Macbeth is having a moment on our screens and on our stages. Recently, it’s been resurrected in the Joel Coen film, The Tragedy of Macbeth, and the Sam Gold production, Macbeth, on Broadway. But why is The Scottish Play so popular right now?
As an artistic piece, we can look at the play through its structure and its narrative to understand its relevance. Macbeth, as opposed to something like Romeo and Juliet or King Lear, is one of the more visual Shakespeare plays. “You have the pieces of the story where it is a very clear narrative,” notes Emma Poltrack, Public Programs Administrative Assistant at the Folger Shakespeare Library, “You have witches, you have a sleepwalking scene, you have an escalation of murders, you have some ghosts…there are these very big set pieces of action where you can understand what is happening in the play.” Because the specific production notes are minimal, directors can take advantage of that and really lean into their own interpretation. A ghost can be a man drenched in blood (as in the 1971 film), a man covered in dirt (as in the 2015 version), or even be a bird (as in the Coen film). For someone looking to produce a Shakespearean piece for a contemporary social climate, Macbeth has a lot of trademark elements to play around with.
As for its narrative content, Macbeth has a strong focus on the idea of power, specifically on a large scale. “We are at a period of time where people are really questioning power structures,” notes Poltrack, “[and] Macbeth doesn’t want the crown because he has some idea of how to make Scotland better, he wants the crown for the crown’s sake.” As long as there has been power there have been people who want it for the wrong reasons, but Macbeth’s discussions of how power is disseminated feels particularly notable. Internationally, we are dealing with the ramifications of someone who has a history of putting his own access to power above any rules and regulations, and domestically we are still understanding how a singular icon of power can keep his or her hold on the populace. Macbeth feels primed to exist in this moment – not only as a dramatization of what we see in the news but also as an example of how long we’ve had to deal with these issues.
Unlike the 1948 version of Macbeth, the 1971 version of Macbeth, or even the 2015 version of Macbeth, the 2021 Coen film is not titled Macbeth, but rather, takes advantage of the full title — The Tragedy of Macbeth. That distinction feels integral to why we are so drawn to Macbeth at this moment specifically. We are living through a litany of tragedies, so it only makes sense that we are drawn to stories that can reflect those emotions back at us. “Catharsis happens in different ways depending on the mise-en-scène,” notes Dr. Ayanna Thompson, a text consultant for the Broadway production, “is something supposed to feel immediate? Or are you supposed to be mourning something from the past?” The aesthetics of Coen’s film in particular have been noted as taking inspiration from German Expressionism, a filmmaking movement that became prevalent in the post-WWI era as a reflection of a nation in crisis. Expressionism was “a way of assembling the clutter of post-war Germany to coherence on the screen.” To use this filmmaking style on Macbeth was to evoke catharsis of our past with the knowledge of our present close at hand.
Yet it’s not only that the specific sadness of Macbeth gives us the opportunity to release our built up emotions, but also that Macbeth deals with tragedy existing on both micro and macro planes. On the small scale, it is about the way ambition and power poisons morality. Macbeth murders Duncan, the king, and also orchestrates the murder of MacDuff’s wife and children. There is a more intimate sense of grief that stems from these individual murders, especially when MacDuff learns of his family’s fate. But Macbeth isn’t just a killer, he is also a king, meaning that his tyrannical reign affects all of Scotland. “Bleed, bleed, poor country!”notes MacDuff, voicing his fears about how Macbeth will make Scotland suffer, “Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure[.]” An entire country is at the whim of a single corrupt entity, so collective and singular suffering happen simultaneously.
It makes sense that we would be drawn to a text like this when we are living with our own duality of tragedies. How do we address our individual mental health in the face of a country-wide crisis? How do we think about our own COVID hardships when millions of people have suffered from it? How do we understand individual pain in the midst of all an all-out war? Macbeth allows us to practice holding these ideas simultaneously — there is adversity all around us, but Macbeth doesn’t end in defeat, it ends in triumph. It is a triumph heavy with suffering, but a triumph nonetheless.