Sobriquet

"Hey, hey, Teach.  What's with the clay-head?"

--Not-my-student asking about the prop for Macbeth class today.

Second favorite event after the baby duck on campus.  

Since this was the last day of regular classes and I will be suffering from not-teaching soon, I liked hearing the sobriquet.

Julius, Post-Ides: sculpture mix, pit-fired on Ocean Beach, SF, CA.

"Be Mind Full": Cawdor Castle Motto

Captain, Shakespearean

Captain, helping: "Read your Shakespeare."

Note: I was in the laundry room to settle the unsettled washer again.  While I was sitting upon the washing machine, I had thought to do a little homework or a little pleasure reading.  Captain helped me to settle upon the classic.

Prepping for Class

Shakespeare's Macbeth, of course.

Some Good Books

Dorothy Dunnett's Macbeth, Lymond, and Niccolo books.

"Lay On, Macduff"

                 I will not yield
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane
And thou opposed being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last.  Before my body,
I throw my warlike shield.  Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'

          Shakespeare's Macbeth, 5.8.3334


Macbeth's final lines, though not his final appearance in the play . . . .

Waiting For Macbeth

Seyton: sculpture mix; dark green, transparent brown, and celadon glazing.

"Hooked, Slimed, and Gutted"

SONG: "CABIN'D, CRIBB'D, CONFIN'D"

There's a hammer in the head
And a pounding at the door.
You'll never sleep soft
Till you even out the score.
There's a question on the table
And a cupboard full of woes,
But your sole occupation's
Shooting blanks of Old Crow.

The innkeeper said,
It never fails, never fails.
Just make yourself at home:
Bed of nails, bed of nails.

Our ghosts just doze at dawn
In a soul-bin "Lost and Found."
Though hooked, slimed, and gutted,
Sorrows rarely ever drown.
(At every bottle's bottom,
Every sinner floats.
On this fishing trip to hell
You're still bailing out the boat.)

Opportunity's not knocking,
But Misery's banging pails;
You've made yourself at home:
Bed of nails, bed of nails.

--MD

Shakespeare: "Cabined, Cribbed, Confined"

MACBETH:
Then comes my fit again. I had else been perfect,
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
As broad and general as the casing air.
But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.—But Banquo’s safe?

--Shakespeare's Macbeth 3.4. . . .

Study Session

"The labor we delight in physics pain."
          --Macbeth from Macbeth (2.3.46)

I believe it's best to take that line out of context.

Worlds In Tandem . . . .

Me: Scotch On The Rocks. You?

Thinking about Macbeth and Macbeth.

Macduck . . . On The Blasted Heath

The title makes no real sense, but I'm rereading my favorite of Shakespeare's tragedies, Macbeth, and so I'm indulging myself.

Self-portrait #51.

Banquo:  The earth hath bubbles as the water has,
          And these are of them.  Whither are they vanished?
Macbeth:  Into the air, and what seemed corporal melted
         As breath into the wind.  Would they have stayed.
                    (Act I, scene iii, 79-82)

The Thinker(s): Orkney-Style?

My Pict (pit-fired clay; hammered copper) --

with someone else's Thor in the background.

I must say that my own sense of the Orkneys comes, chiefly, from Dorothy Dunnett's treatment of those fabulous northern islands in her King Hereafter, that wonderful historical novel of Thorfinn of Orkney, of Macbeth, and of the Celtic/Pictish/Norse mixture that infused those islands.  Seamus Heaney's brief references in his North, the poetry of Orkney poet George Mackay Brown, Henry Treece's historical novel Splintered Sword, the classic Orkneyinga Saga, and R. E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn have also informed my imagination here.   

Unfortunately, I've yet to experience Orkney for myself, though I expect to visit in the next decade or so.

Thor as thinker?  More than you might think, surely.  Check the Eddas.

Shakespeare: "If It Were Done When 'Tis Done"

Light -- and dark -- reading.

"Seyton!"

I'm thinking of a particular speech from Shakespeare's Macbeth: 
V.III. 23-34.  (Seyton is Macbeth's retainer and body-servant.)

Long ago, I wrote what I felt was a successful piece explicating Lord Byron's use of this same passage in his own masterpiece Don Juan.  I should hunt up those old words and see if there's any validity still there.  In the interim, I'll reread that piece from the Scottish play.

William Gibson: "A Walking Shadow"

At the moment, there are two particularly resonating pieces in William Gibson's 1999 cyberpunk novel All Tomorrow's Parties that I would like to share.  I'm also thinking -- or feeling, perhaps, as Laney might -- there's an echo of a few famous lines* from Shakespeare's Macbeth in Gibson's title.  Maybe that's just me.

In the first passage that I'd like to quote, I think Gibson provides a somewhat humorous self-portrait in his description of this particular character, a very adept killer.  I haven't done any kind of research to see if such is common knowledge, at least among those who know, but when I look at the author photo from 1999 (and consider Gibson's look over the years), I do see something a bit autobiographical in the passage.  Consider:

     But he does not draw [the knife] now, and the traders see only a gray-haired man, wolfishly professorial, in a goat of grayish green, the color of certain lichens, who blinks behind the fine gold rims of his small round glasses and raises his hand to halt a passing cab.  Though somehow they do not, as they easily might, rush to claim it as their own, and the man steps past them, his cheeks seamed vertically in deep parentheses, as though it has been his habit frequently to smile.  They do not see him smile.


In the second passage, we get what I would consider an apt insight into tools, whether a knife (as in the novel) or in the handouts and prompts I make more or less everyday.   (I'm not eschewing focus or direction or precise utility for the students, not at all; still, the "handles" -- the ways I may manipulate and use those handouts and prompts -- ought to be "simple" to afford "the greatest range of possibilities".)  Imagine the handle of a knife from the kitchen: plain, streamlined, straight in design, I'm guessing.  Now imagine one of those knife handles shaped specifically with finger grooves, shaped to be held in only one way; that second knife affords a very firm grip, but only in one position, yes?  And therefore, the utility of the knife is limited, prescibed, overly-shaped.  Not the kitchen knife, though, as you can shift your grip to suit the particular job at hand.  All that's part of the meaning I find in the passage from Gibson below.

I love finding the truth in as many disparate places as possible. Consider:

     The handles of a craftsman's tools bespeak an absolute simplicity, the plainest forms affording the greatest range of possibilities for the user's hand. 
     That which is overdesigned, too highly specific, anticipates outcome; the anticipation of outcome guarantees, if not failure, the absence of grace.

--from William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties


*Those lines from Macbeth, from the character Macbeth himself in the last act just after he hears that his wife, the queen, has died:

She should have died hereafter,
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.  It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Dunnett's Macbeth: Thorfinn of Orkney -- A Favorite Passage

Here's a favorite passage from Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter, a novel about the historical Macbeth: Thorfinn the Mighty, Earl of Orkney, King of Scotia.  Frankly, Dunnett's King Hereafter is one of my Top Ten Novels of All Time, but that's an idiosyncratic list.  Still.

Here, we get a crucial insight into the "secret of [Thorfinn's] success", but even as Dunnett provides Thorkel Fostri's bitter assessment, she also provides Tuathal's reflections on what Thorkel says, making a simple statement complex in the best ways.  I end up appreciating the insight into the main character, even as I feel for Thorkel's frustration year after year.  (And yet Thorkel deserves some of that frustration . . . and if you've read the novel, I'll bet you'd agree.  "Year after year" refers both to Thorkel's relationship over time with Thorfinn and to my yearly rereadings.)  There are worthy ponderings possible here: about leadership, about problem-solving, and about reciprocity and the mysteries of connection and admiration.

I'm putting Dunnett's passage below the photo of knife and novel.  (The point of view, here, is that of Tuathal, Prior of St. Serf's, as the POV shifts throughout the novel, usefully so.)

Did [Earl Siward of York] regret his exile?  Had he envied Kalv, turning his coat so adroitly over and over, and at least buying back some years at Egge?

'Envy?  He despised Kalv.  Kalv was a fool,' Thorkel had said.  'There was only one man he envied.'

'He hated Thorfinn?  Always?  I suppose he must have done,' Tuathal had said, thinking aloud.  'Or the Lady Emma would never have risked making Siward her buffer between the rest of England and Scotia.  But then, what if Siward had tried to take over Scotia?'

'Twelve years ago?  Against Thorfinn's manpower, and his money, and his fleet?  Even with England and Denmark behind him,' had said Thorkel Fostri with scorn, 'I doubt if he would have got a levy over the Forth.  And England wouldn't have backed him.  Magnus had Norway then, remember, and half a foot in Orkney already through Thorfinn's nephew Rognvald.  England would rather have had Thorfinn in Scotia, I can tell you, than Siward or Norway.'

And that, thought Tuathal, was still true.  Despite Thorfinn's present weakness, it was still, thank God, true.  He had said, 'And Thorfinn?  He's used to dealing with princes these days.  Does he resent being forced to barter with someone . . . '

He had paused, having caught Eochaid's eye, to rephrase the question, but Thorkel Fostri's voice, at its most sardonic, had taken him up.  'Someone like me, from the barbarous north?  Haven't you noticed yet that Thorfinn is prouder of being Earl of Orkney than he is of ruling Scotia?  He fought for Orkney and won it, against men just like Siward.  His own kind.  He knows them too well to despise them.'

His own kind?  Thorfinn was three-quarters Celt.  They were not his own kind.  Tuathal had said, 'So it's just another negotiation?  Thorfinn neither likes nor dislikes Kalv's nephew?  I find it hard to believe.'

To which Thorkel Fostri had answered in a way he had not expected.  'When did you ever know whether Thorfinn likes or dislikes a man?  He takes them for what they are, and deals with them accordingly.  It's the secret of his success.  You don't fight the sea by getting angry at it, or persuade it to be kinder by loving it.'

The bitterness was plain to all to hear.  Eochaid had got up and left, and he, Tuathal, had asked only one or two questions more.

He was not embarrassed.  It merely appeared to him a paradox worth someone's attention: how a man such as Thorkel described could inspire what Thorkel undoubtedly felt for him.

"Throw Physic to the Dogs; I'll None of It"

A favorite scene: Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act 5, scene 3.

The bloody usurper is about to find that the tide of fortune has turned against him. Macbeth is both a blunt fist and a haunted soul, though the blood beats the nerves every time. I've always felt drawn to Macbeth, though I am not entirely sure why. Certainly, you've got to love a character who claims he'll never quit, and who lives up to that claim, mostly, but for one moment of doubt. And who would gainsay this man that doubt after such fatal promises?

"I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd." With that line Shakespeare channels much of the old heroic alliterative beat-based tradition. You can hear Beowulf and Byrtnoth in that line.

Macbeth is a heroic play. Heroic, but twisted, bewitched, as we all know. Lord Byron's favorite of Shakespeare's plays, at least in his youth. (You can see a bloody Scottish hand all over Manfred, for example.) I think Anthony and Cleopatra spoke clearly to him as the years of exile accumulated. Still, despite (or because of) the iniquities of Macbeth's character, I find much in the play that draws me back again and again. The starkness, the bloody dilemmas, the feast of fortune and the failure of reading fate: all that and more.

Reread with me this time:

Dunsinane. A room in the castle.
Enter MACBETH, Doctor, and Attendants.

MACBETH:

Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:
Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,
I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:
'Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman
Shall e'er have power upon thee.' Then fly, false thanes,
And mingle with the English epicures:
The mind I sway by and the heart I bear
Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.

[Enter a Servant.]

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
Where got'st thou that goose look?

Servant: There is ten thousand--

MACBETH: Geese, villain!

Servant: Soldiers, sir.

MACBETH:

Go, prick thy face, and over-red thy fear,
Thou lily-liver'd boy. What soldiers, patch?
Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine
Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?

Servant: The English force, so please you.

MACBETH:

Take thy face hence.

[Exit Servant.]

Seyton!--I am sick at heart,
When I behold--Seyton, I say!--This push
Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now.
I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
Seyton!

[Enter SEYTON.]

SEYTON: What is your gracious pleasure?

MACBETH: What news more?

SEYTON: All is confirm'd, my lord, which was reported.

MACBETH:

I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd.
Give me my armour.

SEYTON: 'Tis not needed yet.

MACBETH:

I'll put it on.
Send out moe horses; skirr the country round;
Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour.

How does your patient, doctor?

Doctor:

Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.

MACBETH:

Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Doctor:

Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

MACBETH:

Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.
Come, put mine armour on; give me my staff.
Seyton, send out. Doctor, the thanes fly from me.
Come, sir, dispatch. If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.--Pull't off, I say.--
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug,
Would scour these English hence? Hear'st thou of them?

Doctor:

Ay, my good lord; your royal preparation
Makes us hear something.

MACBETH:

Bring it after me.
I will not be afraid of death and bane,
Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.

Doctor: [Aside]

Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,
Profit again should hardly draw me here.

[Exeunt.]

I love the doctor's aside at the end here. He's speaking to and for us, and the wry humor is just another example of Shakespeare's canny layering of emotions. Just look at all the emotions the Scottish king is cycling through in what I've quoted. A brutal confidence may be overriding the doubts of others, but an underlying melancholy undercuts the hubristic joy some other battle-king would be feeling much more sincerely. Macbeth knows he's crossed the line that divides proper manliness, in his terms, from monstrosity, that separates society from those outside it, whether they be nobles or not. Macbeth truly is a usurper and a murderer, and he knows it too too well. Yet he was a glorious thane with all the martial skills that his true king admired, and that's a fact too often neglected by readers of the play, I feel.

Macbeth, above, is at his most Hamletish, if you will, and yet Scottish king and Danish prince burn with strikingly divergent fires. The bonfire of ambition vs. a funeral pyre? Or, perhaps, the way into the parallels and contrasts between these noble figures would be to consider the patterns woven from emotion and intellect, from ambition, hubris, consciousness, responsibility, shame, guilt, anger, and revenge.

I should work on the Macbeth vs. Hamlet conundrum--aiming at the nuances rather than the broad strokes--for that's what I feel it is, a conundrum, as I hear and feel the echoes between the plays. I even have some of the best books on the shelf or in mind to check what the authorities have claimed, but I want to work these two characters out in conjuncton for myself, by myself. An independent exercise in critical reasoning, in dynamic character construction and storytelling: something I think all of us should practice often. (I've been reading a book on Beowulf in which the lack of critical practice and of dynamic narrative awareness has been so frustrating.)