Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's Macbeth

By Garry Wills

Book Overview

In his Pulitzer prize-winning 1993 book Lincoln at Gettysburg, Garry Wills showed how the Gettysburg Address revolutionized the conception of modern America. In Witches and Jesuits, Wills again focuses on a single document to open up a window on an entire society. He begins with a simple question: If Macbeth is such a great tragedy, why do performances of it so often fail? After all, the stage history of Macbeth is so riddled with disasters that it has created a legendary curse on the drama. Superstitious actors try to evade the curse by referring to Macbeth only as "the Scottish play," but production after production continues to soar in its opening scenes, only to sputter towards anticlimax in the later acts. By critical consensus there seems to have been only one entirely successful modern performance of the play, Laurence Olivier's in 1955, and even Olivier twisted his ankle on opening night. But Olivier's ankle notwithstanding, Wills maintains that the fault lies not in Shakespeare's play, but in our selves.

Drawing on his intimate knowledge of the vivid intrigue and drama of Jacobean England, Wills restores Macbeth's suspenseful tension by returning it to the context of its own time, recreating the burning theological and political crises of Shakespeare's era. He reveals how deeply Macbeth's original 1606 audiences would have been affected by the notorious Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when a small cell of Jesuits came within a hairbreadth of successfully blowing up not only the King, but the Prince his heir, and all members of the court and Parliament. Wills likens their shock to that endured by Americans following Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination. Furthermore, Wills documents, the Jesuits were widely believed to be acting in the service of the Devil, and so pervasive was the fear of witches that just two years before Macbeth's first performance, King James I added to the witchcraft laws a decree of death for those who procured "the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person--to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment." We see that the treason and necromancy in Macbeth were more than the imaginings of a gifted playwright--they were dramatizations of very real and potent threats to the realm.

In this new light, Macbeth is transformed. Wills presents a drama that is more than a well-scripted story of a murderer getting his just penalty, it is the struggle for the soul of a nation. The death of a King becomes a truly apocalyptic event, and Malcolm, the slain King's son, attains the status of a man defying cosmic evil. The guilt of Lady Macbeth takes on the Faustian aspect of one who has singed her hands in hell. The witches on the heath, shrugged off as mere symbols of Macbeth's inner guilt and ambition by twentieth century interpreters, emerge as independent agents of the occult with their own (or their Master's) terrifying agendas. Restoring the theological politics and supernatural elements that modern directors have shied away from, Wills points the way towards a Macbeth that will finally escape the theatrical curse on "the Scottish play."

Rich in insight and a joy to read, Witches and Jesuits is a tour de force of scholarship and imagination by one of our foremost writers, essential reading for anyone who loves the language.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195088794
• ISBN13: 9780195088793
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

MUST READ FOR THOSE WHO LOVE MACBETH

THIS BOOK WAS SUGGESTED AFTER SEEING BILL CAIN'S NEW PLAY "EQUIVOCATION". THE GUNPOWDER PLOT (AN EARLY 17TH CENTURY ATTEMPT TO BRING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT OF JAMES I BY BLOWING UP THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT WITH THE KING AND ALL THE LORDS INSIDE) SERVES AS THE BASIS FOR THAT PLAY, AND AS REVEALED IN GARRY WILLS BOOK, ALSO FOR MACBETH. THE BOOK PROVIDES DETAILS OF THAT TIME THAT ILLUMINATE PARTS OF THE PLAY THAT WERE, FOR ME, OBSCURE. AS AN EXAMPLE, THE PORTER'S SPEECH IS ALL ABOUT THE EQUIVOCATION OF THE GUNPOWDER PLOT PARTICIPANTS. WILLS DETAILS OTHER PLAYS OF THE PERIOD THAT INCLUDED THE SAME PLOT DEVICE CONCERNING MALCOLM'S CHALLENGE OF THE LOYALTY OF MACDUFF IN ACT 4. HE PROVIDES INVALUABLE INSIGHT INTO THE CONDUCT OF THE WITCHES, DISCUSSING HOW THEY CAST THEIR SPELLS, THE MAGIC CIRCLE INTO WHICH THEY INVITE MACBETH, AND THE MOTIONS THAT DO AND UNDO THEIR SPELLS. BUY AND READ THIS BOOK (AND RE-READ IT) BEFORE THE NEXT PERFORMANCE YOU SEE OF MACBETH. THE EXPERIENCE WILL BE SO MUCH RICHER WITH THE KNOWLEDGE WILLS PROVIDES.

A Fresh Look at the Scottish Play

Wills' little book takes a fresh look at Macbeth. It's certainly not a revelation that Macbeth was influenced by the Gunpowder Plot and King James' interest in the occult, but Wills' exploration goes deeper. His point of departure is the well-known difficulty in staging Macbeth, a play that bounces from the witch-infested battlefield to an intensely private murder and the interplay between Macbeth and his wife. But all of that is finished a third of the way through the play, to be followed by seemingly disjointed scenes with Malcolm in England, with Hecate and the witches, and other bits that many modern productions simply omit. Wills argues that the environment in England after the 1605 Gunpowder Plot --an attempt by a band of Jesuits to blow up the King, the crown prince, all the senior judges and the entire Parliament-- was not unlike the grave national mood in the US after Pearl Harbor (or perhaps after 9-11, one might add). Macbeth was written the following year, and, Wills believes, is one of many "Gunpowder" plays that showed the Jesuits as satanic, clever liars who made pacts with the devil and sought to overturn the natural political order. In this context, the witch scenes in the play, as well as several other scenes (the porter pretending to be Hell's gatekeeper, Malcolm's verbal testing of Macduff in England) take on a new light. They are not extraneous to the closet murder story, but are themselves key to understanding Macbeth's motives. Macbeth was seduced by the devil and eventually becomes a witch himself. Clever lies ("equivocating") are a trademark of the conspirators, and are a natural offense against language and right. Wills' conclusions are that Macbeth need not be a "cursed" play. If directors and actors would rethink its historical context and seek to understand Shakespeare's message at a time of national crisis, they could redraw the logical links between the disparate scenes and present the play in the way it was intended. This is a wonderful book. Wills is a pleasure to read, whether he writes about Lincoln, Venice or Shakespeare, he always brings a fresh view that is well-worth thinking through.

He Weaves a Compelling Spell

'Macbeth' is a play with a problem, according to Wills. Most directors consider it has too many witches and sprites, so they cut a lot of song and dance. Then there's that banquet scene climax that comes too soon and dribbles off into the seemingly pointless byplay between Malcolm and Macduff in England. Most of this is faithful to Shakespeare's source (Holinshed), but did the Bard fail to wrestle the material into a coherent drama?Wills makes a case for considering the play in its context of current events and dramatic conventions. In particular, he believes that the recently-foiled Gunpowder Plot loomed so large in the public (and particularly, the royal) mind that much of what seems mysterious or pointless to us can be seen as plain references to the Plot and the Jesuit perpetrators of it.He is a master of the material, and his enthusiasm and high intellectual vigor make this a joy to read. His solution to the 'problem' of Macbeth is radical: Macbeth is a witch, and the supernatural element should be stressed, not played down. Even the scene with Malcolm and Macduff can be rescued if one can see Malcolm as a counter-witch, good as against Macbeth's evil, rather than as cautious wimp.The book is full of ideas for interpreting passages that have always been puzzles, and pulling the drama together. His ultimate justification is that Shakespeare was taking advantage of the times -- and that his first audience for the play was James I himself -- and so DID know what he was doing, that much that falls flat now worked well then. I would love to see a production that -- somehow! -- retrieved this vanished topicality.

"Macbeth" in its times.

Wills places "Macbeth" firmly within the context of its times. Shakespeare's play, in addition to others written in 1606-7, contains numerous references to the Gunpowder plot, an attempt by radical Jesuits made in 1605 to overthrow the government and Church of England. Wills, also author of "John Wayne's America,: and "Lincoln at Gettysburg," sees "Macbeth," (as is true of ALL media, whether enduring works of art as this is, or daily newspapers), as a political document. Only through a realization of this fact can the play be truly appreciated.

Wills opens up "Macbeth" to a new level of understandinig.

In "Witches and Jesuits," Gary Wills provides the political and social background of England during the time that Shakespeare wrote "Macbeth." Using the Gunpowder Plot and other events of the time, Wills delves deeper into the underlying meaning of the Scottish play than any other critical treatment, and even includes an explanation about why Shakespeare wrote the Hecate scene. It is an extremely enjoyable read, rare for analyses of Shakespeare.