The Scottish Play

Miss C and I saw Cal Shakes' production of "Macbeth" last night, and it was an interesting new take for us, having seen the modern play "Equivocation" at Marin Theatre Company this past spring.

"Equivocation" was written by Shakespeare scholar Bill Cain about the conflict Shakespeare might have experienced in writing a play that would be acceptable to the new King James (no living monarch could be portrayed) in the time of the Gunpowder plot, a Catholic rebellion against the Protestant king. The Catholic Jesuits captured could not lie as that was a sin, but neither did they want to betray their friends. Their facility with language allowed them to "equivocate," not actually lying but in their answers, not revealing the actual truth, either. Shakespeare used equivocation in Macbeth, which he wrote at the time, as well. Although the play was about an earlier Scottish king, it included many parallels to the current situation at the time, but didn't make outright political commentary -- it equivocated.

"All their prophecies are equivocations," Miss C whispered to me last night, as the the weird sisters did their "Double, double, toil and trouble" incantation. She was referring, for example, to their saying Macbeth would not be conquered by any man "born of woman," although we all knew, in the audience, that Macduff was "from his mother's womb untimely ripped" and that he would do Macbeth in.

The witches and ghosts Shakespeare included in Macbeth were a fascination (obsession?) of King James. No wonder they were involved in a rebellious plot against a Scottish king.