Shakespeare Forever

It’s Halloween. There’s never enough Weird Sisters. 

So now, different portrayals of the Weird Sisters in theater and film! 

As my Shakespeare professor explained it to me, there’s several things that you need for a good portrayal of the Witches: 

• Gender ambiguity
• They appear in wide open, barren places
• There’s a blurring of lines in between which witch is which - they’re almost one person, instead of three. 

One of the best examples of kickass witches in an adaptation doesn’t come from a straight-up movie version of the play, but from a modern adaptation called Scotland, PA. In Scotland, PA, Macbeth is a down-and-out slacker living in a small town in Pennsylvania in the seventies, working for a diner run by Duncan. The witches are three hippies. It’s awesome.  Here’s a youtube clip, watch it, there is hilarity: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmhNYwB02o4

One of the witches is played by Timothy “Speed” Levitch, who is this crazy philosopher guy who’s also a tour bus guy. If you’ve ever seen Waking Life, you’ve seen Timothy Levitch. 

Also, Christopher Walken plays McDuff, who’s a police detective investigating Duncan’s murder, so I don’t even know why you haven’t seen this movie yet. 

Now, a supremely horrible portrayal - the 2006 Australian film version. 

Yes, that totally looks like a good adaptation of Macbeth. Also, the guy from Avatar is in it, which is the only reason anyone’s seen it. 

Instead of strange, ambiguous, sort of incomprehensible figures who seem to exist outside of our reality and don’t exactly play by our rules, the Weird Sisters in this Macbeth are a trio of Catholic school girls.

It is way less awesome than it sounds. 

In their opening scene, they’re shown in a graveyard, graffiting and carving up gravestones, because they are totally hardcore, okay??  At one point Macbeth is tripping out and they try to sex him up. 

It’s actually kind of physically painful. 

All right, one more. 

In the 2010 BBC adaptation (starring Captain Jean Luc Picard, so you know it’s legit), the witches are three nurses working in a wartime hospital.  What they lack in gender ambiguity, they make up for with the striking visuals they provide. Seriously, the cinematography in this movie is unnaturally excellent. 

I wish I could find some good screencaps for you, to show off the design, but luckily, you can watch the whole damn thing legally and free on PBS’s website - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/macbeth/watch-the-full-program/1030/

So yes, today, if you can’t do anything else for Halloween, check out a film adaptation of Macbeth - any adaptation. It’s the prototypical horror movie, guys, you owe it to the play. 

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submitted by megaparsecs

Feel free to submit some Halloween related Shakespeare quotes, photos, scenes, videos, etc.! There’s a ton of creepy and costumed stuff in the Bard’s work and beyond, so let’s have it!

SUBMIT!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

HAMLET:

Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I’ll go no further.

GHOST:

Mark me.

HAMLET:

I will.

GHOST:

My hour is almost come,

When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames

Must render up myself.

HAMLET:

Alas, poor ghost!

GHOST:

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing

To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET:

Speak; I am bound to hear.

GHOST:

So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET:

What?

GHOST:

I am thy father’s spirit,

Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confined to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part

And each particular hair to stand on end,

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!

If thou didst ever thy dear father love—

HAMLET:

O God!

GHOST:

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET:

Murder!

Read More →

from Macbeth, Act IV scene i

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FIRST WITCH:

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.

SECOND WITCH:

Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.

THIRD WITCH:

Harpier cries ‘Tis time, ‘tis time.

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.

THIRD WITCH:

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf

Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,

Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,

Liver of blaspheming Jew,

Gall of goat, and slips of yew

Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse,

Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,

Finger of birth-strangled babe

Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab:

Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,

For the ingredients of our cauldron.

ALL:

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

SECOND WITCH:

Cool it with a baboon’s blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

[Enter HECATE to the other three Witches]

HECATE:

O well done! I commend your pains;

And every one shall share i’ the gains;

And now about the cauldron sing,

Live elves and fairies in a ring,

Enchanting all that you put in.

[HECATE retires]

SECOND WITCH:

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

The character of Lear itself is very finely conceived for the purpose. It is the only ground on which such a story could be built with the greatest truth and effect. It is his rash haste, his violent impetuosity, his blindness to every thing but the dictates of his passions or affections, that produces all his misfortunes, that aggravates his impatience of them, that enforces our pity for him…The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension, but in intellectual; the explosions of his passions are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that rich sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. (Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, 1817)

Let the great gods,

That keep this dreadful pother o’er our heads,

Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,

That hast within thee undivulged crimes

Unwhipp’d of justice; hide thee, thou bloody hand;

Thou perjur’d, and thou simular of virtue

That art incestuous; caitiff, to pieces shake,

That under covert and convenient seeming

Hast practis’d on man’s life; close pent-up guilts,

Rive your concealing continents, and cry

These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man

More sinned against than sinning.

King Lear to Kent, Act III, Scene II

Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.

As You Like It

There has been many an actor before that has stepped into Macbeth’s shoes, and I believe Homer Simpson should join their ranks. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqejedMLkk0&feature=related

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submitted by vanitywillkillusall

Great nature cries ‘Deny not.’ let the Volsces

Plough Rome and harrow Italy: I’ll never

Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand,

As if a man were author of himself

And knew no other kin.