There’s a book beckoning me from the shelves of Paulina Springs Books. Its cover image hit me right in the noirs, and the title made me do a double-take. Yep, that’s what it says alright: MACBETH.
The Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbo has recast The Scottish Play as a contemporary crime novel, set in a rainy, Scottish industrial city that is not named but … Glasgow. It just is. There is NO WAY I can resist this. Macbeth is hands-down my favorite Shakespeare. I read it as a junior in high school (as did my daughter) and fell in love with the hurly burly and the the toil and trouble. As part of the unit on the play we watched Roman Polanski’s 1971 take on Macbeth, which was eerily informed by the 1969 slaughter of his wife Sharon Tate and their unborn child at the hands of a coven of Charlie Manson’s witches.
In blood stepped in so far…
I don’t know what effect it had on my peers, but I probably don’t have to explain the impact it had on my young psyche, besotted as it was with the grim Howardian ethos and tales of wild men battling in the wilderness.
Nesbo isn’t the first to adapt Macbeth into a crime story — which is, after all, what it is at its core. There’s a 1991 movie titled Men of Respect, which recast the story in a New York mob family, which, of course, works perfectly. The movie is overwrought and John Turturro chews ever piece of scenery on set, but Marilyn (who has an odd and perhaps disturbing fondness for mob movies) and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Mac Bethad mac Findláich (c.1005 – 1057) bears almost no resemblance to Shakespeare’s villainous Macbeth. Here we run again into that intersection of Myth and History, and the Myth outweighs and outmuscles the History by a long shot. Turns out that the historical MacBeth was … a Frontier Partisan War Captain. Aye, so he was.
He was Mormaer of Moray (pronounced Murray), a Marcher Lord, tasked with defending a large chunk of the Highlands near Inverness from incursions by seaborne Norwegians — late-period Vikings. His lands were wild, harsh and beautiful and he fought well defending them.
Warfare was more or less constant, and mostly on a scale of raid and skirmish that would have been familiar to frontiersmen from the Ohio Valley to South Africa. As usual in frontier warfare, the combat was brutal and savage, and decisive outcomes were wrought by comparatively small bands of men.
Lady Macbeth is one of the most deliciously crafted villianesses in literature. She, too, was given a bad rap by the Bard. Gruoch ingen Boite was a Scottish noblewoman of the bloodline of the first King of Scotland, Kenneth Macalpine, and she was, by all accounts, a strong partner of MacBeth and a patroness of the Church — noble in all senses of the word.
Let us picture her thus…
(Take that Will! I get to mythologize, too!)
MacBeth did not murder King Duncan in his bed, but rather slew him in battle when Duncan invaded Moray. He became King of Scotland by acclamation in the proper Celtic manner and ruled well for many a prosperous year, before being slain in his turn by Duncan’s son, the man who would become Malcolm III of Scotland.
The death of the last Celtic King of Scotland — the last to rule from the Highlands — marked a turning point in history. Malcolm III married a Sassenach, an Englishwoman, and the kingdom would from then on be oriented toward the south, a feudal, Anglo-Norman construct. The Highland Gaels were marginalized and perceived ever after as a barbarous threat from the north, until their final crushing on Culloden Moor in April 1746.
Here’s an enjoyable documentary on the search for the historical Mac Bethad mac Findláich. Let us once again rejoice that we can enjoy both the brilliantly wrought Myth and the still more compelling History.
Now I shall fill my tankard, stoke the fire and watch Macbeth (2015). See you when the hurly burly’s done…
Macgregor Hay says
Jim-You are a true student of Scottish history…well done. Some of the soldiers look like my clansmen, I think we have a fairly small gene pool.
JimC says
I only know a bit, but I sure find it fascinating.
As for the gene pool, as long as that red-haired Celtic Queen is in it, it’s solid.
Annie says
Oh, Cornelius, I don’t need anymore TBR books to be tossed before me, but I can’t resist a Nesbø. I remember being in Norway and walking past a bookstore with, it seemed nothing but the word NESBØ in view. The one Norwegian word that I knew.
All the Mac Offerings look MacMarvelous. I’ll come back for Timeline.
Now to Marilyn. Did she watch McMafia on AMC? It’s a little Russian Mafia tale that she should be able to sink her teeth into. I am all ready to re-watch the season again.
JimC says
McMafia, eh? Not familiar, but we’ll check it out.
JimC says
Enjoy the Nesbo.
Matthew says
Macbeth is my favorite of the Bard’s plays too. Oddly, I first encountered MacBeth in the cartoon Gargoyles as a kid. He appeared as an immortal. The cartoon versions history was actually closer to the real Macbeth’s than Shakespear’s. Gargoyles was actually a pretty heavy cartoon for a kid, dealing with mythology, Scottish history, and even Mafia storylines. I’m pretty sure it warped my brain.
JimC says
Mafia and Macbeth seem to be linked…
Matthew says
I’m trying to recall if the version of Macbeth in one of the Mafia episodes. I don’t think so.
Pop culture makes weird connections. Connection between Sci-fi and the western for example: Firefly, Star Trek being “Wagon Train in Space”. There’s the connection between Westerns and Samurai flicks. Yojimbo becoming A Fistful of Dollars.
Macbeth is such a classic story that it probably transpose to other settings easily. Throne of Blood was MacBeth in feudal Japan.
RLT says
I dug the Fassbender Macbeth, which is both raw and austere. But my favorite adaptation of “the Scottish Play” will always be “Scotland PA.”
JimC says
Christopher Walken?!?!? Never heard of this. You know what happens next…
RLT says
Christopher Walken, 70’s music, a burger joint, and stoned hippies as witches in an amusement park that sometimes isn’t there. It’s the best sort of blasphemy. And a hell of a trip…
JimC says
OK, I’m in.
Greg Marshall says
I think curriculum designers and teachers underestimate the value that Shakespeare has in the earlier grades, especially when taught using a “total immersion” technique.
My encounter was through an inspired eight-grade teacher who wrapped his classes on Hamlet around an (early) televised version (made in Elsinore, no less). We >read< it full speed: only taking time to figure out what the most obscure references were. Did we understand all the nuance? Of course not! But we learned, and were entertained. The following year he did Macbeth the same way, in all its gruesome glory.
Some critics seem to deplore the resetting of a classic in more modern times and different places. Not me.
I just got this book and it goes into the queue (us e-reader folks have virtual TBR piles, eh?)
JimC says
As far as I’m concerned, it emphasizes the timelessness of the work.
Matthew says
I agree. The more universal a story is the more it can be transposed to another setting. See my earlier post.
John Maddox Roberts says
Shakespeare’s plays were themselves resetting old tales into modern times. No matter what the stories’ time period, they were reset into Elizabethan England, complete with “modern” costuming and props. He has cannons and tolling clocks in 5th century Denmark and billiards in 1st century BC Alexandria.
There was a 1955 anglo-American gangster movie named “Joe MacBeth” about, you guessed it, a lower-level crime boss egged on by his wife to murder his boss and take his place. Gangster movies and Dynastic dramas are about the same thing – powerful men (and women) murdering and betraying each other to seize one another’s power and wealth. “The Godfather” could have been as easily set in Renaissance Italy or Angevin France as in mid-century New York and Sicily.
JimC says
“Men of Respect” (1991) is another mob MacBeth. Haven’t seen it in 30 years, but remember we liked it.
john roberts says
There was another film, “Joe Macbeth,” (1955) that set the story in the Mob. I saw it once but haven’t encountered it since.
I think schools use Macbeth and Julius Caesar because they are more accessible than other Shakespeare and are written in vernacular English instead of the mannered, courtly verse of the other plays. High school kids would be left behind by King Lear and the babbling of the Fool, which could actually be understood by Elizabethan audiences.
Annie says
I’m sorry but was I the only one to walk about from these comments hungry for a Big Mac?
JimC says
I have never been hungry for a Big Mac in my life. In-and-Out maybe…
Annie says
Well, I am a dang long way from In-and-Out back here. lol But there was a day.
JimC says
Right?
deuce says
MACBETH is also my favorite Shakespeare play. Fritz Leiber turned me on to it when he mentioned (whilst discussing REH’s “The Grey God Passes”) that the Scottish Play also featured “gallowglasses”. A sure bet that Howard, a fan of the Bard and a Scotophile from an early age, read MACBETH at some point. Even without that to recommend it, it is simply one of the most powerful narrative works ever created. Also proto-sword & sorcery, IMO.
The best look at the historical Macbeth I’ve found is Peter Beresford Ellis’ MACBETH. Ellis is a renowned scholar of all things Celtic and has a deep understanding of Gaelic kingship and politics (and also, possibly, a fan of REH).
By way of his family connections and native geography, Macbeth was a major historical link between the Battle of Clontarf and the Battle of Hastings, strangely enough. A fascinating man whom history has not treated well.
JimC says
I think that’s why it connected so solidly in HS, when I was getting harassed for finishing state testing too quickly and pulling out “Conan the Conqueror.”
Matthew says
Tolkien created the Ents because he was disappointed that the prophecy about the forest marching did not turn out to be literal.
Conan was a Macbeth in reverse. A usurper who turned out to be a good king. If Howard had not read the play I would be surprised. I think of Conan as an American commentary on monarchy.
lane batot says
The Ents have always been my favorite Tolkien characters–we need some around where I live, all the damned clear-cutting going on……
JimC says
This surprises me not at all…
Breaker Morant says
My favorite discussion of Shakespeare comes from George McDonald Fraser’s memoir of the war in Burma “Quartered Safe Out Here.” No surprise-I tend to find GMF a man for all occasions. This is the first time I have really thought of him this way, but he is my REH/Tolkien etc.
He lent his Platoon Sergeant a copy of “Henry V.” The sergeant with long years of service behind him-strongly (almost violently) was of the strong opinion that Shakespeare had been in the army-contrary to most Shakespeare scholars-based on his writing. He said the only way to get what he wrote is to be there-you don’t learn it in taverns.
Part of GMF wondered for the rest of his life-if Shakespeare had really been in the army.
JimC says
Great story. Feeds the mystery. I’d argue, however, that the truly great can absorb the experience of others — Stephen Crane comes to mind.
Love that you see GMF in that foundational light. We’ve all got a few of ’em. If we’re lucky.
lane batot says
GAWD, how I HATED Shakespeare all through school; reading it, having to listen to it on records, forced to watch films of it–HATED it! Just couldn’t understand or get WHY everyone was so besotted with it. UNTIL…..I got hooked into the Theatre Department in college(mainly due to a production of Arthur Kopit’s “Indians”–the film version being “Buffalo Bill And The Indians” with Paul Newman starring), and ended up joining what was considered a pretentious attempt at “Hamlet”–which we pulled off admirably, according to various newspaper critics, and though I had a small part, I still got mentioned in some of the critiques(if I do say so meeself!). I chose and got the part of the “Gravedigger”–the ONLY humorous part in that whole dang depressing play! “A pick-axe and a spade, a spade; For and a shrouding sheet; O’ a pit of clay for to be made; For such a guest is meat!”–still remember those lines(sung as a little ditty by me with a Scottish accent, just before I threw up Yorick’s skull with mah shovel!). After I DID Shakespeare on stage, in front of alive audience, then, finally, I GOT it! It is to be DONE, not just read or watched, to TRULY appreciate it! Yet, I still prefer Willy’s more humorous plays by far…..
JimC says
Yeah, the way it’s taught is often “read this, it’s good for you.” Make it accessible and people love it. They’re brilliantly crafted tales, after all.
Jerry says
Way old post, but I just saw Macbeth performed in Cedar City so I came back to see what you had said earlier.
Awesome performance. First time I’ve seen it staged.
Great Elizabethan theater and Shakespeare Festival.
A long haul from Oregon.
And they only sell 3.2 beer in town.
Cheers
JimC says
Lucky man.