SCOTT L. NEWSTOK and AYANNA THOMPSON
‘Why Macbeth? postulates Harry J Lennix in his essay: A Black Actor’s Guide to the Scottish Play, and the question is a pertinent one when reviewing the American book Weyward Macbeth; Intersections of Race and Performance. Why Macbeth indeed? Of all Shakespeare’s plays it is undoubtedly Othello, Titus Andronicus or The Merchant of Venice that spring to mind where the issue of race is concerned. The answer, says Lennix, is that Macbeth is: ‘a great work that does not carry the onerous burden of race’, but as with all matters Shakepearean, the answer is never quite that simple.
Weyward Macbeth, which takes its title from an alternative name for the Weird Sisters, is a collection of essays which deal with the relationships between race, ethnicity and culture in the English-speaking world, specifically in the USA and almost exclusively about African-Americans. It ranges from versions of Macbeth on stage, screen and in music, to deeper linguistic problems such as the play in translation, and even whether Shakespeare’s use of the word ‘black’ can be construed as racist in itself.
The visibility of whiteness
A chapter that will be of particular interest to classic film enthusiasts is the section on Polanski’s film version of Macbeth, Riddling Whiteness, Riddling Certainty by Francesca Royster. Royster views the film in the light of white supremacy (a pertinent view considering Polanski’s own experience of Nazism, which informed his scene where Lady Macduff is killed and her castle ransacked), and what she terms the visibility of whiteness. Polanski’s Macbeth, argues Royster, makes whiteness and white supremacy visible, and links 1970s blaxploitation films, which aimed to foster a strong sense of black identity, with Polanski’s use of white spaces, styles and cultural practices.
Royster also examines the language
of Macbeth, linking the chiasmus of ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ with
blackness as the representation of evil; ‘my black and deep desires’, and
fairness as being inextricably associated with whiteness as a marker of
goodness. Was Shakespeare inherently racist in the language that he employed?
As a white reader, the book did make me question further the use of the word
‘black;’ by Shakespeare: does he use the term simply as a trick of wordplay, or
does he employ it as a pejorative and racist term? When we ask if Shakespeare
was racist, we may answer yes if confronted with The Merchant of Venice,
even if the: ‘hath not a Jew eyes’ speech may give us pause for thought on that
argument. I am not convinced we would as readily say guilty as charged when we
come to a reading of Macbeth.
The use of language to denote social and cultural values is one of the themes of Anita Maynard-Losh’s chapter: The Tlingit Play. Maynard-Losh was the director of a 2003 production in Alaska which set Macbeth within the cultural context of South-east Alaska’s indigenous people, the Tlingit. The characters spoke Tlingit when observing traditional group values, and English when they were following their individual desires, hence most of the scenes between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were in English. This is fascinating and thought-provoking; whereas Royster believes that it is the words themselves, such as ‘black’, that convey cultural values, Maynard-Losh used an entire language itself to put that message across to the audience. It was additionally joyful and poignant, says Maynard-Losh, that the actors spoke the Tlingit language in a production of Macbeth staged in Washington, as theirs had been a native language that the American government had once tried to eradicate.
One of literature’s greatest strengths is that it can and does bridge seemingly impossible gulfs between class, gender, race and culture. What Weyward Macbeth does very neatly is to ask whether black people are inherently disconnected from Shakespeare, a premise that is brilliantly debated by Peter Erickson in his chapter: Black Characters In Search of an Author Amy Scott-Douglass (Shades of Shakespeare) also asks whether we, the audience, actually ‘see’ colour, and if race is relevant when we watch a Shakespeare play. Certainly, as she points out, the Royal Shakespeare Company do not consider it a problem even if others do: ‘the RSC may be colour-blind, but I’m not’, said one of her students in response to the casting of a twenty-three year old, black actor, Nonso Anozie, as King Lear, in 2002 (p.193). Scott-Douglass’ student interpreted this piece of casting - a black father and three white daughters – as lending weight to Lear’s scathing words about his wife being an adultress. Personally, I am of the same ‘colour-blind’ opinion as the RSC when it come to casting; my quarrel would have been with Anozie’s age in this case.
This is one of the book’s great strengths – it genuinely makes one think about how sixteenth and seventeenth century plays, written by a man who was not of an age but for all time, can be staged in our own age and time. Is it, for example, an anachronism to cast a black actor as say, Hamlet or Lear or the King in Cymbeline, when black people did not much live in Denmark or ancient Britain when those plays were both written and set? Yet, we have no qualms about the casting now of women as Ophelia and Juliet and Desdemona – Shakespeare did not ever do that.
There are some weaknesses in the book, mainly factual: historical Scotland was not, for example, an island, as is claimed by Lennix (p.117). It is also rather irritating.to anyone with a modicum of knowledge about English history to read an inaccurate statement such as: ‘not to mention his (Shakespeare’s) five references to Edward the “black Prince” in the history plays (Weird Brothers, p.18, Celia R. Daileader) in reference to Shakespeare’s male black speaking characters, and where it is obvious that race is being confused with a mere sobriquet. Overall, however, Weyward Macbeth is an interesting and deeply thought-provoking book, which is well set out, and ideal to dip into when a fresh perspective is required about Macbeth.
I still have one question unanswered however: is it tantalisingly possible, or a mere coincidence, that Douglas Lanier, the author of the chapter Ellington’s Dark Lady, is related to Emilia Lanier, allegedly Shakespeare’s mistress and the Dark Lady of the Sonnets? If I were Mr Lanier, I could not resist doing some research to find out.
ISBN: 978-0-230-61642-4 Weyward Macbeth – Intersections of Race and Performance is edited by Scott L. Newstok and Ayanna Thompson,. and published by Palgrave Macmillan, USA, 2010
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