being grabbed by actors who seem to appear from nowhere.  Perhaps the highlight of our time in the hotel came when we were attempting to find our way out.  We had reached the stairway and were trying to follow an actor one way (at the back of the white-masked cloud) when a woman’s scream echoed through the hall.  We all looked at each other, about-faced, and (like good heroes) ran towards it to find Macbeth standing over the body of a very pregnant Lady Macduff.  Somehow, the knowledge that we had just missed the murder (even if there was nothing we could have done about it) sank sickly into my gut.  Had there even been anyone there to observe her last moments?  Had she expected to see him coming round the hall?  Had she greeted him or did he surprise her?  And did she try to fight him off or gracefully accept her fate?

Now this is theatre.

The experience jostled me.  As we explored the different rooms, there was no doubt that I was moved; to tears, terror, laughter, excitement, suspense, pity and everything in between.  Being able to touch and be touched by what was going on brought the story home to me in a way that I’ve never experienced before.  Of course, there isn’t really a cohesive story.  There is no set path for a visitor to explore, there is no pre-determined way to experience the hotel.  Proprietors estimate that each guest only sees 1/16^th of the total experience.  And I won’t say that at times I wasn’t left wondering “so what does this have to do with Macbeth?”  But even in those times, I was too enraptured with what was going on around me to mind too horribly much.

Some reviewers find that Shakespeare haunts the attraction rather than is the attraction.  I don’t entirely disagree with them, but I find it difficult to lend their argument full credence.  Certainly liberties were taken with “Sleep No More”, and there are things which still don’t make sense to me.  That, however, is what I think holds the greatest appeal.  The entire thing is a puzzle which can be solved one of ten billion ways and it is up to each individual to determine her own experience and what that experience means.

When I left the hotel I was exhausted.  I felt like my mind was going to leak out my ear.  I had a difficult time forming coherent sentences, and we drove home through the now-torrential thunderstorm in almost complete silence.  As I collapsed into my bed that evening, all I could think was “Macbeth hath murdered sleep.”

…for that… I slept like a baby.  Despite having bizarre blood-soaked dreams with figures in white Venetian masks and random time-traveling with an eye towards steam-punk style globetrotting antics. 

Go.  Seriously.  Find some way to get there.  This is a veritable revolution in the way audiences experience Shakespeare and I can only hope that this cutting edge cuts deeply into the fabric of American Theatre.  I don't think that saying "I will cheat on the bard" works here because technically I didn't really.... it's more like having a tryst with his similar-yet-different twin brother.

Brush up on your Shakespeare

Call it a hot topic, a pet peeve, or a hobby, but I collect Shakespearean misquotes.  Maybe it’s an extreme expression of my own Shakespearean arrogance, but I especially like when I find misquotes in historical documents or influential literature.

Misquotes fall into one of two general categories.  The first category encompasses words quoted correctly but used entirely incorrectly (the classic example of this is “wherefore art thou Romeo” (Romeo and Juliet 2.2) being quoted to mean “Romeo, where are you?” rather than “why are you Romeo Montague?”).  The second misquote category is for instances in which someone quotes words that are similar to Shakespeare but not exactly the Bard verbatim (i.e. “Alas Poor Yorick I knew him well” rather than what Hamlet actually says; “Alas Poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio…” (Hamlet 5.1)). 

Today’s offender comits a misquote belonging to the second category.  English Romantic Hannah More was not a stupid woman.  She was educated (unusual for women at that time), spoke Latin, was published several times over, and hung out with Samuel Johnson and David Garrick.  However, in her 1799 piece Structures on the Modern System of Female Education written in reaction to Wollstonecraft’s famous Vindication of the Rights of Women, Moreexecutes a grievous Shakespearean misquote.  In chapter eight, More talks about women writers and novelists.  In an attempt to demonstrate her point about the prevalent fear that too much reading turns women into rampant novelists, she cites two infamous stories: The Iliad and Macbeth.

More claims:

“The glutted imagination soon overflows with the redundance of cheap sentiment and plentiful incident, and by a sort of arithmetical proportion, is enabled by the perusal of any three novels, to produce a fourth; till every fresh production, like the prolific progeny of Banquo, is followed by ‘Another, and another, and another!’ “.

It actually took me some time to verify that this was a misquote because it sounded so familiar.  After a little research, I understood why.

More is confusing two passages from Macbeth.  The story she tells surrounding the quote is the story of 4.1 in which the Witches summon forth specters to show Macbeth the future.  After having been shown the armed head, the bloody child, and the crowned child holding a branch and being told famously “none of woman borne shall harm Macbeth” (4.1 1621-22) and “Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Byrnam Wood, to high Dunsmane Hill Shall come against him” (4.1 1635-37), eight ghostly kings appear.  Banquo appears last with a mirror in his hand which shows Macbeth Banquo's progeny through the ages.  Kings upon Kings, all of Banquo’s line.  Obviously this does not bode well for the “immortal King of Scotland”.

Macbeth does use the word “another” during this sequence, but not in the way that More recalls.  Here is what he says:

Thou art too like the Spirit of Banquo: Down:

Thy Crowne do's seare mine Eye-bals. And thy haire

Thou other Gold-bound-brow, is like the first:

A third, is like the former. Filthy Hagges,

Why do you shew me this? --- A fourth? Start eyes!

What will the Line stretch out to'th' cracke of Doome?

Another yet? A seauenth? Ile see no more:

And yet the eighth appeares, who beares a glasse,

Which shewes me many more: and some I see,

That two-fold Balles, and trebble Scepters carry. (Macbeth 4.1 1659-68)

While there are many words here, we only find the barest hint of More’s “authoritative” line of text.  Macbeth uses the word “another” once in the seventh line of this passage, though he implies the word several times more.  

At first, I was satisfied with this answer, but something was nagging me.  More’s quote still sounded so achingly familiar.  It took me a moment before I realized why that was.  More seems to have conflated this speech with another, more famous, speech of Macbeth’s.  Take a gander at what Macbeth says when news is brought to him of his wife’s demise:

She should haue dy'de heereafter;

There would haue beene a time for such a word:

To morrow, and to morrow, and to morrow,

Creepes in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last Syllable of Recorded time:

And all our yesterdayes, haue lighted Fooles

The way to dusty death. Out, out, breefe Candle,

Life's but a walking Shadow, a poore Player,

That struts and frets his houre vpon the Stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a Tale

Told by an Ideot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing. (Macbeth 5.5 2337-2349)

(….I know that you didn’t really need to read that entire speech, but I can’t help myself.  It’s one of my favorites.)

Especially pay attention to the third line of Macbeth’s infamous sound and fury speech.  Familiar, no?  Apparently More did have a head for Shakespeare, a pretty good one at that since she remembered the particulars of an oft-forgotten bit of text.  Her recollection wasn’t perfect though because she super-imposed the words of one of the most famous canonical works onto a less-known bit of plot advancement.  How embarrassing!

I can’t help but laugh a little as the final implications of More’s misquote are that these ill-fated books by women writers are merely bits of fluff.  “Tales told by idiots”.  Far from being the enlightened pieces of literature that so frightened men of Eighteenth Century England, literate women were fated to write novels “full of sound and fury signifying nothing”.  Perhaps More’s misquote was more of a Freudian one.  After all, her primary reaction to Wollstonecraft’s work was “Rights of women!  We shall be hearing of the Rights of Children next!”.  I wish there was a more authoritative way to enter More’s mind regarding this little bit of inconsistency; it would have at least given the feminists something else to bicker about.

I think the moral of the story is (once again) if you’re going to quote him, quote him right.  More may not have had the benefit of the internet, but you certainly do!  There are plenty of free textual resources out there, and I am always willing to play dramaturge for inquisitive minds.

famous last words

Yesterday, a member of my family passed away. It wasn’t unexpected, it wasn’t tragic (as far as death goes), it just was. People die. It is the ultimate punctuation to life. The period, question mark, or exclamation point to our time here upon this mortal coil.

I got the inevitable phone call (of course while I was driving, ain’t that the way things go?), I cried a little, and then I got to thinking. Here was a man who knew he was going to die. He was in the hospital and all signs were pointing at the hereafter. What does one say in those situations? There’s not much to be done, clearly, when you know you are running out of breathe and that your thought cannot sustain itself to another line. But there is still time for a few more words, a poignant tid-bit, a grand exit perhaps. At the very least one final jab at the world…

In Shakespeare, people die a lot. It’s the nature of the beast when you write Renaissance tragedy. Sometimes these deaths are expected, sometimes they are not. This passing within my life got me to thinking, what do the characters of the most eloquent man in the history of the English language say when their time is up?

Perhaps the most famous last words are spoken by Hamlet;

If thou did'st euer hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicitie awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in paine,
To tell my Storie….
O I dye Horatio:
The potent poyson quite ore-crowes my spirit,
I cannot liue to heare the Newes from England,
But I do prophesie th'election lights
On Fortinbras, he ha's my dying voyce,
So tell him with the occurrents more and lesse,
Which haue solicited. The rest is silence. O, o, o, o.

(Hamlet, V ii, 3832-4847)

Of course, people usually only remember the first bit of this speech. The beautiful part. I can only hope to be half as eloquent on my death bed (or, as in Hamlet’s case, stretched across the ground after having lost a duel and watched my mother be poisoned by my step-father while he lies dying from my own blade). Hamlet recognizes he is dying, he concedes the Country to the invading forces, and then passes in moans of pain. In doing so, Hamlet denies his own decree. “The rest is silence” he says, before letting out increasingly weaker moans of distress. Even in death, Hamlet remains contrary- unable to follow his own orders. Unable to act upon what he has set out to do. He is consistent then, his true self upon the last moment of his life.

Another famous set of last words (though perhaps people don’t realize they are quoting a death rattle when they use them) are given by Richard Plantagenet:

A Horse, a Horse, my Kingdome for a Horse.

(Richard III, V iv, 3840)

This comes from a character who has consistently been able to connive and cannodle anything he wants out of any other character. Here, in death, he is stripped of that ability. He begs for the necessities of battle. Unable to acquire them, he is slaughtered by his own inadequacy (finally). These last words reflect the universe stripping Richard of his unrighteous gains in order to give him his just deserts. It is also a reminder that not everyone can predict their death and give an eloquent speech, sometimes we die pleading for what would save us.


Of course, how could I discuss death without discussing the most famous lovers of all time? Both Romeo and Juliet have memorable closing remarks, though in very different ways. Here is Romeo:

…Eyes looke your last:
Armes take your last embrace: And lips, O you
The doores of breath, seale with a righteous kisse
A datelesse bargaine to ingrossing death:
Come bitter conduct, come vnsauory guide,
Thou desperate Pilot, now at once run on
The dashing Rocks, thy Sea-sicke wearie Barke:
Heere's to my Loue. O true Appothecary:
Thy drugs are quicke. Thus with a kisse I die.

(Romeo and Juliet, V iii, 2969-2977)

Romeo is a fine balance between the lovely and the practical. He gives his rehearsed speech, he says his goodbye to the world, he even has one of the most dramatic toasts of all time. Then, finished, reality sets in. Much like Hamlet’s “O, o o o”, Romeo is unable to stop at merely the lovely. We find Romeo the human being in his last line- perhaps more revealing and more truthful than anything he had previously spoken. Far from the flowering poetry he spoke but a moment before, Romeo’s final utterance is shiveringly real. Succinct. To the point. It is his life, encompassed.

Juliet is similar:

Yea noise?
Then ile be briefe. O happy Dagger.
‘Tis in thy sheath, there rust and let me die.

(Romeo and Juliet, V iii, 3032-3035)

No long speech. No dramatic toast. Merely the truth. Instructions. Practicality. She has no time for anything else. She is blatant, straightforward and simple, yet poetic. There is nothing brutal about Juliet’s last words. They are kind, gentle, personifying the dagger as something to be rejoiced in rather than feared. It will free her, let her die rather than cause her to die. Juliet releases life as simply as an exhale and nearly as silently.

A less famous parting speech is spoken by Antony:

The miserable change now at my end,
Lament nor sorrow at: but please your thoughts
In feeding them with those my former Fortunes
Wherein I liued. The greatest Prince o'th'world,
The Noblest: and do now not basely dye,
Not Cowardly put off my Helmet to
My Countreyman. A Roman, by a Roman
Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my Spirit is going,
I can no more.

(Antony and Cleopatra, IV xv, 3062-3070)

Antony’s last words also mirror his life. They are strong, practical, and giving. He counsels his friends to remember him in a happier time, a mightier time. He turns the thoughts of Cleopatra to himself at his prime. He eulogizes himself, summing his life up in a necessarily succinct piece. Antony is not terse, but he certainly isn’t a Romeo. No flowers for him, but rather marble monuments. He dies a warrior and a prince. Though in the arms of his lover, he does not die swooning. He simply stops. He can no more.

Another warrior who exits the stage in a flight of glory is the notorious and infamous Macbeth:

I will not yeeld
To kisse the ground before young Malcolmes feet,
And to be baited with the Rabbles curse.
Though Byrnane wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou oppos'd, being of no woman borne,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body,
I throw my warlike Shield: Lay on Macduffe,
And damn'd be him, that first cries hold, enough.

(Macbeth, V viii, 2468-2475)

MacB actually runs off the stage fighting. He curses, spits, fights, and the next we see of him Macduff is carrying his head to the assembled Scottish Lords. This is again a character in the pinnacle of his life at the moment before his death; he is bright, bold, arrogant. He knows he will lose this battle, but he does not run. He throws up his shield and taunts his impending doom.

But what are Macbeth’s other choices? He certainly cannot grow anymore (as he is already King), he may fade back into obscurity rotting in some dungeon somewhere, but his story is over. Byrnane Wood has come to Dunsinane, the witches’ prophecies have all been fulfilled. There is no more destiny for Macbeth, no other part of the story for him. He must die, he has no choice in that. His only choice is how he does die.

So what will I say when facing down my death? Will I have flowery poetry, be begging for the necessities of life, be ready to face the reaper head on, eulogize myself? Will I find some truth about the deepest core of my humanity in that moment, or will I just fade into obscurity? Will it be offstage or onstage? Or will someone simply announce in the fifth act that “his commandment is fulfilled that Rosincrance and Guildensterne are dead” (Hamlet, V ii, 3864-3865). I don’t think there are any answers to these questions until the moment of their certainty, and I hope to be asking them for many years to come before that certainty arrives.

I will conclude this little jaunt into the macabre with a thought from Cymbeline. When Guiderius and Arviragus set Imogen (as Fidele) in her tomb in IV ii (lns 2576-2600), they speak the following poem because they have no voices to sing. My own voice does not feel the jubilation to be lifted into song at present. I am tired. I am sad. So, once again, I will rely upon Shakespeare to sing for me.

Feare no more the heate o'th'Sun,
Nor the furious Winters rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast don,
Home art gon, and tane thy wages.
Golden Lads, and Girles all must,
As Chimney-Sweepers come to dust.

Feare no more the frowne o'th'Great,
Thou art past the Tirants stroake,
Care no more to cloath and eate,
To thee the Reede is as the Oake:
The Scepter, Learning, Physicke must,
All follow this and come to dust.


Feare no more the Lightning flash.
Nor th'_all-dreaded Thunderstone.
Feare not Slander, Censure rash.
Thou hast finish'd Ioy and mone.
All Louers young, all Louers must,
Consigne to thee and come to dust.

No Exorcisor harme thee,
Nor no witch-craft charme thee.
Ghost vnlaid forbeare thee.
Nothing ill come neere thee.
Quiet consumation haue,
And renowned be thy graue.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

The literary gods have had mercy upon my poor soul and have sent a white knight to rescue me from the evil clutches of William Faulkner. My Spring classes have started and, while I am certain that should I be so inclined to I could find the time for good William, I simply have not managed to eek him back into my schedule.

Which means that I get to blog about something a little more upbeat than dreary and dreadfully long sentences: filicide!

Filicide is the act of a parent intentionally killing his/her child. Our good friend William (Shakespeare, not Faulkner) has several plays which feature filicide, probably the most obvious example being Titus Andronicus. Filicide is also featured in The Winter’s Tale (though Leontes does not actually manage to kill Perdita, he does try…) and perhaps our favorite Shakespearean foray into the macabre, Mr. and Mrs. Macers go to Scotland… otherwise known as Macbeth.

Bear with me for a moment, I promise this circles back to Scottish witches.

In a 1765 political pamphlet entitled A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (available here), John Adams speaks on (and debatably introduces) one of the most famous metaphors of the American Revolution: that of England as the mother country. He says, “Is there not something extremely fallacious in the common-place images of mother country and children colonies? Are we the children of Great Britain any more than the cities of London, Exeter, and Bath? Are we not brethren and fellow subjects with those in Britain, only under a somewhat different method of legislation, and a totally different method of taxation? But admitting we are children, have not children a right to complain when their parents are attempting to break their limbs, to administer poison, or to sell them to enemies for slaves? Let me entreat you to consider, will the mother be pleased when you represent her as deaf to the cries of her children, -- when you compare her to the infamous miscreant who lately stood on the gallows for starving her child, -- when you resemble her to Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare, (I cannot think of it without horror,) who…

‘Had given such, and knew How tender ‘t was to love the babe that milked her,’

“but yet, who could,

‘Even while ‘t was smiling in her face, have plucked her nipple from the boneless gums, and dashed the brains out.’ “

Oh ho Mister Adams. Well done, well done indeed.

I have not done extensive research on this subject (though trust me, I intend to- it’s on my “to-do” list along with Johnny Depp and getting a hobby that doesn’t involve libraries), but based upon the perfunctory looking-into I have done I will state that Shakespeare’s words have been used to back every side of every major political argument since just after the poor man died. Frequently in these instances, he is even misquoted- used by the rhetoricians in their time-honored tradition of bending the thoughts of others to their own means.

Now I don’t intend to go too deeply into this concept today, I will save that for when I have more to back my currently biased and unsubstantiated opinions. What I do want to point out is how seemingly random Mister Adams’ reference is.

The quote which Dear John pulls is perhaps the most debated line of Macbeth. It is the only reference to the pitter patter of small bloodthirsty Scottish feet in the play, neither MacB nor his Lady wife ever again mention their own progeny. Clearly there are no Macbeth children in the play, so if Lady M is telling the truth (and why should she not?) then she did have a child and something happened to it. Was it Macbeth’s? Was it a bastard child? How and when did it die? Is its death something which urged her to demand of the spirits to “Take my milke for Gall..” (I iv)? If she had had a child to tend to, would she still have been a murderous witch? These are questions we will never know the answers to, but directors and scholars will continue to debate them, making Adams’ quote one of the “hottest topics” of the Shakespearean cannon.

So John Adams uses the most famous line of one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays in his pamphlet. Why?

Politicians invoke Shakespeare like they invoke a God. Shakespeare is a higher intellectual authority, a literary deity. You can no more trump Shakespeare than you can deny Barthes’ Eiffel Tower. Politicians bank on that. Invoking Shakespeare lends an intellectual superiority. “Not only do I understand him, but he is on my side”. It brings to the proverbial room a discomfort, what do you say to Shakespeare? You can’t rebut him, you can’t discredit him, the best you can hope for is to come back at him with another of his own set of words and hope it holds up in an epic battle with himself (much like this).

Perhaps what startled me the most about Mister Adams’ reference is that he is one of the greatest rhetoricians of history. Here he is, leaning upon the words of Shakespeare (not even unpacking them mind you, just sticking them in his pamphlet) to help him make a tangential point. This either means that Mister Adams recognized a tactic which works and made use of it, or he was just out of creative things to say that day. I’m going to put my money on the first one, but either way, John Adams could certainly have used some time to brush up on his Shakespeare. MacB is no more a play about filicide than Othello is a play about a handkerchief. In addition, I’m not entirely certain how comfortable I am with the metaphor of England as Lady M and the States as the otherwise-unmentioned MacBaby. Certainly we deserve more regard than a single line in passing. We are (and were even in 1765) a large political force. Perhaps Adams is invoking it to suggest that England neglects America just as Shakespeare neglects Baby MacB. They will give us no answers, they recognize us only as an allegory of their success in failure, and they sure as hell won’t admit to having us in polite company.

So kids, today’s moral (brought to you by our good friend the second president of the United States and the letter “S”) is: Shakespeare is your rhetorical buddy. Use his powers well and you too may someday aspire to political greatness.