In grammar school the teacher read a few lines of Macbeth, then gave students a turn at trying the lines. Back at my house my buddy and I took our own turns. Too bad we had no concept of amateur recording in 1950 or so, but we tried giving an aura of bombast that I’m still impressed by in my memory. Shakespeare was the first out loud reading I’d tried. Browning would follow soon. But boy, did we love the Shakespeare in our mouths.
It’s an easy plot to resonate with. Murder, betrayal … destiny, witches, black magic …
Democracy has to be learned (no one has yet learned it very well); kingship is easy, a caveman can understand it: fully, perfectly.
Welles, wow! thanks, hollowaypages
Macbeth’s Minions
Anyway, that aspect of Macbeth I wish to recall now and to focus on is the idea of illegitimate succession. The society thinks it knows how things work, but the society is oh so easy to deceive. (And if no alpha klep is deceiving it it will deceive itself: “deceived” is our stable state.) Macbeth kills King Duncan, Lady Macbeth goes nuts, the society goes to the dogs, Macbeth, the usurper hires murderers to kill his competition … the murderers get murdered …
This is all perfectly parallel to the Passion story, isn’t it? The real king is rejected, the fake kings run everything, the people stand around, smell a rat, but obey the fraud with the sword …
So far I’m only hinting at where this is to go, but I post while still planning, while resting …
Hint: The cheaters are in control, keep the records, hire the bureaucrats: eventually turn citizens into rubber stamp bureaucrats, crucify anyone who would keep honest records … Eventually there’s no record that anyone was ever honest! except in myth (obviously not trustworthy).
