4. The Play And The Script
How can Macbeth, a tragedy written for the early seventeenth century audience, be presented in a photoplay for a twentieth century audience? This was the problem of (Orson Welles), the screenwriter. The film itself shows how well the writer and all others concerned with it succeeded. However, a comparison of a portion of the original play and the script reveals how the screen writer has made the film effective by retaining the Shakespearean flavor and by using modern sound effects and camera techniques.
As you compare the film and the play, ask yourself these questions:
Why is the film script so much shorter than the play?
Why is more movement specified in the film version?
Deletions in the Study Guide for MACBETH
In the final editing, the continuity of the photoplay demanded that several deletions be made. Therefore, it will be necessary to effect the elimination from our study guide of the text listed below:
Delete the first two speeches. The scene in the motion picture starts with:
“I laid their daggers ready…” from Lady Macbeth’s speech in the play text.
In the script text, delete everything preceding the sound of the owl, off stage.
Note that these pages are for illustration only.
Delete question # 5 (Notice the dialect used in the play. How does it help the film to be convincing?).
Delete the following two quotations:
“Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters… ‘
“…Duncan is in his grave; After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.”
THE PLAY
ACT II – Scene II. — INVERNESS. Court of Macbeth’s castle.
Enter Lady Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth: That which hath made them drunk hath
made me bold;
What hath quench’d them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace!
It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern’st good-night. He is about it:
The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms
Do mock their charge with snores. I have drugg’d their
possets,
That death and nature do contend about them,
Whether they live or die.
Macbeth: (Within) Who’s there? what, ho!
Lady Macbeth: Alack, I am afraid they have awaked
And ’tis not done: the attempt and not the deed
Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers ready;
He could not miss ’em. Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done ‘t.
Enter Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth: My husband!
Macbeth: I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?
Lady Macbeth: I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Did not you speak?
Macbeth: When?
Lady Macbeth: Now.
Macbeth: As I descended?
Lady Macbeth: Aye.
Macbeth: Hark! Who lies in the second chamber?
Lady Macbeth: Donalbain.
Macbeth: This is a sorry sight. (Looking on his hands).
Lady Macbeth: A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.
THE SCRIPT
Lady Macbeth walks toward background up steps, camera moving up as Macbeth exits left background. Camera moves in to medium close reverse of Lady Macbeth. She turns and walks slowly down steps toward left foreground. Camera pulling back and left.
SOUND (off screen): Thunder and Wind.
LADY MACBETH: That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold
What hath quench’d them hath given me fire.
She steps toward foreground then right, camera pulling back and panning her to close shot.
SOUND (off screen): An owl.
LADY MACBETH: Hark! Oh! Peace! Oh…
She continues toward foreground camera pulling back.
LADY MACBETH: It was the owl that shriek’d.
She looks up left, stepping away from camera which pans left’, bringing in shot the entrance to the King’s chamber in upper left background.
LADY MACBETH: — He is about it.
Macbeth appears momentarily in entrance to King’s chamber.
MACBETH: — Whos’t? Who goes?
LADY MACBETH: — Alack!
Lady Macbeth walks to stairs in background, camera moving in to close shot.
LADY MACBETH: I am afraid they have awaked
And ’tis not done! The attempt and not the deed
Confounds us.
SOUND (off screen): The owl.
LADY MACBETH: — Ohhh…! Ohhh…!
SOUND: Thunder and wind.
LADY MACBETH: …I laid their daggers ready!
He could not miss ’em.
Macbeth walks right and toward foreground, down steps, camera moving in shooting past Lady Macbeth at right, as Macbeth looks back up left, then steps to her in close-up upward angle.
LADY MACBETH: My husband!
MACBETH: I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?
Macbeth steps down a step and looks back up left.
LADY MACBETH: I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.
Did not you speak?
MACBETH: — When?
LADY MACBETH: — Now.
MACBETH: — As I descended?
LADY MACBETH: — Aye.
Macbeth reacts alarmed, raising hand.
MACBETH: — Hark!
He reacts to blood on his hand, holding it to camera which pulls back as he moves forward.
MACBETH: — This is a sorry sight.
He steps down right, turning toward Lady Macbeth in background, camera moving down and right with him to close shot where he sits down.
LADY MACBETH: A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.
5. Questions About The Photoplay
1. What did you think about the film’s interpretation of the Witches? How does it differ from that in the play? Which is more effective?
2. How does Welles use the Holy Father in the film? What is your opinion of creating a person not in the original play? How does it add to or detract from the film’s effectiveness?
3. How does the photoplay make use of the elements of weather to advantage? Are these also specified in the play?
4 What scenes not written by Shakespeare have been developed by Welles? Were these scenes necessary? Explain.
5. Notice the dialect used in the play. How does it help the film to be convincing?
6. What speech or speeches in the film were remembered by you? What made them remain in your mind?
7. What minor character or characters seem to be portrayed ably in the film? What makes the portrayal or the portrayals outstanding?
8. How do the backgrounds against which the film was produced contribute to the photoplay? Give examples.
9. Was the director successful in his handling of scenes in which a number of people appeared? Cite examples of this from the film.
10. In your opinion, what parts of the photoplay showed effective use of the camera, of lighting, or of sound effects.
6. Oral And Written Activities
1. Interview some one who has seen Macbeth. Ask him or her to comment on the movie. What was especially effective? What parts were remembered? Why? Write a composition based on the interview or tell the class what information you obtained. Possible persons to interview might be theatre ushers, projectionists, teachers, librarians, relatives, or your own classmates.
2. Prepare an article similar to one in a modern news magazine (Time, Newsweek, or Pathfinder). Use the happenings during a part of the play as the basis for your writing. The murder of Duncan, the death of Lady Macbeth, Banquo’s murder, the slaying of Lady Macduff and her children, and other occurrences present possibilities for treatment in news-magazine articles.
3. Keep a scrapbook of pictures, reviews, and news stories dealing with the film Macbeth. Below the reviews and news stories, write your opinion of the printed material. Do you think that the reviewer is fair in his discussion’? Why? How does the writer help you in selecting and judging the movie?
4. In Macbeth, Duncan was murdered, and a new king came on the throne. Find other murders or assassinations, which made history. The assassination of Julius Caesar, of Abraham Lincoln, of the Austrian Archduke, and of others might provide the material for a talk or essay on “Great Assassinations.”
5. Lady Macbeth was a social climber. Do you know anyone in fact or in fiction that is a social climber, or have you heard about people of this type? Write or tell about social climbers, their problems, their successes, and their failures.
6. Here is an activity that will require some imagination. Have you wondered just what people are thinking as they become involved in their life problems? Just what were the thoughts of Macbeth or Lady Macbeth or Macduff during the action of the play? If they had written diaries, or if Shakespeare had written them, we might have learned even more about the reactions of these people. Try to imagine what, one of the characters in the play would write in his or her diary. Then write that diary, using the first person (“I”) throughout. Example: Macbeth writes: “I saw three witches on the blasted heath. I didn’t like them, but I liked what they told me. They hailed me as Thane of Cawdor, and as King. They told Banquo that his children would be kings. Soon afterwards, I learned that I had been made Thane of Cawdor. Maybe. I shall become King, but if I do, it will be by chance alone…
7. Following are other topics that might be used for talks and compositions: “What I Think of Macbeth (or Lady Macbeth) as a Person,” “Minor Characters Are (or Are Not) Important in the Play,” “Ghosts in Macbeth and in Other Fiction,” “A Comparison of Lady Macbeth and Becky Sharp (or another outstanding woman character).” “How Would Shakespeare Write His Play Today?” “The Shakespearean Stage and the Modern Stage,” “Why Is Shakespeare a Great Dramatist?” “A Review of a Shakespearean Play,” “Amusements during Shakespeare’s Time,” “Murders in Shakespeare and in Modern Fiction,” “How I Would Change Macbeth If I Were Writing It for Modern Readers,” “Hamlet and Macbeth — A Comparison (of the plays or the films),” “My Favorite Scenes in Macbeth,” “The Character That I Liked Best (or Least),” and “What a Person Can Learn from Macbeth”
7. Suggestions For Further Study
Before or after seeing Macbeth, you might find some of the following materials helpful:
A full-length version of Macbeth for comparison with the screenplay.
The Mercury Shakespeare volume of Macbeth edited for reading and arranged for staging by Orson Welles and Roger Hill. It is illustrated by Welles, too. Records made by Welles and his Mercury Theatre Company (including Erskine Sanford, William Alland, Richard Wilson, and Edgar Barrier) follows his edition of the play. Harper and Brothers. 49 East 33rd Street. New York, distributes the Mercury Shakespeare and the Columbia records.
The 16-minute British film giving a conventional treatment to Act II, Scene II (the murder of Duncan) and Act V. Scene I (the sleepwalking scene). Distributed by British information Service and others, it provides opportunity for comparing an English version of the two scenes with the same scenes in Welles’ Macbeth.
Nielson and Thorndike’s Facts About Shakespeare (Macmillan), which discusses Shakespeare’s England and London, his biography, his reading, chronology and development, the Elizabethan Theatre, and questions of authenticity.
Shakespearean Playhouses by John Q. Adams (Houghton, Mifflin), which has an amazing amount of information on this interesting subject.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature, which contains brief, accurate references to Macbeth, Shakespeare, and Other items in English literature.
If you are unable to obtain these materials, ask your librarian. She will be glad to help you.
8. Familiar Quotations
In Macbeth, as in many of Shakespeare’s plays, are certain quotations that are known to thousands of persons. Do you know the quotations from which the following lines have been selected? Can you tell on what occasion and by whom the line or lines were spoken? Watch for these and other well-known lines in the motion picture.
“If it were done when ’tis done,
Then ’twere well it were done quickly…”
“Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters…”
“There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face…”
“The moon is down…”
“Is this a dagger which I see before me…”
“I dare do all that may become a man…”
“Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care…”
“A little water clears us of this deed…”
“There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood,
The nearer bloody….”
“…Duncan is in his grave;
After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.”
“You lack the season of all natures, sleep.”
“What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam
At one fell swoop?”
“All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten this
little hand.”
“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.”
“I ‘gin to be a-weary of the sun…”
9. Dramatize A Scene
Macbeth like all plays, was written to be acted, not just read and studied. Why not try to act out one or more scenes from the play in the classroom? The opening of Macbeth with the three witches and their prophecies to Macbeth and Banquo might be a good dramatic possibility. There are many other possibilities, too.
To interest the whole class in the subject, have each student try out for a part. This might mean that five or six students would be trying out for each role. After all of the students who are candidates for the role of Macbeth have given their readings of a few lines, the rest of the class might help in the choice. The person receiving the highest number of votes for being the best possible Macbeth would receive the assignment; the one second place in the balloting would be designated as an alternate — to replace the first Macbeth in the event of absence or illness.
Students not qualifying for or not interested in acting positions could become sound effects men, costumers, lighting effects engineers, or scene painters (they might construct the witches’ kettle or a small background piece). A student director might be chosen, if one is available. Other students might be engaged in the writing of a prologue which would serve to explain the play to an audience. Still others might develop a program that could be used in connection with the performance.
If time is limited, the dramatization might take the form of a radio broadcast. To make this more realistic, a simulated microphone, or a real one, might be placed in front of the actors. If the dramatization is especially effective, ask for permission to broadcast a scene over the school loudspeaker system.
Consult the special edition of Macbeth (Viking Press, 1942), arranged and condensed for Little Theatre production by Thomas P. Robinson. It contains detailed stage directions and designs for scenery and costumes.
ABOUT THE EDITOR — Hardy R. Finch is the head of the English Department of Greenwich Conn. High School. Until recently, he was also Associate Professor of English and Psychology for the Extension Division of New Haven State Teachers College. Mr. Finch is chairman of the Photoplay Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English.