Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time:
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted on a pole, and underwrit,
‘Here may you see the tyrant.’
— Shakespeare, Macbeth
Just came back from an amazing trip to New York with our good friends T— and L—. We had a chance to see Daniel Craig of 007 James Bond fame play Macbeth in an off-Broadway production with Oscar nominee Ruth Negga. So we did. We also snuck in visits to the Metropolitan Museum to look at their Greek & Roman stuff, as well as their current exhibition of the French painter Jacques-Louis David (you will say that you do not know him, as I did….wait for it …. you do). And in addition we visited The Cloisters in uptown New York City, the best museum nobody knows about.
The Cloisters is the home of our semi-canine friend above, as well as amazing medieval art, stained glass and building elements from Europe. Indeed the entire museum is essentially created from spare parts from medieval Europe, including the famous Unicorn tapestry, illustrated manuscripts, gilded wine glasses, a delightful courtyard and nearly entire chapels.
We’re going to Greece and Rome in the fall, so we were excited to see the Met’s collection of Greek and Roman art and sculpture, as well as another visit to the Arms & Armory room:
Here’s some Greek stuff: Priam begging for his son Hector’s body, a grotesque, Hercules wearing a lion…
We took a walk on The Highline, which is very nice – a kind of mini-Central Park, near where our boat-based Architecture tour departed. Lots of interesting architecture including the new Hudson Yards.
The Macbeth was wonderful. Daniel Craig provided a fair bit of cognitive dissonance for me, as I know him mostly as Bond. His Macbeth was a wonderful far cry from his Bond. He seemed quite joyful and touched by the crowd’s response afterwards. Negga’s Lady Macbeth was absolutely outstanding.
The production was good fun. The stage at first glance appeared quite sparse and I expected a “small” Shakespeare. But soon the smoke was roiling, the lights were flashing, the walls were moving, and the play took on a much more cinematic experience than I expected. Much of the production was “modern” – the witches wear normal street clothes, Banquo is dispatched by a handgun, Bond (err, Macbeth) wears a fur coat that would not look out of place on a rapper…all good fun.
Since I was going to see Macbeth and hadn’t read it since high school (or never?), I decided to read it on my last plane ride. You may not have read Macbeth, but you probably know some of the famous lines, and the story itself: Macbeth, egged on by his wife Lady Macbeth and 3 Witches who foretell his future, kills King Duncan and usurps the throne, and embarks on a killing spree to cement his rule. I’ve captured some of my favorite lines below.
Oh, those witches:
Fair is foul and foul is fair,
Hover through the fog and filthy air
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes
Ray Bradbury did not invent that phrase 🙂
And of course the famous witches’ scene:
First Witch. Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
All. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
All. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
I love this rhyme, when King Duncan executes the Thane of Cawdor for treason and promotes Macbeth:
Go pronounce his present death,
and with his former title greet Macbeth.
and when the sentence is executed and the death reported back:
Nothing in his life
became him like the leaving it.
Macbeth:
So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
Lady Macbeth, when pondering her husband’s potential abandonment of their plan for pity of King Duncan:
Yet do I fear thy nature:
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness.
and…
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time, bear welcome in your eye,
your hand, your tongue. Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t.
Macbeth, on the assassination:
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly.
Macbeth after the crime, remorseful:
Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast,—
Which reminds of the last time we went to New York City and saw the interactive, participatory show Sleep No More, loosely based on Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth, after the crime, driven mad and to some extent remorseful:
Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why,
then, ’tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account?—Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him.
And Macbeth’s soliloquy lament on her death:
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
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.
Macduff, as he fights Macbeth to the death:
Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time:
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted on a pole, and underwrit,
‘Here may you see the tyrant.’
Macbeth in response:
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 damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’
