The death of Scots actor Nicol Williamson was reported on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. As described by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, “Nicol Williamson, a Mercurial Actor, Is Dead at 75” (Obituaries, p. A29), Mr. Williamson could be difficult to work with; I remember his performing I Hate Hamlet in the early ’90s, with it being the rare experience of the performer’s conduct overshadowing the show. Nonetheless, as Jason points out on the Wild Hunt, Williamson was Merlin in arguably the finest “King Arthur” film, and- as Mr. Weber considers, “perhaps because his aggrieved Scottish temperament seemed so suitable”- he played Macbeth more than once, notably in the BBC Shakespeare series. The YouTube clip that shows Macbeth’s pivotal meeting with the Witches (IV.i) demonstrates Williamson’s ferocious concentration as an actor: watch as the scene (and camera) basically settle onto his face, and admire as he holds the scene with his expressions, his thoughts, and his actor’s will. The depiction of the Witches is unique: more so than any other production that I have seen, this presents the Witches as village Wise-Women, positioning them against the Callanish Stones to reinforce their identities as ancient Forces upon the British Isles. (This is perhaps the most benign interpretation of the Three Witches that you are likely to come across.) But check out how this scene becomes about nothing but Mr. Williamson’s face, and his actor’s commitment to his part.
With so much interesting research emerging attesting to Magick-Workers in Early America, it seems undeniable that the Magickal Traditions of the Old World made their way into America through the immigration of European settlers. While such people may not have exerted monstrous amounts of influence in the settling of the New World (preferring, apparently, to seek out relatively unpopulated places such as the Appalachian mountains, or the mountains of the American Northeast, or at least in one case- to judge from the “Joshua Gordon Witchcraft Book” held at the University of South Carolina- the 1600s Southern frontier), it is noteworthy that we- meaning, Magickally-minded Folks, inclined towards the Old Ways- have had our place in America (hidden, secret, living “on the down-low”), but there, and hence, here.
Fascinating as that is, what really intrigues me is the extent to which early American Magick-Use reflects back upon the Europe of the late 1500s/ early 1600s- still the Age of Magick, with the Burning Times still going on (the 1600s, the first period of settlement in the New World, is also the last century of the Witch-Burnings). Early American Magick-Use provides another prism through which to judge the Magickal beliefs and practices of the Old World; what is most intriguing is the degree to which these beliefs and practices appear to involve Circle-Casting, or the Formation of a Magickal Circle-Space.
For instance, in The Silver Bullet and Other American Witch Stories, we learned of Magickal Folk-Beliefs carried into the Appalachian mountains by Irish, English, Scots, and German settlers- which apparently were preserved long enough to be recorded in the stories found in this book, which were generated in the 1930s. Another book, Signs, Cures, & Witchery, also finds copious amounts of Old World Magick-Belief transported into Appalachia- this time, specifically looking at the activities of German pioneers. What is especially interesting (to my mind) is the number of times that someone in The Silver Bullet describes casting a Magick Circle in order to perform Magick: casting a Magick Circle exactly as we are accustomed to casting Circles, but described in the context of Depression Era mountaintop Folk-Magick.
However, not surprising: if one considers the evidence that Circle-Casting was widely associated with Magick-Work in England during the Elizabethan Age of the late 1500s and the Jacobean Age of the early 1600s.
Circle-Casting- or Circle-Formation, as perhaps the case may be- divides in the Time into two categories: (1) the Grimoire-Tradition, carried in medieval grimoires innumerable issued throughout the Middle Ages; these will be the Traditions that seem to us most like those of the Gardnerians, the Alexandrians, and all those influenced by the writings of Gardner, Valiente, Crowther, the Sanders, the Farrars (et al), and which will be reflected by the learned elite of the medieval period, able to read said written occult-works, the Grimoires (2) as well as the Oral-Folk Culture Traditions carried by Oral-Folk Culture practitioners such as village Wise-Women and Cunning-Men; these are reflected in the “Witch” Plays (as opposed to the “Wizard” Plays, inspired by the educated Grimoire-Tradition), and are based upon the sometimes-raucous, often improvisational Tradition that we associate with “Energy-Raising.”
Perhaps the most famous example of the Elizabethan Grimoire-derived (Ceremonial-Traditional) Circle-Casting known to us is that presented to us by Marlowe in Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), in Act I, scene iii, lines 8-24: Faustus formally charges into being the Circle that he has transcribed on his floor (as per the illustration attached to the printed play, seen above). Being of the Christian Magick variety, this Circle is particularly “anagrammatized” with the Name of Jehovah, as well as laid out by the “figures of every adjunct to the Heavens, and characters of signs and erring stars”- that is, it has been made to resemble in miniature an outline of the Astrological Heavens themselves, in a very Microcosm/ Macrocosm, “As Above, So Below” sort of deal. This Circle is further empowered by calling in the Spirits of the Four Elements.
Caveat: as the Wikipedia entry on the play will tell you, Marlowe’s play was published in two versions, known as the Text A and the Text B versions: the Text A is thought to resemble more closely Marlowe’s original script, with Text B representing an “improved-upon” version of the play reworked after Marlowe’s untimely death. As the Wikipedia entry notes, there are differences between the two versions of the play- but as the Wikipedia entry fails to point out, in Text B (the text most often reproduced, as people tend to play it safe by putting into print the greatest possible number of words potentially committed by Marlowe to paper), the Names of only three of the Four Elements are called (“Earth” is omitted). Text A calls in all Four Elements- which makes the most sense- and demonstrates to us a genuine late 1500s Tradition of Consecrating a Magick-Circle by Calling In all Four of the Mystical Elements of Life. (The reason for “Earth’s” absence is surely as simple as, the type-setter blanked. Maybe it was getting close to lunchtime, and he was hungry and distracted.)
Another caveat: in the interest of being totally responsible in the transmission of Magickal Knowledge- Dr. Faustus’ Legend comes to us as the Supreme Example of the Perils of Trafficking with the Forces of Darkness. The Middle Ages took such things strenuously seriously, and so we have the cautionary Tale of Faustus: who was Fool enough to believe that he could contract with the Forces of [Christian] Hell and live to tell the tale.
In short, Faust represents the ultimate in Christian Theology cautioning one against Magickal Practicing. But you know what? Here’s how I look at it: Faustus actually ASKS the Devil to come into his Circle (the Devil being represented as the reptilian sort-of creature in the picture next to Faust, just outside of his Magickally Protective Circle). Never mind the Pagan Thealogical Question: Do we as Pagans even give credence to the Thought-Form of the Devil? (I, for one, do not, and therefore- it seems to me- avoid the obvious pratfall of Faust by Calling In only such Deities as Whom I judge to be Honorable and Just, and with Whom I feel comfortable that I have established a fair Working-Relationship.)
Another example of Circle-Casting in a play whose Cultural influence is extremely difficult to question, is that presented by Shakespeare in The Tempest (c. 1610). Although explained merely by a stage-direction- following Line 57, Act V, scene i: “They all enter the Circle which Prospero had made, and there stand charmed”- Prospero’s famous speech “Ye Elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves” is meant to be understood as a Circle-Invocation inspired by Ovid’s account of Medea’s Invocation to the Spirits of Nature in Metamorphoses. As represented in Julie Taymor’s 2010 movie-version starring (in a status-changing gender-bending 
performance) Helen Mirren as the Female Wizard Prospera, the speech is every bit a Circle-Invocation as much as that presented by Shakespeare’s contemporary Marlowe- but oriented from a very Nature-driven perspective. It demonstrates to us that- at least for Shakespeare, in the early 1600s- Circle-Casting could be thought effective if engaged purely from an orientation towards Nature, rather than from a strictly Ceremonial Traditional point-of-view. (It might be, if you watch enough productions of The Tempest, that you don’t see many examples of Prospero or Prospera actually Casting a Circle during this speech; I believe that is because so many people nowadays simply do not know what to make of the stage-direction “the Circle that Prospero had made,” having no cultural context through which to formulate the Magick-Circle. In short, I don’t think many theater-folk today understand a “Magick Circle,” and so, have no idea how to stage this segment of The Tempest.)
And then there is the Circle-Casting found in singular form in the “Witch-Plays” of the late 1500s-early 1600s: whereas the Grimoire-Traditions are preserved in written manuscripts read by the educated and the literate, the 
Ways of Witchcraft must have been maintained through oral Folk-Culture. Apparently there was, at least in England, a coherent system identified as “Witchcraft : the Witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd and The Masque of Queens, and Middleton’s The Witch all do the same thing as “Witchcraft” in all four plays, what we would consider to be the most significant Witch-Plays of the early 1600s. This involves forming a Magickal Circle- but unlike the Ceremonial Magicians, who enact recorded ritual in a dignified manner, the Witches generate their mystical Spaces through intention, rhythm, movement, music, and excitement: very much what we would term “Raising Energy.” So much folklore surrounds the idea that Witches (like Faeries) danced in Circles, that we should not be surprised to find Circle-Dancing associated with all these Jacobean Witches: the Witches in Macbeth (c. 1605), for instance, dance “hand in hand” in order to “wind up their Charm” in Act One, scene iii; similarly, in Act Four, scene i, they dance around their Cauldron (which will cause one to dance in a Circle) in order to “set the stage” for the Thane of Glamis and for the Spirits that they will raise for him, ending the scene by performing a last “antic Round,” or excited Circle-Dance.
The male Ceremonial Traditions of the late Middle Ages are driven by the performance of prescribed ritual; the female Witchcraft Traditions of Jacobean England are set in motion through “Energy-Raising” spectacles (as we would think of them); yet both Traditions depend upon an understanding of an enchanted, specialized (Circular) Magickal Space.
Far from being held super-secret, however, Magickal Traditions appear to have been openly embraced in England during the time of Elizabeth: there was a flourishing business of printing and selling pamphlet-edition Spell-Books and “How to” Magickal manuals, with George Lyman Kittredge providing many examples of “grass-roots” Magickal experimentation in Witchcraft in Old and New England. The fact that plays which deal with Magickal matters are clearly popular is an indication of the Elizabethan/ Jacobean interest in Magick, and the fact that Magickal Ceremonies are performed in Magickal Plays presented as popular theater plainly indicates all by itself a means of transmission of this knowledge.
Assuming that Circle-Casting is indeed well-established as late 1500s/ early 1600s English Magickal custom, we would imagine English settlers in the New World to transport faith in Magickal Circle-Casting with them into America: exactly as we seem to find in early 20th century Appalachia.
All of this might be understood as cultural encouragement to consider Circle-Casting as primary in the performance of the Magickal Arts.
The “Arts, Briefly” edition of Wednesday’s New York Times (Nov. 30, 2011, p. C3), compiled by Dave Itzkoff, reports that the Out-Gay and Scots actor Alan Cumming is bringing a new National Theater of Scotland production of Macbeth to the Lincoln Center Festival this summer; the trick is, Mr. Cumming is performing the show as a one-man turn, performing every role himself, including both Macbeth and his regicidal wife. On the one hand, this means a heck of a lot of lines to memorize, with no one else onstage to cover for you if you go up on one; at the same time, think about your streamlined productions (plus, as Mr. Itzkoff points out, lowering considerably the risk of someone’s saying the Name out loud). A clearly ambitious actor’s challenge (has anyone ever done Macbeth as a one-man show before? how will he kill himself as Lady Macduff? how will he duel himself as Macbeth and Macduff?), the greater curiosity is to see what Mr. Cumming does with the Three Witches (wonder if he interprets the so-called “Weird Sisters’ Charm” as an energy-raising spell? “Peace- the Charm’s wound up”). The production originates at the Tramway in Glasgow in June, then transfers to the Lincoln Center Festival, where it will play from July 5 to 14.
Accessible to anyone with a computer, the PBS Great Performances film-version of Patrick Stewart’s acclaimed Macbeth 
offers an excellent opportunity for Juggler readers to investigate the most famous Witch-story in the world (with the exception of The Wizard of Oz); the story of Macbeth is always going to be that of a man and three Witches. Excellent though Stewart and Kate Fleetwood are as the murderous couple (Ms. Fleetwood’s Sleepwalking Scene is now officially one of my favorites), I suspect it will be the Witches for whom Jugglers will wish to tune in; the problem is (here’s the rub), these particular Witches are difficult to get a handle on. They are primarily presented as Nurses, initially performing triage on the severely wounded soldier who describes the battle to King Duncan (and Macbeth’s heroism on the field).
However, after his report, the man goes into convulsions and the Nurses move in to “save” him- by sticking him in the neck with a lethal dose of something, causing his electrocardiogram to flatline. The “Nurses” then reveal themselves to be the Witches by pulling down their surgical masks and reciting the famous lines, When shall we Three meet again- in thunder, lightning, or in rain? They (then, wait for it) pull out the dead man’s heart, and outfitted with this grisly trophy, exit down the hospital corridor chanting, Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair!
Quite an introduction, right? We will next see them carrying bone-saws and carving knives, as they assemble a bizarre simulcrum of a man to present Macbeth (including their stolen organ, placed in mocking parody of a living heart). First, however, they recite the Weird Sisters Charm (often cut from productions), singing it as a plaintive bit of spell-craft, in a portion that (if excerpted) would serve as a fascinating bit in a montage of Famous Movie-Witch-Moments. The initial interview with Macbeth is very well-done, as the Three stop coming off like psycho-murderesses for a minute, and serve as the familiar Prophetic Sibyls of legend (is that redundant- “Prophetic Sibyl”?)
A certain logic appears abandoned, as the Three start turning up in Castle Macbeth, as kitchen-maids and serving-women (wait, first they’re Nurses, then kitchen-workers, and now they’re serving the Macbeths dinner?) An even greater lapse of logic appears committed when Macbeth goes to sit in his chair at the banquet- only to discover that the Three have seated themselves in it already (wait, they’re serving the meal- but they’re going to sit in his chair, first?) This makes sense, once one realizes that- having sat in his chair himself- Macbeth is now positioned to meet Banquo’s blood-splattered ghost.
We next meet
the Sisters in the famous Cauldron Scene- here performed with nary a vessel in sight (but rather, in the morgue of a hospital). Instead of tossing Magickal (albeit kind of gross) ingredients into their cauldron, the Witches appear to be suffering some sort of malfunction in their neural synapses or something. Once Macbeth enters the space (closed off by plastic curtains), the Three appear to defibrillate body-bagged corpses back into life long enough to utter the Three Enigmatic Prophesies.
It’s all deliberately quite a bit to take, and at first glance seems extremely sensationalistic and exploitative; it is hard to sell someone on the idea of Witches as ethically-driven Good Guys, standing in front of Patrick Stewart’s Witches with their carving knives and their plundered body-organs.
However- if we apply a Classical spin to these Witches, and conceive of Them as avenging Furies or tormenting Harpies: they begin to make sense, as Spirits drawn to this scene of criminality and murder- assuming for themselves the very instruments that Macbeth chooses for his crimes. Yes, these are Witches that hang out with body-carving utensils a lot- but body-carving utensils are Macbeth’s weapons of choice. Of course they stalk him down to his castle- because they are primeval Spirits of vengeful retribution. Yes, they spend a lot of time doing strange things with dead bodies- as does Macbeth himself, as he murders people violently out of life.
One can 
argue that the Witches do nothing more than mirror the Macbeths’ own actions; there is something supernatural about them, as they vanish in front of Macbeth’s eyes, and turn up in mysterious and incognito fashion at his home. In taking the soldier’s life, they establish themselves almost as Goddesses of Life and Death, easing the pain of his suffering and accepting his valiant spirit into their care. It is interesting that, of the three great tragedies, Hamlet, Lear, and Macbeth: there is no divine redemption in Lear; in Hamlet, there is Supernatural Justice in the form of the Ghost; but in Macbeth, there is Divine Justice (a Pagan Justice), in the form of the Weird Sisters.
Macbeth’s actions are those of a man who would seem to call Furies and Harpies upon his head. In the beginning of this Macbeth, there is a recurring shot of an elevator going down- just as Macbeth arrives descending in an elevator (uh, descent into violence, murder and cruel inhumanity, anyone?) After their regicide, we watch the Macbeths in their boudoir- a blazingly red boudoir (uh, red as the flames of hell, maybe?)
But at the end (in this movie)- the Witches re-arrive in a blaze of celestial light, to hold Macbeth’s gaze with grim pleasure as he realizes in a sick horror- Enough! His time has come to an end.
If there is anyone who makes sure that Macbeth gets his in the end: it is always going to be the Three Witches.
The most prolific and famous American Shakespearean until Joseph Papp- Orson Welles was able to to use his post-Citizen Kane fame in promotion of filmed Shakespeare. For his first such effort, he approached Republic Pictures, otherwise known for producing Westerns and Saturday-matinee serials. Excited by the prospect of working with a director of Welles’ prestige, and sold by his descriptions of an atmospheric film that welded Wuthering Heights with Bride of Frankenstein, Republic agreed to finance his project: 1948′s Macbeth.
Always a daredevil with these things, Welles promised to
have filming completed in three weeks; as a precaution, he had the actors pre-record their dialogue, and as an experiment with verisimilitude, established an across-the-boards Scottish “burr,” meant to suggest Scots dialect. A leading lady was next required; Tallulah Bankhead and Agnes Moorehead are two of the famous candidates considered. A Camp Goddess to Gay Men everywhere, the thwarted prospect of La Bankhead as the Scottish Queen is too agonizing to dwell over (although her bourbon-soaked Southern growl would have marked her more as a Queen of the Swanee than Scotland); Agnes Moorehead (famed, need I say, as Endora on Bewitched) also would have made a divinely purring villainess of a Queen.
As it was, Welles ended up going with a voice-actress from his radio days, who had never been onscreen before- either Bankhead or Moorehead would have been more interesting.
Anyway- Welles sets to filming, doing his Expressionist Film thing, with dramatically varying perspectives between objects in startling closeup and stuff in the far background, and he gets it done in twenty-three days.
The film was regrettably not well received (although its reputation has improved somewhat, as more modern audiences have a greater appreciation for the Avant-Garde). The modest resources of his studio proved limiting; the pre-recorded dialogue creates a disconnect between actor and speech; and the Scottish “accents” can be distracting. However, its Witches are among my favorites, perhaps because Welles conceived them as representatives of a pre-Christian Pagan religion (Druidic, in fact), oppressed by the Church (itself an intruding faith; hence the “Holy Man”- an invention of Welles’- who shows to shoo the Three away from the heath).
Perhaps because of this Druid-like approach, Welles’ Witches straddle that confused line between Mortal/Supernatural better than any other I can think of. They seem Creatures of the fog and the moors to a degree that other (Macbeth’s) Witches do not appear able to manage; I love the shot of them scurrying away into the mist, and get the image of crows or ravens, as they regroup to continue surveillance on Macbeth. There is something supremely Celtic in their interchangeable quality (three Goddesses who are One; One who is Three).
Welles’ genius for staging and pacing is on full display in the film’s beginning, which introduces the Witches, and which is handily found on YouTube. Welles
splices the Witches’ dialogue together from both the Cauldron Scene (IV.i) and their opening (I.i), starting his film off with the famous “Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble.” It introduces the Witches nicely, and then immediately sets up Macbeth’s meeting with them, forgoing the tedium of the long Exposition Scene. A really nice touch is Welles’ placing forked staffs in the Three’s hands (as above). I figure this must have been due to some remarkably thorough research- such forked staffs are commonly associated with Witches in illustrations from the late 1400s-1500s. It’s a little difficult to tell, but in the picture you see here, those staffs have a U- or horseshoe-shaped top to them; Ginzburg discusses such staffs in terms of both European Witches and the Eurasian Shamans who also carry them (Ecstasies, p. 136).
One thing about the
movie which has become famous: owing to the want of Republic’s costume-department, outfits were rented from elsewhere. When they showed up, it became apparent that they weren’t appropriate in a lot of ways; by then, however, there was no time to send them back and no budget for anything else. You may notice in the YouTube clip that Macbeth and Banquo look like Atilla the Hun and Ghengis Khan rather than Scots thanes; the most notorious element in the movie is Macbeth’s crown, which gives the impression of a box with spikes on top of it. Welles lamented that it made him look like the Statue of Liberty; if you’ve ever seen The Simpsons episode where they do the play, when Homer delivers the “Tomorrow” speech (which he does in its entirety), he is wearing Orson Welles’ Macbeth crown.
Juggler readers interested in a very good, decidedly non-conventional Macbeth may well wish to check out this 2006 Australian film adaptation by Geoffrey Wright. Reconceptualized as a modern mobster drama, Shakespeare’s script works astonishingly well as a tale of Sopranos-style warfare and betrayal. (Like Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and McKellen’s Richard III, this film demonstrates the Bard’s universal quality, as he is re-imagined so readily into contemporary settings of crime families and fascistic dictators.) Wright’s movie is also interesting for catching Sam Worthington just before he became famous for Avatar and Clash of the Titans (Macbeth, by the way, gives him much more room to show that he is a good actor than, say, Clash did). Mr. Worthington’s sexiness plays agreeably well throughout, as he makes an attractive partner to Victoria Hill’s very sexy Lady Macbeth; a Scottish couple (well, Australian) who can captivate the audience with their sexual charms as they captivate each other, exciting through their physical beauty and appalling through their amorality, makes for a very dynamic show.
Part of Wright’s thinking (as well) seems to have been, the Scottish Play meets The Craft. 
The Witches (or Wyrrd Sisters, as the script calls them) are presented here as seriously rebellious Catholic school-girls. We first meet them as they vandalize a graveyard (note: there is nothing in Shakespeare’s text about the Witches assaulting edifices of Christianity; one of the play’s unique qualities is its general “paganness” and lack of interest in Christianity). Later the Trio will trip on Ecstasy and engage in (I guess, underage) fornication with Macbeth- an interesting Macbeth, that has the Thane actually “getting it on” with the Witches, teenagers though they appear to be. (Few productions imagine sex between the Scottish King and the Weird Sisters, although the idea of their supernatural encounters as perceived through a fog of hallucinogens has been standard since Polanski’s movie in the early 70s.)
The more overt displays of Witchery, in this version, are interestingly saved for the fiend-like Lady. (Ms. Macbeth is a part written with “Witchy” subtext to it, starting with her speech to “Spirits that tend on Mortal thoughts” [I.v.40], which is generally believed to have been inspired by Medea in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.) Wearing Witch-like garb, praying to the Full Moon, and grinding up sleeping pills in a mortar with a pestle- Victoria Hill’s Mobster-Queen is easily as Witchy as the Three Corrupt School-Girls in this Australian Hit-Man Macbeth.
Patrick Stewart, an RSC actor so well-known for Star Trek and The X-Men that it seems redundant to “link” him, performed The Scottish Play in London in 2007, then transported it “over the pond,” to play a run on Broadway in 2008. Mr. Stewart (beg pardon, Sir Patrick) was brilliant; I would hands-down call him the finest Macbeth that I have ever seen- except that I have seen Ian McKellen’s performance (in the filmed version of his 1979 RSC run, opposite Judi Dench). Therefore- having seen Mr. McKellen (beg pardon, Sir Ian’s) turn, I cannot say that Sir Patrick’s is the best I have watched; but then, because I have seen Sir Patrick, I cannot call Sir Ian the finest Macbeth of my acquaintance. Ms. Dench (beg pardon, Dame Judi) is hands-down the most fabulous Lady Macbeth, like ever (or at least since Ms. Siddons was so famous for the role in the 18th century).
The many impressive qualities of Stewart’s performance aside- being of course a Royal Shakespeare Company veteran, the man’s vocal delivery was extraordinary; he had been performing the role for some serious time (already, in England), so by the time he got to New York with it, he had it “down” (this was absolutely the first Macbeth I have ever seen that made the part look as if it were easy to do); he played the role with a fascinating wounded, haunted quality that was very different from the usual Bloody Thane. This was a Macbeth that from the very get-go was fearful of his plans- yet unable to resist carrying them through.
A very interesting feature of the production was to pair Mr. Stewart (an actor admittedly on the plus-side of middle age) opposite a markedly younger, hot wife. We had the sense of the current Lady Macbeth as perhaps the second Lady Macbeth, and a bit of a trophy-wife. This created an interesting dynamic, as one got the impression that Mr. Stewart’s Macbeth would be quite content to live a peaceable retirement with his hot-babe wife, devoting his days to Scotch and golf, perhaps. Alas- his hot trophy-wife has burnings for a Queenship, and Stewart’s Macbeth seemed very reluctant not to gratify her desires.
The show was produced at the Lyceum Theater,
a fantastic Beaux-Arts structure built in 1903. As one might expect, it was influenced by basically the late 1800s, and serves as marvelous jewel of an example of a relatively cozy, wonderfully ornate Old-Style playhouse. (One thing that really confuses me is, what in the world did they do with their bodily functions back in 1903? The lavatory accomodations appear to be closet-spaces sort of partitioned off under the eaves, at least in the balcony. They seem remarkably unsuitable for large groups of people, particularly in an era when women customarily had voluminous skirts with which to contend.)
Well, the point is- the Lyceum was a terrific, 1800s-style venue in which to watch this early 1600s play.
As to the show itself, setting aside the performances (which were all excellent): this was a British production, carried across the “pond” to the United States, and therefore represents a bit of a difference in the way that Shakespeare is “put up” in England, compared with how Yanks tend to do it, over here.
The British, the Gods love and adore the British- the British are devoted patrons of the Theatrical Arts, especially Mr. Shakespeare: to the extent that they can get rather tired (it seems) of “just” putting up the plays, and so the Brits (Gods love their theater-producing hearts) will “interpret” Shakespeare’s plays all over the place. (This is a very different approach than that taken by American Shakespeareans, who have a tendency to take the script, and put it up- as faithfully, and in as straightforward a manner as we might manage. We Yanks tend to eschew dressing up Shakespeare with “interpretation” so much, feeling it better to allow his texts to do their own speaking, on their own terms.)
The British (I think) can get bored with this attitude (as they have been producing and performing Shakespeare with such intense devotion for four centuries, I guess “merely” doing the plays seems old-hat to them, by now). Mr. Stewart’s Broadway production of Macbeth, therefore was an example of a British Shakespeare production “interpreted” all to death.
It was set in “Europe” just prior to World War I (the background battles were presented then as WWI conflicts, and the Witches were WWI nurses- but weird, strange, demented WWI nurses). 
A major point that this production wished to make was (apparently) a connection between the desire for power and eating- the desire for food serving as a metaphor for the yearn to possess worldly might. The kitchen of the Macbeth castle (therefore) served as the backdrop to a number of scenes. Sometimes this worked alright (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth conspiring murder while they snack in a midnight raid on the icebox, ok). Sometimes this went crazily amiss: having established the kitchen as the operative location in Castle Macbeth- King Duncan’s first entrance into the Macbeth’s home was through the kitchen-door, as Lady Macbeth scurried around directing the kitchen-servants in preparing dinner, an apron tied about her fetching waist.
They bring- the King of Scotland- into the Macbeth’s castle- through the kitchen-door.
I was like, sure- cause that’s so often how royalty was treated in the early 1900s; they would bring you in through the kitchen- while the mistress of the manor had her apron on.
This was this weird kind of wordless interlude where all the characters sat down and played musical chairs- intended I guess to demonstrate something about the ephemeral nature of worldly power (?); after the show, my friend asked me what was the deal with that part, and I said, I don’t know: I’ve never seen a production do that before.
Oddly, they performed exactly one-half of the Banquet Scene- up until Banquo’s blood-splattered Ghost shows up to haunt Macbeth. Then- swear to the Gods- they brought the curtain down for intermission.
After intermission- up comes the curtain; and they act out in pantomime the portion of the scene that came before- and then pick up and deliver the rest of this really spooky freak-Macbeth-out scene. (It just didn’t work; it just didn’t.)
Never mind all of this. If one goes to Macbeth, one goes to see Witches in action (or at least I do, and I’m pretty sure that Witches were a major draw for the play back in the Jacobean days); in this production, the Witches Scenes were a mess, just a huge mess.
Part of the problem in putting up the Witches Scenes these days is (and I’m counting back through three separate productions here: Theater For A New Audience; Cheek By Jowl; and Mr. Stewart’s; none of which I count as having had a success, Witch-wise), I don’t think people understand how to do the Witches. Because I think there is a ritual- a pattern- a logic and an intelligent sensibility to how the Witches enact their Scenes, and I think that this logic reflects an understanding of how to perform Jacobean Witchcraft (which Witchcraft, I think, is also familiar to modern Wicca Witches, if they study it carefully enough).
The Broadway production starring Patrick Stewart did not really quite appreciate this perspective, I feel. This was a production that stressed the bizarre, the surreal, the grotesque, and the sensory-overwhelming as their approach to the Witches. My friend and I were both astounded when the Witches “rapped” their lines, an interesting way to bring relevance to Shakespeare’s tragedy. At the same time- World War I Witch-Nurses- rapping?
The big Witches’ Scene (IV.i, likely as not the scene everyone in an audience has gone to the theater anticipating) was a wreck. Being wartime Nurses, the Witches wheeled out killed soldiers dressed in body-bags, who delivered the famous prophecies. The Witches (bizarrely) began acting like short-circuiting robots (for real; I remember one who kept trying to walk through a wall, unable to comprehend in her “short-circuiting robot-head” that she could not). The Witches are rapping their lines like mad; strobe-lights start going like craziness; these body-bag corpses are prophesying all over the place; Patrick Stewart is acting all freaked-out.
The whole thing was this bizarre assault upon the rational senses, intended to overwhelm the mind- there was no sense of a methodical progression through a supernatural ritual, intended finally to function as a sort of seance, and it was finally over in what seemed like a minute.
Patrick Stewart was brilliant as Macbeth; the production had its shortfalls; the treatment of the Witches was a disaster. If you ever wanted to study The Scottish Play from the point-of-view, how to enact a Jacobean Ritual of Witchcraft?: this production would have left you mystified.
Here is an instance of the ubiquity of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play and the Curse imagined incumbent upon it: (totally apparently outside-the-loop segue)- I’ve been reading this kind of gonzo book The Secret History Of The World, by Mark Booth (The Overlook Press, 2010); I came across it browsing my local bookstore, and was very intrigued by its purported revelation of The Previously Unknown History of the (entire) World- as influenced by Secret Societies.
At first, I was really mad into this, as Mr. Booth starts out in Chapter 1: In The Beginning (“God Peers at His Reflection”), discussing the possibility of a Mind-Before-Matter Universe, in Which the Mind of God- or The Gods- first created the Universe- and then the Earth (our Mother Planet)- then Humans- Humans (who, rather than coming To Be and THEN conceiving of Divinities)- Humans, who (having been Created specifically to Imitate the Gods) were Made by The Gods, literally IN The Gods’ Image.
OK- this, I was into. Then we go into Chapter 3: “The Genesis Code. Enter the Dark Lord”- which posits how the malign influence of both Satan and Saturn, as in both the Greek Mythology and as the Planet, enters the picture of Early Tranquil Humans. Then into Chapter 5: “The Gods Who Loved Women,” which (among other things) goes into the Greek Mythologies of Deities enjoying congress with mortal Females, in a section sub-divided into “The Genetic Engineering of Humankind” and “The Original Origin of the Species.”
Then we’re off on this dancing tour of history, hitting: Isis and Osiris (Chapter 6); the Amazons, Enoch, Hercules, Theseus, and Jason (Chapter 7); Orpheus, Job, and the Riddle of the Sphinx (Chapter 8); well, it just goes on and on- Noah and the Myth of Atlantis; Rama’s Conquest of India; Zarathustra’s Battle Against the Powers of Darkness (in Chapter 10: “The Way of the Wizard”); before Imhotep and the Age of the Pyramids; Moses and the Cabala; King Arthur and the Crown Chakra- it keeps going:
Mohammed and Gabriel; the Prophecies of Joachim; St. Francis and the Buddha; the Templars Worship Baphomet.
Pagans may find interesting Chapter 14: “The Mysteries of Greece and Rome,” which includes the Eleusian Mysteries; Socrates and his Daemon; Plato as a Magus; The Divine Identity of Alexander the Great; and the Rise of the Magi; as well as Chapter 15: “The Sun God Returns,” which actually goes into Jesus, the Crucifixion, and the Mystical Marriage of Mary Magdalene.
Anyway- this goes on for 28 Chapters, until a Postscript, where Mr. Booth (swear to the Gods) analyzes who the Anti-Christ is likely to be, according to Biblical prophecy.
The point (oh, by the way) is to illuminate and demonstrate how Secret Societies (like the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons and the Templars and I don’t know who all) have (secretly) since the Beginning of Everything- preserved in secret Esoteric Teachings, all this Super Secret Understanding of It All.
OK- what finally snagged my attention enough actually to wish to write about this: in the course of reviewing Shakespeare as a Secret Initiate into the Secret History of Everything (Chapter 20: “The Green One Behind the Worlds,” in which Mr. Booth also discusses Columbus, Don Quixote, and Francis Bacon)- because of course Shakespeare is going to be one of the Secret Initiates, responsible for forging a “new form of consciousness. But how do we know Shakespeare was an initiate?” (p. 398, emphasis in the original).
Well, apparently, we know this because in entering “the Green Wood” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we re-enter an “an archaic form of consciousness in which all nature is animated by spirits,” signalling that we are “entering the realm of the esoteric, the etheric dimension.” (p. 399)
AND we know that Shakespeare was an “initiate” (into the Secret Societies whose Secret Knowledge has Guided the Development of Humans since, you know, the Very Beginning) BECAUSE: “Shakespeare has done more than any other writer [in the Anglo-Saxon countries] to form our idea of beings from the spirit worlds and the way they may sometimes break into the material world”; Mr. Booth cites both The Tempest and Midsummer in this regard.
Then (p. 398), Mr. Booth goes on to include The Scottish Play: “Many thespians still believe that Macbeth contains dangerous occult formulae that give it the force of a magical ceremony when performed.”
So there you go: Macbeth; dangerous “occult formulae”; the “force of a magical ceremony when performed.”
Never mind the perception of the “occult formulae” in Macbeth as “dangerous”; dangerous maybe, if you do not know what you are doing. Any Wiccan or Neo-Pagan savvy enough to locate The Juggler is (I’m sure) qualified to handle the Magickal Formulae in Macbeth; I’ve been a Student and a Devotee of the Weird Sisters and their Magickal Performances for something like 20 years now, and feel quite confident on my ground when I am in Their Presence and performing Their Rites.
At the same time- one wishes general understanding that experimentation with the “formulae” of The Scottish Play is a bit akin to tinkering with nuclear fission. Please be careful what you do- as a mega-deep theatrical tradition/ superstition will tell you.
All the same, please note: Mr. Booth’s acknowledgement of a universal theatrical understanding, of a “Magickal Ceremony” of Great “Force,” enacted through the “Occult Formulae” discovered within the Cursed Scottish Play.
Theater director Gregory Doran, on the first day of rehearsals for his 1999 Royal Shakespeare Company’s production: “We’re calling it Macbeth- Not “Mackers,” not “The Scottish Play,” none of the euphemisms. Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth- there, I’ve said it, and I haven’t been struck down. There’s supposed to be a curse on this play! Bollocks! The only curse is that it’s so hard to do!” [From The Shakespeare Miscellany, by David Crystal and Ben Crystal, (The Overlook Press, 2005) p. 178]
So famous is the Curse of The Scottish Play, theater-types will make a strenuous point to avoid The Name. Myself, I’m wicked superstitious, so for instance, when I went to BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) in anticipation of Cheek By Jowl’s production, I asked the very nice man, I’d like a ticket for The Scottish Play, please. He gave me a Look of Meaning, and concluded the sale: That’s one ticket for tonight’s performance of [significant look] The Scottish Play.
If you’ve ever seen The Simpsons episode where they go to England, you remember Ian McKellen’s cameo outside a theater where he is starring in The Play. So of course the Simpsons heedlessly repeat The Name over and over, as poor Sir Ian is blasted by lightning. “Please! Stop! Saying! That Name!” Then the marquee of the theater breaks off and falls on him.
The Curse of The Scottish Play, rendered in The Simpsons.
According to The Shakespeare Miscellany (p. 178), a “white witch” attempted to exorcise Macbeth’s Ghost of its Curse in September 2001. Wishing to raise the Spirit of the Scottish King at the site of Inverness Castle, the White Witch was stymied first by the present Lady Cawdor’s refusal to allow her home to be so used; many other Witches intended to cooperate in the proceedings canceled due to “mysterious happenings,” and the cameraman engaged fell ill during the filming.
A Curse impregnable to the cleansing of White Witchcraft, you see.
Should one make the horrible mistake of speaking the Unspeakable Name (especially if you are in a theater, or Theater Gods forbid as the Worst of all possible Fates- backstage during the performance of a show, any show at all): there are a few quick solutions to be had. Sometimes a fast, remedying quote of Hamlet’s line as he meets the Ghost will do the trick: “Angels and Ministers of Grace- defend us!” I have met a theater director who told me that his company determined upon a quote of Portia’s speech as a peaceable counter-charming: “The Quality of Mercy is not strained- it droppeth as the gentle Rain.”
However- the most effective way to break the pall of the Cursed Name- the Name of the cursed Scottish King- is to remove yourself from the immediate environment (you leave the dressing room to step into the hall, you leave the backstage area to step into the alleyway; you do something).
Now- you spin widdershins, to “unwind” the Baleful Charm. Once you have “spun loose” any Bad Mojo Energies- you return to backstage, or your dressing room, or whatever.
If you watch The Dresser (a 1983 film of a London stage play, starring Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, about a theater troupe touring England during World War II), you will see this ceremony performed, as Mr. Finney lets slip the Name of the Scottish Play; his dresser (Mr. Courtenay) is appalled: Oh, now you’ve said the Name of the Scottish Play! Mr. Finney, realizing with horror what he has done, scoots out into the hall, to spin furiously in a circle several times, before returning to the dressing room to finish dressing for Lear.
I find it fascinating that Macbeth associates (on two different levels) Charms with spinning and/or unspinning. The Witches “wind up” a Charm immediately before meeting Macbeth (I.iii); if you say the Name of the Scottish Play out loud (oops!)- you immediately “unspin” or “unwind” the Dark Power.
According to Macbeth, Charms are Things either “wound up,” or should the case be- “unwound.”
Sir Ian McKellen, reminiscing upon his 1979 turn as Macbeth (with Dame Judi Dench): ”Somehow it was magic: and black magic, too. A priest used to sit on the front row, whenever he could scrounge a ticket, holding out his crucifix to protect the cast from the evil we were raising.” [From this nifty book I recently acquired, The Shakespeare Miscellany, by David Crystal and Ben Crystal (The Overlook Press, 2005), p. 156]
Of all Shakespeare’s plays, Macbeth stands out for having a Curse attached to it. Why exactly it should be Cursed is a matter of conjecture: it is a dark, violent, scheming, back-stabbing, betraying play, with (oh yeah) Witches in it. (As such, it features Witchcraft: famous, Jacobean Witchcraft.)
All of which adds up, apparently, to a Curse (“Macbeth is to the theatrical world what King Tut’s tomb is to archaeologists,” Norrie Epstein, The Shakespeare Miscellany, p. 176), and theatrical legend places this Curse all the way back to the play’s first days. A surely apocryphal story holds that the boy-actor who was originally to play Lady Macbeth died shockingly and suddenly back-stage; Shakespeare supposedly saved the show by whipping the poor lad’s costume off his lifeless body and sweeping onstage in his stead (that story can’t be real, but you will encounter it). According to the Miscellany (p. 176), King James banned the play for five years after seeing it, perhaps (as the Miscellany’s authors surmise) finding the Witches’ incantations “too real for comfort.”
Time and again, through the ages, evidence of a Freaky Fortune is found attached to the play: in a 1672 production in Amsterdam, the actor playing Macbeth pulled out a real dagger and killed the actor playing Duncan for real; in 1849, two rival actors (William Charles Macready and Edwin Forrest) performed the show in New York, in separate productions. Ardent theater-fans in those days, a mob of Forrest supporters formed outside the Astor Place Opera House (where Macready was playing) on May 10; they were opposed by a mob of Macready-fans, and over twenty people died in the ensuing riot.
The Curse continues to the present day: during Sir John Gielgud’s 1942 production, the actors playing Duncan and two of the Witches died, and the set designer committed suicide; during the doomed 2001 run at the Cambridge Shakespeare Company: Macduff injured his back; Lady Macbeth, her head; Ross broke a toe; and the set was destroyed when two cedar trees crashed to the ground.
One thing to bear in mind when contemplating the “Scottish Play” and its attendant Witchcrafts- like Tut’s tomb, it arrives with a Curse hanging in its air.
I don’t think one should be afraid of the Play; like all plays, it is meant to be enjoyed, and like any other work of supernatural horror, it is intended to excite to a thrilling degree.
As a Jacobean work of Witchcraft, Macbeth is uniquely situated to be instructive to us.
All the same, I would advocate great Care in approaching so Weighty a Work; there appear to be traditions of some centuries’ scale, that hold Macbeth to be a very Potent Matter.
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