Macbeth Response

Macbeth is over. We are no longer warriors, or witches, or thanes, or princes. Gone are the swords, and the crowns, and my cape, and my cane. We will never again have to cover ourselves in fake blood, or (god forbid) pleat a kilt. I have not reason to rise up on a platform and roar at the beldams below me. Nobody will ever again make one little slip-up and basically ruin the rest of the play, leaving them and their fellow cast members to go out into the hallway and dissolve into tears because we thought we had sabotaged what was left of the of the performance, although in the end, it was probably fine.Vanished is my tangled halo of teased hair, powder-white skin, and crimson blood dripping from my lips. I will never again be a gracious king, murdered as he slept, or a enchantress queen, bellowing at her incompetent servants. I will never again be a part of this wonderful show, and it breaks my heart.

Macbeth is a play about greed and revenge, murder and treason. Macbeth is a character who undergoes one of the greatest developments in all of Shakespeare. He begins as a general, returned from war, who is surprised that he has been promoted and granted a large area of land by the king, Duncan. He is visited by three witches, who tell him that he shall be king of Scotland someday. They also tell him that his best friends children will be kings as well. This is a turning point, where Macbeth becomes power hungry, suspicious, and presented with this moral dilemma; must he become king by action, and murder the present ruler, or will he become king if he does nothing, and leaves it all to destiny? He eventually becomes king by killing Duncan secretly, and blaming it on someone else. This starts a spiral of death, where he kills his best friend, his friend Macduff’s entire castle, and anyone who dares challenge him. Much of his beginning decisions are driven by his wife, Lady Macbeth, who orders him to kill Duncan and constructs a way to do it. However, later on in the play, Macbeth is driven by his own greed, and Lady Macbeth grows farther away from the conflict. She ends up committing suicide, because of guilt. Macbeth is told by spirits conjured by the queen of the witches, that he will not die until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane (his palace), and that no manborn of woman shall kill him. This lulls him into a false sense of security, because forests can’t move, right? everyone was born from a woman, right? A turn of events occurs when Macbeth’s enemy, Macduff, invades with his army discussed as trees and bushes so that nobody would notice them moving toward the palace slowly, and Macduff reveals that he was “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped” which is still technically birth, even if it is a c-section, but I didn’t write Shakespeare. He ends up killing Macbeth.

I find it fascinating that the year I did not get the character I wanted (Lady Macbeth, of course), was the one year I fell in love with the roles I played. While becoming an old man, when I played King Duncan, was tough and grueling, especially to keep up a hunchback the whole play, playing Hecate, the queen of the witches, really resonated with me, and I had so much fun transforming myself, not only physically, but mentally. I feel sorry for everyone I decided to growl at when I went outside for my lunch break in full hair, makeup, and costume. They looked terrified. And there was no better feeling in the world than to be high up on the platform, scowling down at the audience while bellowing lines I had worked so hard on. I learned what Macbeth really meant, I understood every part of it, I learned from my mistakes, but the biggest lesson I was taught? Don’t be disappointed in what you got. BE happy, because you can make it better. The praise I got from my cast, who worked just as hard as I did, and probably did an infinitely better job, who liked my performance, was worth more than any applause from the audience.