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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0027  Wednesday, 5 January 2000.

From:           Tom J. Sellari <tom@drjohnson.personal.nccu.edu.tw>
Date:           Wednesday, 5 Jan 2000 13:08:41 +0800 (CST)
Subject: 11.0021 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0021 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth

>Moreover, the fact that something is in
>a play isn't simply common sense.  Some people, not to mention whole
>cultures, may have no concept of play-acting.

Out of curiosity, which whole cultures? In any case, do any members of
this list belong to such a culture? A relevant point, I think, if
culture has any relation to ethics.

>Everyone's seen a child
>at a movie who weeps unconsolably for the death of a fictional
>character.

Of course, some (Aristotle, for example) might find such weeping to be
the point of it all.

>Even if we were to grant the concept of play-acting, it's still not
>clear why that implies that we shouldn't intervene.

But the 'concept of play-acting' should make that clear, shouldn't it?
(Interactive drama aside.)

>We could always leave, but we don't...
>Without an audience, there is no play.  And without a play, Macbeth has
>no fate.  Of course, he would have no freedom either...
>None of this is to say that I have a clear sense of what sort of action
>would count as ethical vis-à-vis the stage.  But I would like to suggest
>that it is an ethical problem, which an appeal to common sense merely
>avoids.

So, is leaving the play a means of facing the problem, a kind of
protest?  A boycott might be seen as an ethical response to a
questionable staging of a play, but not as a determinant of Macbeth's
fate. The idea of assigning to the audience the 'guilt' for the fate of
a character is daft.

Sure, if we've any standards of conduct, we're all guilty, but it's not
of Duncan's murder.

T.J. Sellari

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