Five hundred centuries after its composition, Macbeth cease to evolve. Members of the Scottish parliament are digging up evidences to show that this Scottish King was framed by the master-playwright Shakespeare. The crusade is being led by a senior Tory MP, Alex Johnstone, with a band of 19 loyalists from different parties. Their cliam: "Macbeth is misportrayed in the Shakespeare play of that name when he was a successful Scottish king."
On this 1,000th anniversary of the birth of Macbeth, king of Scotland from 1040 to 1057, it seems yet another Scottish offensive against the British dominance. The Scots have always been vocal about their contirbution to the wealth of English Literature. Over the centuries, writers, poets and philosophers of Scottish origin have held out excesses from their English counterparts and now once again time has bestowed a chance to salvage one of their figures who has inured guilt from the pages of a literary creation.
The crusaders have justified their stand with the research conducted by an American academic. Jhonstone has vehemently dismissed the literary notion of Macbeth and instead has upheld a very opposite perspective, so far unknown to the scholars and readers of the play by the same name.
Shakespeare's Macbeth was based on the Holingshed Chronicles of England, a definitive historical source at that time and which inspired Shakespeare in wrting many of his plays. However, the palywright, known for his grammatical and factual highhandedness, had distorted some of the facts to suit his dramatic needs. For instance, in Holingshed's account Macbeth is elder to Duncan;but Shakespeare reverses their ages. Again, the mention of the witches, presented as the three weird sister, is essentially Shakespearean.
The play was the last of Shakespeare's four great tragedy and is considered as the darkest of them all. In his famous, Essay on Macbeth, Coleridge points out that the opening of Macbeth shows the 'excited' state of a mind and atmosphere, which prepares the reader for an impending turmoil and turblence. He also mentions that the play is "wholly and purely tragic," thus sweep-ing any further doubts about its historical irrelevancy, except other than naming the characters.
Shakespeare's Macbeth is a dramatic masterpiece representative of the workings of human psycholgy at its best. The characterization of Macbeth soars above the temporal and factual urgency. The exegesis of his creation is not historical but literary and Johnstone's politiking of Macbeth is off the mark in saying that "Macbeth is misportrayed in the Shakespeare play."
Although Johnstones' Scottish sentiment is understandable, his Shakespearean interest is however, perceived as a spin-off for promoting tourism.
Friday, February 04, 2005
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