SHAKSPER 2000: Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 01/08/00 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0036  Saturday, 8 January 2000.

[1]     From:   Todd M Lidh <tmlidh@email.unc.edu>
        Date:   Thursday, 06 Jan 2000 11:22:51 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbe

[2]     From:   Judith Matthews Craig <je-mc@apex2000.net>
        Date:   Thursday, 6 Jan 2000 16:20:09 -0600
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0021 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth

[3]     From:   Tom Sellari <tom@drjohnson.personal.nccu.edu.tw>
        Date:   Friday, 7 Jan 2000 13:59:29 +0800 (CST)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth

[4]     From:   Karen Peterson-Kranz <tlb@kuentos.guam.net>
        Date:   Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:33:50 +1000
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth

[5]     From:   C. David Frankel <frankel@arts.usf.edu>
        Date:   Friday, 7 Jan 2000 19:53:42 -0500
        Subj:   RE: SHK 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Todd M Lidh <tmlidh@email.unc.edu>
Date:           Thursday, 06 Jan 2000 11:22:51 -0500
Subject: 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth

On Wednesday, 05 Jan 2000 Sean Lawrence wrote:

> Don't be so sure.  I mean, don't we come expecting to see a play?  And
> would there be a play without Duncan's murder?

I've been reading this thread with no small amount of amusement; coming
from an acting background and considering myself a fairly solid
performance critic who emphasizes audience and anticipation (from both
playwright and audience), I have enjoyed the clever arguments made on
both sides.

However, when I read the above, I couldn't help but stop chuckling. It
seems to go beyond the stroke of reason to assign culpability, however
indirect, to an audience in this manner. Simplified out of this equation
are producer choice, director choice, theatre owner choice and other
variables.

Moreover, it skews the logical: are readers of history books culpable
for the Holocaust because they decided to read the book knowing it was
about World War II? are writers of those same books culpable for knowing
that there would be an audience wanting to read about World War II?

The comparison here is justified. It may be clever to put the audience
in the role of accomplice (unwitting or, as implied above, witting), but
it doesn't stand up to reason.

Oh, and to follow the line above: yes, there would be a play without
Duncan's murder. It just wouldn't be the same play.

Todd M Lidh
UNC-Chapel Hill

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Judith Matthews Craig <je-mc@apex2000.net>
Date:           Thursday, 6 Jan 2000 16:20:09 -0600
Subject: 11.0021 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0021 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth

Sean Lawrence writes:

<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.

My argument was NOT based on "common sense" but on the principle that in
differing levels of reality, play-acting is on a lower level.  To rush
into a play to save a character is really not a violation of common
sense, as people see it happening, but rather a stupid action that
affects nothing.  It does nothing to change the play or the ethics
involved.  Decisions that one makes in real life demand ethics because
they really do affect others in a way that play-acting does not-a little
girl crying because  she is affected by what she sees on the stage is
manipulated, not making ethical decisions. If I do remember correctly,
one of the hopes of Renaissance dramatists was to influence the
conscience of the actual king so that he would make better decisions in
the real world.   If Hamlet rushed in to save the player King, he would
not have had the same effect on Claudius as he has in his actual killing
in Act V.  He would merely look even more crazy and probably would be so
judged by the audience members in the Elizabethan audience (or by
extension) a modern audience.

I guess I hold that play actions seen on a stage have a lower position
on the "Great Chain of Being" (pardon the allusion to such an outdated
concept) than actions a living person takes in real life in his
relationships with other real people actually interacting with each
other.

Judy Craig

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Tom Sellari <tom@drjohnson.personal.nccu.edu.tw>
Date:           Friday, 7 Jan 2000 13:59:29 +0800 (CST)
Subject: 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth

Sean Lawrence writes:

> Just to admit that there might be such cultures [cultures that do not
> understand play-acting] makes the
> concept of play-acting not explicable on the grounds of common sense.
> Unless we make our own culture universal, and claim that what we accept
> as normal is simply given, the idea of play-acting still requires an
> explanation.  Invoking its name doesn't get us anywhere.

I'm not talking about common sense, but about common practice, for which
I make no claim of universality. To assume a spectator should interfere
with the action of a play is, in our culture, to misunderstand the
genre.

> Though an example isn't really necessary, I thought I'd offer one:  in
> the film "The Piano", a Maori invited to a production of "Bluebeard"
> charges the stage about half-way through, shouting "Wretch!  Taste my
> club!".

Doesn't it sound fishy to you to offer an example from a film? I could
in this way prove, for example, the existence of Jabba the Hut. In any
case, the example shows a person who does not understand our genre of
dramatic performance. (That's not the same thing as not having any
concept of play-acting, by the way.) Confusing a play with real events
is confusion, however much we might admire the qualities of character
that lead to it.

> ..."the concept of
> play-acting" doesn't really explain very much.  It's just a label put on
> what we still haven't explained.  Somewhere in his essay on Lear,
> Stanley Cavell points out that saying the stage is a "fictional setting"
> doesn't get us off the hook because 1) nobody knows what a fictional
> setting is; 2) if it means anything, it's that we're not to do anything,
> which is just to restate the problem.

I agree that using the concept of play-acting doesn't explain much, but
that's why I find this line of questioning about guilt to be
unenlightening. The only reason I can offer for not stopping a stage
Macbeth from his misdeeds is that we wouldn't have much of a play if I
did. (Not to mention the possibility that a stage Macbeth might be
carrying a real dagger.) So what can we learn from the question about
the guilt of the audience? Only that we don't interrupt plays... which I
suppose we already knew. Should we interrupt them? Not if we want to
have this genre at all... isn't that the question you're really asking?

I appreciate Cavell's work on Wittgenstein (whose On Certainty addresses
the present issue), but as a critic of drama he tends to pursue
questions that interest him regardless of whether they are relevant to
the play or not. I submit that we do know what a fictional setting is,
and can in most cases readily identify one when we see it. 'Knowing' is
not the same thing as 'defining' or 'explaining'. I agree with the
second point: 'drama' implies no interference from the audience. So,
until we change the genre, we won't be interfering. But again, we
already know this.

> We're guilty, I would say, for his existence, to which we assent by
> being there.  This includes both his fate and his freedom.

His existence is a played one; what does `guilt' mean if we are guilty
of playing?

> And would there be a play without Duncan's murder?

Yes, but I suppose it would be a comedy. Where's Nahum Tate when we need
him?

Tom Sellari

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Karen Peterson-Kranz <tlb@kuentos.guam.net>
Date:           Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:33:50 +1000
Subject: 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0030 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.

And Sean Lawrence wrote:
>[snip]  Just to admit that there might be such cultures makes the
>concept of play-acting not explicable on the grounds of common sense.
>Unless we make our own culture universal, and claim that what we accept
>as normal is simply given, the idea of play-acting still requires an
>explanation.  Invoking its name doesn't get us anywhere.

Some thoughts on the "concept of play-acting," and explanations for
play-acting:

First, I think individuals who have no concept of play-acting have
existed, and do exist, everywhere.  The thought occurs to me that such
individuals may have existed in late 16th-early 17th century
England...if not, how to explain the MND mechanicals' concern that their
play will frighten the ladies, and their decision to carefully explain
that no one is really dead?  We, the complicit audience, are of course
encouraged to see the mechanicals' play, and their concerns, through the
eyes of Theseus and Hyppolita: to perceive (smugly) that Bottom and Co.,
by virtue of their low social "degree," are projecting their own
conceptual confusion about the nature of dramatic mimesis onto their
"nobler" audience.  Whether this smugness reflects the play's own view
remains open, however.  I thought the recent film version of MND did a
rather nice job of showing how even people well aware that they are
watching "play-acting" (and pretty bad play-acting at that!) could
become absorbed in the drama and forget, momentarily, that it is "only a
play."

In fact, isn't this what Hamlet hopes will happen when he stages "The
Mousetrap"?  He emphasizes in his directions to the players that they
are to be "natural" in their manners, hoping that Claudius will, on some
level, forget that it's "only a play" and momentarily allow his own
"play-acting" to slip...

>From the many references in the plays and poems to plays, players,
play-acting and representation in general, it seems that Shakespeare may
have been interested in the points we have been debating in this thread.
And in some cases, he seems to just as interested in the "child at a
movie
who weeps inconsolably for the death of a fictional character" as he is
in
the more sophisticated types whose "common sense" tells them that it's
only
a play and that they, as members of the audience, should not intervene.

As a final note, I think we may be (re)constructing a culture in which
the liminal space between "reality" and "drama" is enlarging itself, and
in which the boundaries are increasingly indistinct.  It's most visible
in pop culture.  Consider "The Jerry Springer Show": no one, including
at times the program's producers, is ever really sure whether these
people are "for real" or not.  (My own take on Springer is that it's a
postmodern reincarnation of charivari, in which the audience may, in a
controlled and ritualized environment, express their hostilities toward
those who have transgressed against the mores of the global village!)

I'm wandering.  I'll stop now and do something productive.

Cheers,
Karen Peterson-Kranz
University of Guam

[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           C. David Frankel <frankel@arts.usf.edu>
Date:           Friday, 7 Jan 2000 19:53:42 -0500
Subject: 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth
Comment:        RE: SHK 11.0030 Re: 3rd Murderer in Macbeth

> >Sure, if we've any standards of conduct, we're all guilty,
> but it's not
> >of Duncan's murder.
>
> Don't be so sure.  I mean, don't we come expecting to see a play?  And
> would there be a play without Duncan's murder?

It seems to me that different levels or modes or worlds (I'm still
searching for the right words) are being confused here.

There is no Duncan who gets murdered.  In the theatrical world there's
an actor who plays a character (a dramaturgical creation) that
represents a person who exists in the fictive world.  Although we
perceive all of these together, I also think that we keep them
separate.  It may be that we recognize contiguities or similarities
between the fictive world and the "real" world (the one the audience
inhabits) and we might feel guilty that those things represented could
also occur in reality, but that's a different issue, I think.

cdf


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