In my Shakespeare class, I asked the students to pitch their dream version of the play we had just finished studying (Macbeth) as if they had all the resources and connections to make it happen. They selected their favorite actors, researched costume ideas, and digitally developed the way the stage would look. There were lots of different variations on Macbeth, including Breaking Bad meets Macbeth, French Revolution Macbeth, and a couple of Victorian London concepts as the setting for the Scottish play.* It was really cool, and the students did a fantastic job.
But the one that really got me thinking was one in which a student framed the story of Scottish dynasties as actually one of the antebellum South. Instead of it being North versus South, however, it was the concept of a plantation owner (Duncan) whose favorite slave (Macbeth) helps quell an uprising on the plantation (the beginning of the play). Since the student was only sketching out the concept, there wasn't time to nail down all the particulars.
That's what this essay is for.
I think there's a lot to mine here, especially because it provides a view into racial dynamics that are usually reserved for discussions about Titus Andronicus, Merchant of Venice, or Othello. Putting Othello into antebellum South isn't a new idea--though one I'd be interested in seeing--but swinging the Scottish play that way is one that opens up unique concepts of racial violence.
Think, for example, of the scene where Macbeth leads Macduff to the room of the slain Duncan (2.3). In this concept, the plantation owner (Duncan) is already a white man. Consider the power--the unsettling experience--of hearing a black slave say this about his now-dead master:
The rich imagery is strengthened by the dynamic of the characters. In some ways, this creates a more sympathetic Macbeth, because he is striking against the system that has robbed him of his humanity. Later, when he confesses that "full of scorpions is my mind," there's an added depth, for he has usurped the oppressor's tools to bring about the end of the oppression.
...Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature
For ruin's wasteful entrance:
Right before he says the lines that are quoted above, he has killed the two guards who were asleep during Duncan's watch. Casting those guards as slaves as well adds an additional level of intensity to that crime: He kills the people who ought to be free as well as the one who owns him. (This is enhanced, too, by the beginning, in which the rebellion that is quelled is actually a slave revolt on the plantation that Macbeth participates in--by sustaining the status quo.)
Of course, there are downsides to this interpretation. Why would Macbeth and his wife be hosting a slave owner? Why would Macbeth become king of the plantation (called Scotland, I guess) while his sons are running away? Discreet cutting would be required to take care of this all, of course, especially if we have the other thanes as being, like Macbeth, slaves. That could be a chilling ending: giving up the possibility of freedom because it came under a tyrant's hand in order to restore the status quo that denied the uprising thanes' humanity.
There are a lot of other possibilities with this, but I think it's fantastic. I felt like I had to share. Could someone please call Idris Elba and see if he's interested in an antebellum Macbeth? Cool, thanks.
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* I'm not superstitious about using the word Macbeth. I mean, at all. I think the idea of the play being cursed is nonsense. But I was tired of italicizing the word.
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