Macbeth by Shakespeare — Ambition, Tyranny, and the Ruin of a Leader (w/Katie Mestres)

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this

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is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast,

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episode number

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197.

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Quoting directly from our book today, and you’ll

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note on the video that I’m going to be looking

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down a lot, and that’s because I have a

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digital version of the book, so I’ll be reading this off my phone. I’m going

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to kind of break the fourth wall a little bit, tell you how I’m doing

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it, but it is the same book that I would have physically

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today. So we’re going to pick up here from our book today,

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from our play today, actually. Act 1, Scene

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1. Thunder and lightning. Enter

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3 witches. First witch. When

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shall we three meet again? In thunder, in lightning,

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or in rain? When the hurly-burly’s

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done, when the battle’s lost and won.

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That will be ere the set of the sun. Where the

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place? Upon the heath. There to

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meet with Macbeth. I come,

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Graymalkin. Paddock calls. Anon.

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Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and

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filthy air. They exit.

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Picking up in Scene 2. Alarum within. Enter King

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Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, with attendants,

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meeting a bleeding captain. What bloody man is that?

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He can report, as seemeth by his plight, of the revolt, the newest

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state. This is the sergeant who,

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like a good and hardy soldier, fought ‘gainst my captivity. Hail, brave

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friend! Say to the king the knowledge of the broil as thou

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didst leave it. Doubtful it

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stood, as two spent swimmers that do cling together and choke their art. The

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merciless MacDonald, worthy to be a rebel, for to

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that the multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him,

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From the western isle of carns and gallows-glasses is supplied,

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and Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, showed like a

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rebel’s whore. But all’s too weak for brave

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Macbeth. Well, he deserves that name, disdaining Fortune

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with his brandished steel, which smote with bloody execution like

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valor’s minion, carved out his passage till he faced the

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slave which ne’er shook hands nor bade farewell to him.

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Till he unseamed him from the nave to the chops, and fixed his

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head upon our battlements. O

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valiant cousin, worthy gentleman!

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As whence the sun gins his reflection shipwrecking storms

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and direful thunders break, so that from that spring whence

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comfort seemed to come discomfort swells, mark, King of

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Scotland, mark! No sooner justice had with valor

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armed, compel these skipping carnes to trust their heels. But

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the Norwegian lords, surveying vintage— or surveying vantage, with

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furbished arms and new supplies of men, began a fresh assault.

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Dismayed not this our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?

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Yes, as sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.

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If I say sooth, I must report they were as cannons overcharged with double cracks,

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So they doubly redoubled the strokes upon the foe. Except they

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meant to bathe in reeking wounds or memorize another

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Golgotha, I cannot tell. But I am faint.

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My gash is cry for help.

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So well thy words become thee as thy wounds. They

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smack of honor both. Go get him surgeons.

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The captain is led off by

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attendants.

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That is a bit from our play today.

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And it comes to us in this kind of way. And I want you to

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think about what we’re going to talk about today, because we’re opening up a month

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of Shakespeare here on the show. We’re going to start

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with this play that we are going to be covering today, and we’re going to

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move into Coriolanus and Henry V as well. We do

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this every year, or at least every other year, on this show.

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In reading this play, which by the way, the name of it has already been

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revealed in the name of one of the characters mentioned,

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something about splitting from the nave to the chops there. One of

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the more interesting facts of our age, The age we live in right now,

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the age where we have technology like the kind that’s bringing you this podcast

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today. One of the interesting facts of our age is the lack of tragic

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stories, truly, genuinely tragic stories being

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told via books and film. Now, don’t get

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me wrong, plenty of tragic circumstances are constantly

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splashed across our collective social media feeds from people we know, people we

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don’t. People experience tragic circumstances across the globe everywhere.

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Circumstances imposed upon them by fate or identity or chance, both

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random and purposeful, and of course, nature itself. We

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observers of this stream of tragedies are, of course, tacitly rewarded by

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the algorithm for engaging with this stream through clicks and

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scrolls and eye movements. And while it may initially

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appear as though there are more tragedies in the world, the actual fact of the

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matter is that there aren’t any more tragedies now than there ever were before in

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human history. From the burning of a random village in the Amazon in

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1500 BC to a person soliciting funds for cancer treatments on a

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GoFundMe page in the year of our Lord 2026,

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tragic circumstances are a regrettable and pervasive human

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constant. What is missing

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in our tragic circumstance social media feeds is fictionalized

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stories of real people overcoming those tragedies to become

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heroic. Or maybe remain anti-heroic and

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succeed in the end.

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Now, it’s almost as if we’ve wound up in a spot

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like Charlie Kaufman was lamenting in that great movie

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Adaptation back in 2002, where he stands up and he talks to Bob McKee.

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You may remember this scene. Charlie Kaufman, played by Nicolas Cage, where he says,

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you know, what if the writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much

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happens? Hmm. Where people don’t change, they don’t have any epiphanies, they struggle

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and are frustrated, and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real

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world. The author today of the

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play we just read from might come down more on the side of Bob McKee’s

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response to that postmodern lament by Kaufman more than he would with

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us postmoderns, I think. And the play we are covering

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today would be part of his answer. Today on the show,

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We will be discussing the hurly-burly, the nature of tragedy,

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and the lives of average men, which are more

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well-documented now than at any other time in human history.

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Today, let us discuss— let us figure

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out how to think about in our time Macbeth,

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specifically the tragedy of Macbeth by William

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Shakespeare.

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Leaders, the tragic narrative of Macbeth isn’t merely, quote, a tale

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told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing,

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not even in our ontologically

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materialistic era.

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And today on our show, you may have already noted if you’re watching the video

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version of this, we have a new guest. We are We are bringing a

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new person into the fold. A new guest co-host is

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joining us. This is her very first time on the show. Welcome to the show,

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Katie Mestras. Katie Mestras is an

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artist, actor, educator, human, and clown from Middletown,

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New Jersey. She has 2 master’s degrees, which qualifies her to be here

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probably even more so than me. One in Shakespeare and performance,

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one in Shakespeare and one in performance, I’m sorry. from Mary Baldwin

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University located in Staunton, Virginia.

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She’s been working in the theater community on and off stage for over 25 years,

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finding love in performance design and puppetry. We may talk a little bit

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about puppetry today too. I want to know if there’s ever been Macbeth done in

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puppetry. She loves script analysis and

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digging into Shakespeare’s poetic and not so poetic texts. And by the

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way, before we allow her to— well, allow her— before

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we open the door for her to come in and say her piece. She was

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recommended to us by another guest, Ryan Stout.

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So this is a case of someone having an excellent

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experience coming on and then saying, hey, this dude’s

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doing something interesting, you should probably pay attention to this thing over here.

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So we love it when our guest co-hosts recommend other guests to

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come on to the show. With all that being said, how are

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you doing today, Katie? How’s it going? Oh,

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you’re muted. I did that to myself.

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Um, I’m doing pretty well. Um, thank you for having me on the show.

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I just want to clarify, um, the master’s degrees thing. So the program

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itself is called Shakespeare Performance, and I have 2 master’s

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degrees in that specific one. So one is an M.Lit., which is just a

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fancy European way of just saying a regular master’s degree, uh,

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and the following is an MFA, which is my fine— my Master of Fine Arts.

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Got it. Okay. All right. Cool. Again, we like to get those things

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accurate on the show.

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And again, that qualifies you more to speak probably on this than myself. I’m

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just a schmuck who reads. I like to think I’m a fairly

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intelligent schmuck, but just a schmuck who’s reading. So

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I want to talk a little bit before we really jump into Macbeth itself and

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really start pulling apart some of the themes that I think are evident here for

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leaders in this, in this play, I want to mention

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that in order to get my arms around Macbeth, number one,

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well, a couple things. First, I tragically

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always confuse Macbeth and Hamlet together in my brain. Like, I merge them together in

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my brain for some reason, which is terrible because we covered Hamlet on this show.

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I should know better by this point, but I still kind of do

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that. But now, post-reading Macbeth and now talking with you,

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I don’t think I’ll be doing that in the future anymore.

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I watched 2 performances of Macbeth in

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preparation for this episode, and I watched the film version

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of this play starring Michael Fassbender and

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Marion Cotillard just to get my arms around that. And that

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version you can go and check out on Amazon. As you know, folks who listen

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to the show, I’m also a huge film junkie. So

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I had to go look up the film. Um,

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I also read a series of essays on Shakespearean tragedies by A.C. Bradley,

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which I had no idea who that person was before I sort of stumbled onto

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all of this. Um, I’m sure Katie knows, and she’s going to tell me all

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the problems with Bradley and his analysis. But it, but it, it was

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written— well, one of the things we do on the show is we tend to

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look at the writer in the context of the time in which he wrote, and

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we don’t try to apply like our current context to him. We just sort of

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take him as he or her, as he or she happens to be.

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Um, because it’s usually the best way to do them their best, their best

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diligence. However, with that being said, I can see where

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folks would have a challenge with, uh, with Bradley. Um, although his

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analysis on Macbeth was very interesting, we borrowed some of his things here. We’ll talk

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about those today. Um, one of the things that has struck me,

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Katie, is that we keep revisiting Macbeth as well as

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Hamlet and King Lear and Othello, um, in

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film and in TV. And this is what I sort of opened up with on

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the show today and even on podcasts like this, because it fulfills some deeper

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longing in us around how to make a narrative sense of

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tragic circumstances. And I think that that’s really what lies at the

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core of Macbeth. But

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you’ve clearly got expertise in this space,

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so I defer to you. What do you think of Macbeth

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and your background with Shakespeare? And talk a little bit about sort of

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how you think about this play that

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seems to seems to never run out of steam or hasn’t run out of

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steam in the last 400 years. Yeah, so

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my opinion on Macbeth is probably different than a lot of other people’s.

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It’s— and it’s really just based on personal preference in comparison

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to his other works. I do enjoy reading the play. It’s,

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it’s a quick read. It’s short. I think it’s his shortest tragedy.

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It’s easy to understand. It’s well written, has a lot of great

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monologues and soliloquies. But in terms of theatrical

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performance, I am sometimes so bored

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by it. Because it’s so— it’s one of his

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more popular ones to do. It’s one of his easiest ones to cut and put

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together. And obviously, you don’t have to get any kind

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of royalties because there’s no living heirs to Shakespeare or nothing. Nobody

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owns his estate. You just do whatever you want with the script. And

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but the fact that you can do whatever you want with the script, but people

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still tend to do the same things over and over and over again.

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They don’t come at it with a different viewpoint. I mean, it’s a very straightforward

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play anyway, but if it’s not— if it’s not well

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directed and if it’s not well performed, it has a tendency

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to drag. And I’ve seen a performance where they cut

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nothing from the script, or at least it seems that they kept— like, cut

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nothing from the script. And there was just some scenes that just went on and

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on and on. It was just exposition of like, yes, we already know this happened.

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Why are you reliving it? We don’t— we don’t care. We want to see the

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action. We want to see it happen. You know, you go to see a play,

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you go to hear a play, but like— Yeah. I don’t know, there’s something

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about Macbeth that doesn’t— it also doesn’t connect to me.

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Like, I can’t find a lot of salience in it. And I don’t know if—

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I mean, I think modern audiences, they’ll like it, but I wonder if

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they like it because it’s like, oh, well, this is Shakespeare, this is Macbeth, I

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have to like it because everybody likes it because it’s popular. But, you know, you

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don’t, you don’t have to like it. He didn’t write bangers all the

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time, right? Mm-hmm. But

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there’s— for me, it’s not a real connection to like a modern audience

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because we don’t have kings. We don’t have, you know, people who

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are succeeding to the throne. We don’t have thanes and dukes and things like that.

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So all of this, all of these people that come in, it’s like, who are

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these people? But for some reason, like the history plays,

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which I used to think, oh, well, those are probably really boring. The history

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plays to me. Yeah. sometimes are way more exciting than

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Macbeth because Macbeth is just, oh, it’s done over and over and

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over again. But you, you always see something fresh with like the other

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history plays like the Henrys or, um,

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like Richard III. Richard III. Yeah, like those kind of plays. Like

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people, I think they’re a little bit more exciting. I think the beginning of Macbeth

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is way more exciting than the end, which

243
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sounds counterproductive. But I think because,

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you know, Lady Macbeth is at the beginning most of the time, and then all

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of a sudden she disappears and goes crazy. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then Macbeth kind of

246
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goes nuts. And then all of a sudden it’s like, well, we’re all against Macbeth,

247
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let’s go kill him. So it’s very straightforward. But there’s a lot more—

248
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there’s a lot more, like, stuff happening, like very

249
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specific things, like anxiety-inducing things,

250
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like about to murder the king, and are we gonna get caught for it? And

251
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you know, by the end it’s like, well, obviously we know he’s doing

252
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bad things, so let’s go get him. And at that point it’s like, all right,

253
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like, let’s kind of get it over with. There’s no, like, yeah, there’s nothing

254
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compelling to, to bring forward. Also, I think there’s such a darkness about this

255
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play that kind of sometimes makes me feel physically uncomfortable at the end of it.

256
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And, you know, it could, it could truly be like a cursed, a

257
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cursed play. Um,

258
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So it’s interesting that you would bring these points up because I think you’re

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right. I don’t think you’re incorrect in any of this analysis.

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Um, I think, I think productions enjoy it, to your point.

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Like, I— the production I watched was one that came out of,

262
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um, it was filmed from the BBC and it

263
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had the guy from, um, Doctor Who,

264
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um, one of the Doctor Whos in it. Yeah. And, uh, one of

265
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the more recent Doctor Whos. Oh, uh, David Tennant,

266
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probably. He’s done a lot of Shakespeare. Might have been him,

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but I might be wrong. My, my guests will— or my guests, my listeners will

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correct me on this. Um, if it wasn’t Tennant, my— they’re reaching out to me

269
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all the time. They’re telling me, oh no, no, you missed that one. And I

270
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could look it up, but I’m not going to do that right now. Um, but,

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um, but it starred a guy from Doctor Who. It might have been Tennant. Um,

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and it was, it was done talk about modernizing it,

273
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right? Mm-hmm. Everybody was dressed in modern costume.

274
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Um, it was very, um— and I’ve done some theatrical

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production work in my, in my distant past. Um, when I

276
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was in community college, I did some community theater stuff because I was a,

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I was a Bachelor of Fine Arts major. That’s what I went to college for.

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Um, I did not go to college for business or any of that other kind

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of stuff. Um, and I, I came to that later on. But,

280
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um, I made my Bachelor of Fine Arts practice. I figured I

281
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needed to know something about theater production, so I did a, I did a little

282
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bit on some theater productions and went and saw some theater productions in New York

283
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City. And so, um, the, the set design of it, which is

284
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fascinating to me, um, was very, uh,

285
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modernistic, uh, or postmodern actually, which went along of

286
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course with the modern costuming. Like Banquo

287
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and, uh, and Macbeth when they’re dressed as soldiers, They’re very much

288
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dressed like they came out of the Iraq War, you know, so it’s a very

289
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contemporary, you know, contemporization of Macbeth.

290
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So I think to your point about staging it, it’s easy to stage,

291
00:18:16,756 –> 00:18:20,112
you know, you don’t have too many transitions, it works, you can kind of

292
00:18:20,112 –> 00:18:23,677
mold that a little bit. I also think you’re correct in that

293
00:18:26,588 –> 00:18:29,620
there’s a lack of, and we’ll talk a little about this today, but particularly with

294
00:18:29,653 –> 00:18:33,341
Bradley’s analysis of sort of Macbeth, but there’s a

295
00:18:33,341 –> 00:18:37,134
lack of, um, there’s a

296
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lack of psychologizing around why Macbeth does the

297
00:18:40,830 –> 00:18:44,461
things that he does. That because we

298
00:18:44,526 –> 00:18:48,366
live after the death of not the novel. Well, yeah, we

299
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live after the death of the novel because the novel’s basically dead. I think anyway,

300
00:18:52,006 –> 00:18:54,364
that’s one of the things that, one of the ideas that we explore on this

301
00:18:54,364 –> 00:18:58,045
show, not the book. That’s why this show is called Leadership Lessons from the

302
00:18:58,045 –> 00:19:01,673
Great Books, not Leadership Lessons from the Great Novels. Um, The

303
00:19:01,914 –> 00:19:05,720
book is still alive, but the novel itself has migrated to all

304
00:19:05,768 –> 00:19:09,236
these other spaces, right? So it’s migrated to film very

305
00:19:09,236 –> 00:19:13,057
strongly. It’s migrated to theater where you came

306
00:19:13,057 –> 00:19:16,702
out of, or where you, and where you make your, you know, made your bones.

307
00:19:17,634 –> 00:19:20,524
We think that it’s, at least on this show, I think that it’s migrated to

308
00:19:20,524 –> 00:19:23,591
social media. Like all the things that a novel used to do, that

309
00:19:23,591 –> 00:19:27,078
interiority, like a good Jane Austen novel, Now

310
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we actually rely on streaming shows

311
00:19:31,168 –> 00:19:35,015
and movies to do that for us. Um, so the novel’s probably on its

312
00:19:35,048 –> 00:19:37,694
last legs. And you, and you can disagree with me about that if you want,

313
00:19:37,710 –> 00:19:41,156
but Macbeth comes before all of that. And

314
00:19:41,188 –> 00:19:44,763
so you’re right, we don’t get interiority into Macbeth,

315
00:19:45,101 –> 00:19:47,603
or we don’t get a psychological sort of

316
00:19:48,369 –> 00:19:52,186
analysis and a slicing of him. Um,

317
00:19:52,202 –> 00:19:55,279
we also don’t get a psychological analysis and a slicing of Lady Macbeth. We have

318
00:19:55,344 –> 00:19:58,702
no idea what— well, not no idea. Yeah. We have a limited idea of what

319
00:19:58,702 –> 00:20:01,990
her motivations are only based on what the words are that Shakespeare put in her

320
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mouth. And again, we’re, we’re post-novel, right? We’re also

321
00:20:05,505 –> 00:20:09,324
post-feminism, which is a whole other kind of set of pieces of analysis around

322
00:20:09,324 –> 00:20:12,640
that. And so we’re looking at it from different, different lenses, right?

323
00:20:13,351 –> 00:20:16,841
And so I agree with you. And then as far as the darkness piece,

324
00:20:21,656 –> 00:20:25,474
one of the things we really like as people, particularly postmodern

325
00:20:25,538 –> 00:20:28,482
people, is we like this idea that,

326
00:20:29,946 –> 00:20:33,180
um, anybody can be redeemed at any time.

327
00:20:35,310 –> 00:20:38,363
And I was watching a, a recent movie that I was watching, Masters of the

328
00:20:38,363 –> 00:20:42,069
Universe. I don’t know if you’ve seen that movie. I— is that

329
00:20:42,117 –> 00:20:45,772
the He-Man one? Yes, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. I haven’t, I

330
00:20:45,884 –> 00:20:49,732
haven’t seen that in a really long time, but I used to love, um, when

331
00:20:49,748 –> 00:20:52,285
I was a kid, it used to come on like, I don’t know, Channel 11

332
00:20:52,285 –> 00:20:56,058
or something every year, and we like We’re like already around the TV with

333
00:20:56,058 –> 00:20:59,012
our popcorn. We’re like, we’re gonna watch Masters of the Universe! We were so excited.

334
00:20:59,109 –> 00:21:02,690
It was, it was like an event in my household. So the movie

335
00:21:02,947 –> 00:21:06,688
is, is interesting because it’s sort of nostalgic bait for people like you and I

336
00:21:06,736 –> 00:21:10,204
who remember this and sort of have these memories. Um, but then it’s also updated

337
00:21:10,204 –> 00:21:13,785
for like millennials and Gen Zers who have no concept of any of that and

338
00:21:13,865 –> 00:21:17,061
didn’t get to experience that historically. Um,

339
00:21:17,816 –> 00:21:21,155
and so one of the things that is interesting in that movie is Skeletor has

340
00:21:21,204 –> 00:21:24,961
a moment played by the Jared Leto crushed it as Skeletor. Oh.

341
00:21:25,041 –> 00:21:28,782
Oh my God, it’s ridiculous. And he says something to

342
00:21:28,798 –> 00:21:32,508
He-Man in there that is so

343
00:21:32,652 –> 00:21:36,265
totally antithetical to our time, it took me by surprise that he actually said it

344
00:21:36,265 –> 00:21:40,054
out loud. Because He-Man’s trying to, you know, see if there’s any good in him,

345
00:21:40,070 –> 00:21:43,635
if he can be turned, whatever. And Skeletor laughs that cackle,

346
00:21:44,309 –> 00:21:47,504
and he goes, I just do evil stuff for evil’s sake. I’m just evil.

347
00:21:48,184 –> 00:21:51,952
Like, there’s no, there’s no great well of goodness inside of me

348
00:21:51,952 –> 00:21:55,801
somewhere. No, I’m evil. I do evil. He didn’t say the curse word,

349
00:21:55,817 –> 00:21:59,212
but he’s like, I do evil stuff. That’s what I do. I’m an evil guy.

350
00:21:59,503 –> 00:22:02,804
There’s no other motivation other than that. And it was sort of weirdly

351
00:22:02,901 –> 00:22:06,622
refreshing to like hear that because that means that he’s not

352
00:22:06,622 –> 00:22:10,358
redeemable. You’re gonna just, you gotta eliminate him, right? Kind of like the

353
00:22:10,487 –> 00:22:13,916
Joker in The Dark Knight, you know, The Dark Knight back in the day. Yeah.

354
00:22:14,092 –> 00:22:17,769
with Batman. But we struggle with this idea that people aren’t

355
00:22:17,785 –> 00:22:20,964
redeemable. And so Macbeth

356
00:22:21,060 –> 00:22:24,769
challenges that because there’s no— Macbeth is not redeemable. Mm-hmm.

357
00:22:24,850 –> 00:22:28,543
Macbeth does not get redeemed at the end. He just gets killed and

358
00:22:28,543 –> 00:22:32,155
that’s just it. Um, so I agree with you, that does create a

359
00:22:32,155 –> 00:22:35,993
certain darkness 400 years later in the psyche of a Westerner

360
00:22:35,993 –> 00:22:38,385
when they read it. So I agree with all of your points.

361
00:22:39,926 –> 00:22:43,741
I’m fascinated by this because I think the lessons in here are

362
00:22:44,911 –> 00:22:48,101
really interesting from a tragic

363
00:22:48,101 –> 00:22:51,691
perspective. Um, because to your

364
00:22:51,724 –> 00:22:54,288
point, and I’m going to push back on this a little bit, I think we

365
00:22:54,288 –> 00:22:57,270
do actually have kings, but we call them CEOs now.

366
00:22:58,199 –> 00:23:01,790
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and we do have

367
00:23:01,886 –> 00:23:05,717
emperors, we call them prime ministers now. And, and we have

368
00:23:05,733 –> 00:23:09,357
these people that are that are playing at global levels in our

369
00:23:09,424 –> 00:23:13,097
world, but they don’t

370
00:23:13,097 –> 00:23:14,629
seem to ever—

371
00:23:17,098 –> 00:23:19,050
I’m going to be— this is very broad. I’m going to open the door here.

372
00:23:19,453 –> 00:23:22,565
They don’t ever seem to experience tragic circumstances like the rest of us.

373
00:23:24,208 –> 00:23:26,785
They seem to just sort of float above it all. Yeah.

374
00:23:27,815 –> 00:23:31,313
And I think that’s the thing that actually hooks us into

375
00:23:31,362 –> 00:23:35,124
Macbeth. It’s sort of schadenfreude for us. Because we see

376
00:23:35,124 –> 00:23:38,840
these, like, I’ll use a public

377
00:23:38,840 –> 00:23:42,410
example that everybody knows. Bill Gates’s name was on the list of

378
00:23:42,459 –> 00:23:43,690
folks that went to Epstein Island.

379
00:23:46,550 –> 00:23:50,252
People are still buying Microsoft products. We’re

380
00:23:50,414 –> 00:23:53,429
recording this on a computer that is powered by Microsoft.

381
00:23:57,026 –> 00:23:59,283
There seems to have been no penalty for any of that.

382
00:24:01,076 –> 00:24:04,687
Yeah. And I think we have to— I think tragic narratives

383
00:24:06,154 –> 00:24:09,861
give us the ability, like Macbeth, give us the ability to sort of walk

384
00:24:09,861 –> 00:24:13,384
out all of those feelings of like frustration and anger and vengeance

385
00:24:13,659 –> 00:24:17,441
and desire for justice to see things happen to

386
00:24:17,458 –> 00:24:21,296
people that we think deserve it. And that’s why I think Macbeth still

387
00:24:21,313 –> 00:24:25,156
works. But I don’t know if you— I don’t know what you think about

388
00:24:25,204 –> 00:24:28,836
that. Oh yeah. I mean, I think obviously Macbeth still works and like, I see

389
00:24:28,836 –> 00:24:31,554
your point with CEOs. and prime ministers and, uh,

390
00:24:32,839 –> 00:24:36,654
being those, you know, what we have now today. Um,

391
00:24:36,880 –> 00:24:40,675
I think the thing about Macbeth is, is that it’s the succession of

392
00:24:40,691 –> 00:24:44,535
title kind of a thing. And like, while there is some like type of

393
00:24:44,567 –> 00:24:47,731
nepotism sometimes within companies, it’s not like,

394
00:24:48,425 –> 00:24:51,685
oh well, this person is going to get this

395
00:24:51,911 –> 00:24:55,528
kingship because they’re next in line if this person dies.

396
00:24:55,659 –> 00:24:59,391
So like, if somebody’s like, Well, if I— unless you’re like, I’m the son and

397
00:24:59,407 –> 00:25:03,145
I’m gonna go kill my dad because I want this CEO title, there’s not,

398
00:25:03,257 –> 00:25:06,674
there’s not like that type of

399
00:25:06,882 –> 00:25:10,315
succession in our public sphere that

400
00:25:10,315 –> 00:25:14,132
connects the same way as like, oh, if the king dies,

401
00:25:14,245 –> 00:25:17,469
then Macbeth is going to be next in line, right? Right. So like, oh, if

402
00:25:17,517 –> 00:25:21,046
this person dies, I’m going to be next in line. Which, if, you know, if

403
00:25:21,062 –> 00:25:24,735
people were smart, uh, directors and people like that, they could

404
00:25:24,735 –> 00:25:27,512
make those kinds of connections within that

405
00:25:28,122 –> 00:25:31,139
functionality. But I don’t know if that’s

406
00:25:31,878 –> 00:25:35,473
ever been done, or I feel like sometimes with Macbeth,

407
00:25:36,051 –> 00:25:39,759
people just tend to get a little bit lazy. Because it’s

408
00:25:39,759 –> 00:25:43,451
like, it’s all just right there laid out for you. Right there. And maybe

409
00:25:43,451 –> 00:25:46,870
it’s like, maybe people are scared, like, oh, we don’t want to screw with Macbeth

410
00:25:46,983 –> 00:25:50,739
because like, we don’t want to mess with the story because it’s so

411
00:25:50,739 –> 00:25:54,191
popular and everybody’s familiar with it. Why change it?

412
00:25:55,177 –> 00:25:58,957
Which I get, you know, familiarity, you know, it’s, it’s something

413
00:25:58,973 –> 00:26:02,231
that keeps the masses coming in. And I think sometimes too, like those,

414
00:26:03,789 –> 00:26:07,420
you know, it’s gotta, gotta put the name on the

415
00:26:07,420 –> 00:26:11,244
marquee, right? Like, oh, Macbeth is coming. Like, that’s a— I know exactly what to

416
00:26:11,244 –> 00:26:15,055
expect when I’m going into Macbeth. I know what happens. I’m already prepared.

417
00:26:15,540 –> 00:26:18,206
I don’t have to worry that I’m gonna hate this play because I already know

418
00:26:18,206 –> 00:26:20,494
that I love it. I want to see what it’s done with. And I think

419
00:26:20,494 –> 00:26:24,316
sometimes people go to see these Shakespeare shows because they

420
00:26:24,348 –> 00:26:27,817
want to see if some— what, what somebody else has done with the same

421
00:26:27,817 –> 00:26:31,495
story. The same story. So, but sometimes it’s just, I’m

422
00:26:31,495 –> 00:26:34,257
just gonna keep doing the same thing and over and over and over again. And

423
00:26:34,386 –> 00:26:37,646
I, I like that you mentioned Shakespeare in modern clothes.

424
00:26:38,626 –> 00:26:42,368
I love when performances do that, and I think it’s

425
00:26:42,416 –> 00:26:46,077
becoming way more and more common, um, because

426
00:26:46,190 –> 00:26:47,800
that kind of

427
00:26:49,754 –> 00:26:53,082
connection to the audience where you modernize the characters on

428
00:26:53,082 –> 00:26:56,360
stage. It makes the audience feel like they’re living in the same

429
00:26:56,458 –> 00:26:59,484
timeline as the story that’s being told.

430
00:27:00,455 –> 00:27:04,096
So it, it makes that kind of visual connection to it.

431
00:27:04,630 –> 00:27:07,786
And that’s, I think, important because if you think about it,

432
00:27:08,919 –> 00:27:12,283
the most accurate way to— if you pay

433
00:27:12,412 –> 00:27:15,965
homage to Shakespeare’s design is to be as simple as

434
00:27:16,159 –> 00:27:19,977
possible because he didn’t have sets. The costumes that they

435
00:27:20,009 –> 00:27:23,769
wore were usually just, you know, hand-me-downs

436
00:27:23,882 –> 00:27:27,625
from, uh, people of higher status,

437
00:27:28,222 –> 00:27:31,749
or they had specific costumes for, say, like the Roman plays or something.

438
00:27:32,425 –> 00:27:35,887
But most of the time they would be wearing just

439
00:27:36,692 –> 00:27:40,452
regular Elizabethan garb. which is the same thing as their modern

440
00:27:40,500 –> 00:27:44,075
dress. So when we put these plays into our modern dress,

441
00:27:44,684 –> 00:27:48,260
you know, we’re paying a better, a better homage

442
00:27:48,372 –> 00:27:52,220
to Shakespeare in that way. Okay, so let me ask you this question. Yeah,

443
00:27:52,364 –> 00:27:55,026
one of the push— one of the pieces of pushback that I always get whenever

444
00:27:55,026 –> 00:27:58,858
I do Shakespeare, whether it’s from our cover Shakespeare, whether it’s from guests,

445
00:27:58,874 –> 00:28:02,705
and we’ll get back to Macbeth in a minute, whether it’s from guests, or whether

446
00:28:02,705 –> 00:28:06,249
it’s from listeners, I always get this pushback. And I’m gonna get this

447
00:28:06,249 –> 00:28:09,729
pushback on this episode too. If we can

448
00:28:09,826 –> 00:28:13,545
update the dress, which I agree with you, like,

449
00:28:14,272 –> 00:28:17,991
I’m reading Coriolanus right now, and I didn’t realize that they had

450
00:28:17,991 –> 00:28:21,795
turned that into a film with— gosh, a

451
00:28:21,957 –> 00:28:25,763
few years ago. And so I went and looked at the trailer for that, and

452
00:28:25,779 –> 00:28:29,376
they’re all in modern, you know, garb. I think Gerard

453
00:28:29,408 –> 00:28:32,897
Butler is in that movie, you know, or the movie version of

454
00:28:32,897 –> 00:28:36,444
Coriolanus, right? Mm-hmm. And so

455
00:28:36,606 –> 00:28:39,648
they’re all in, they’re all not even in, they’re not in Roman garb. They’re in,

456
00:28:40,247 –> 00:28:42,691
they’re in modern warrior

457
00:28:44,293 –> 00:28:48,082
garb, right? They’re dressed like soldiers from, again, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan

458
00:28:48,162 –> 00:28:50,337
War, whatever these modern wars are that we’ve had. Okay.

459
00:28:52,351 –> 00:28:56,175
And so that connects to your point, that connects with the audience. But Ralph Fiennes,

460
00:28:56,224 –> 00:28:59,576
that’s who it is. Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler,

461
00:28:59,885 –> 00:29:03,551
Fassbender, Maria, um, or Marion

462
00:29:03,759 –> 00:29:07,417
Cotillard, um, in Macbeth, the film version of Macbeth, which, by the way, they

463
00:29:07,513 –> 00:29:11,171
weren’t updated in their clothing. They, they, they kind of did the, the original thing.

464
00:29:11,540 –> 00:29:14,957
Okay, cool. But they set it all in Scotland. So it’s like in

465
00:29:15,294 –> 00:29:19,128
it that this, the, the sets are the environment, which is kind

466
00:29:19,144 –> 00:29:22,978
of amazing. Um, but the pushback I get is you

467
00:29:23,010 –> 00:29:26,508
could update the clothes, but you can’t update the language. Why are we saying these

468
00:29:26,540 –> 00:29:29,956
and thous? Why are we saying error and or and eeh? Why are we doing

469
00:29:29,989 –> 00:29:33,838
this? Like, just make it English. That’s

470
00:29:33,838 –> 00:29:37,480
always the pushback I get. So go ahead and respond to that. Yeah, and I’ll

471
00:29:37,528 –> 00:29:41,345
definitely respond to that. So like, it is just— it is,

472
00:29:41,538 –> 00:29:45,019
first of all, it is English. It is early modern English. So it’s— I know

473
00:29:45,051 –> 00:29:47,762
a lot of people say, oh, it’s Old English, I can’t understand it. It is

474
00:29:48,211 –> 00:29:52,061
early modern English, uh, most of the time written in iambic pentameter

475
00:29:52,349 –> 00:29:56,125
or other kinds of meter, sometimes in prose. I think

476
00:29:56,125 –> 00:29:59,339
people approach Shakespeare and they’re so afraid of it because they’re like, well, I don’t

477
00:29:59,355 –> 00:30:02,182
understand what any of this means. It’s just poetry.

478
00:30:03,360 –> 00:30:06,936
Yeah. So it’s just poetry. So really, it’s just heightened

479
00:30:06,936 –> 00:30:10,690
language. It was the language of the time. And I think

480
00:30:11,305 –> 00:30:13,877
the fun of it, for me anyway, is

481
00:30:14,945 –> 00:30:18,650
analyzing the text and trying to understand exactly

482
00:30:18,666 –> 00:30:22,478
what’s being said and looking at all the rhetoric and using that towards

483
00:30:22,512 –> 00:30:25,473
performance. And it’s It’s— you have to

484
00:30:25,473 –> 00:30:28,711
appreciate the beauty. And that’s not to say you

485
00:30:28,839 –> 00:30:32,461
can’t make a modern English version of Macbeth. You

486
00:30:32,525 –> 00:30:36,067
can, but then it wouldn’t be Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It would be somebody

487
00:30:36,131 –> 00:30:39,865
else’s interpretation of Macbeth, and therefore you’d have

488
00:30:39,897 –> 00:30:42,958
to license it from them. So it’s just way easier to

489
00:30:43,022 –> 00:30:46,820
just use the original Macbeth because it’s just—

490
00:30:46,949 –> 00:30:50,699
it’s free to license. You could just do it, and it’s poetry, and it’s beautiful,

491
00:30:50,795 –> 00:30:54,225
and the language is lovely. And it’s interesting looking at a lot of his other

492
00:30:54,225 –> 00:30:58,071
plays I remember I was in like a Shakespeare survey class in

493
00:30:58,071 –> 00:31:01,902
my undergrad, and we were reading a variety of plays. We read

494
00:31:02,078 –> 00:31:05,861
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we read Henry IV, we read Hamlet, um,

495
00:31:06,102 –> 00:31:09,628
we read The Tempest. Uh, there was one other that we read, but

496
00:31:10,734 –> 00:31:14,164
after I read Henry IV, Part 1, and then I

497
00:31:14,212 –> 00:31:17,850
immediately read Hamlet after that, and I was like, oh my God.

498
00:31:18,588 –> 00:31:22,322
He loved Hamlet. This was his magnum opus. The language in

499
00:31:22,370 –> 00:31:25,977
Hamlet is so much more heightened than the language in

500
00:31:25,977 –> 00:31:29,632
Henry IV. Henry IV is simpler. It’s just kind of

501
00:31:29,664 –> 00:31:33,079
like whatever. There’s a lot more prose. But in Hamlet, it is,

502
00:31:33,849 –> 00:31:37,504
it is art. It is his masterpiece. It is, I think, one that he

503
00:31:37,504 –> 00:31:40,758
loved writing. So you can tell the difference. Like, even in As You Like It,

504
00:31:40,886 –> 00:31:44,509
that play is like 90% prose. He was just kind of

505
00:31:44,509 –> 00:31:48,036
like— and I think I’ve heard people joke like, oh, he wrote As You Like

506
00:31:48,084 –> 00:31:51,309
It because And that’s why he called it As You Like It, because it’s like

507
00:31:51,309 –> 00:31:54,758
the audiences wanted more and more and more stuff. He’s like, well, here you go,

508
00:31:54,999 –> 00:31:58,096
here’s some crap that I just put out, you know. So it’s like, like modern,

509
00:31:58,369 –> 00:32:02,139
like, like modern filmmakers, right? Like, we

510
00:32:02,139 –> 00:32:05,749
got like, uh, Steven Spielberg or something. In 400

511
00:32:05,749 –> 00:32:08,894
years, people are going to look at Steven Spielberg the same way that we look

512
00:32:08,894 –> 00:32:12,023
at Shakespeare today. Shakespeare was just a popular

513
00:32:12,071 –> 00:32:15,841
playwright at the time, and that was the common media. So, you know, like our

514
00:32:15,841 –> 00:32:19,662
common media today is film and television. Back then it

515
00:32:19,710 –> 00:32:23,355
was, it was plays and bear baiting, which was competing

516
00:32:23,403 –> 00:32:26,438
with, you know, you could pay the same price to go see a play or

517
00:32:26,438 –> 00:32:29,858
you could go down the street or across the street and go see some, a

518
00:32:29,970 –> 00:32:33,631
bear being attacked by dogs. So like, it’s just, that

519
00:32:33,760 –> 00:32:37,164
was their entertainment for the time. And our

520
00:32:37,228 –> 00:32:40,937
entertainment for the time, Spielberg, not everything

521
00:32:40,985 –> 00:32:43,633
that he makes is a masterpiece. Like, you know,

522
00:32:44,611 –> 00:32:48,347
sometimes— That’s true. Sometimes he makes like stuff that’s like,

523
00:32:48,443 –> 00:32:51,121
okay, this is for the common people, but then he makes

524
00:32:52,051 –> 00:32:55,562
bigger, more important— like Titanic is some like an epic movie that he made.

525
00:32:56,043 –> 00:32:59,650
And then I forget, I can’t think off the top of my head other

526
00:32:59,746 –> 00:33:03,578
things that he’s made right now. But you understand, you understand

527
00:33:03,578 –> 00:33:07,298
the comparison there. Oh yeah, like Close Encounters of

528
00:33:07,298 –> 00:33:11,082
the Third Kind or E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

529
00:33:11,354 –> 00:33:14,929
or The— any of the Indiana Jones

530
00:33:15,026 –> 00:33:18,648
movies that, that he directed, any of the first 3.

531
00:33:18,745 –> 00:33:22,206
I’m not talking about the last few. Those don’t exist in this dojo.

532
00:33:22,593 –> 00:33:25,874
We don’t talk about those. We don’t, we don’t talk about

533
00:33:26,565 –> 00:33:30,232
those, you know, or, or any of his historic

534
00:33:30,232 –> 00:33:33,717
epics. So Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s

535
00:33:33,717 –> 00:33:37,286
List. Yeah, I thought he did Schindler’s List. I just wasn’t sure. Yeah.

536
00:33:37,430 –> 00:33:40,810
Um, and Titanic was done by James Cameron, but that’s okay. Oh, James Cameron, duh.

537
00:33:40,810 –> 00:33:43,790
That’s okay. That’s all right. That’s all right. That’s right. You on that one, you

538
00:33:43,790 –> 00:33:47,110
could kind of flip-flop them. They’re both doing— I mean, it’s fine. Um, my point

539
00:33:47,110 –> 00:33:50,350
is, and I get your point, um, those— he’s gonna

540
00:33:50,350 –> 00:33:53,970
do those kinds of films, but then, you know, he’s

541
00:33:53,970 –> 00:33:57,730
gonna— oh, for lack of a better term, he’s gonna push out something like

542
00:33:57,730 –> 00:34:01,130
Disclosure Day, which just came out. And it’s

543
00:34:01,130 –> 00:34:04,770
like, yeah, maybe you’re done, Steven. Maybe, maybe it’s time to be

544
00:34:04,770 –> 00:34:08,453
done. And maybe that’s okay. Like, it’s, you know, like Eminem would would maybe say

545
00:34:08,453 –> 00:34:09,839
back in the day, like, it’s okay to be done.

546
00:34:12,819 –> 00:34:16,474
Okay. Before we go back to Macbeth, one other point, and I want to find

547
00:34:16,474 –> 00:34:20,178
out from you. We don’t often talk about who Shakespeare was as a

548
00:34:20,178 –> 00:34:23,446
creative on this show because we just make an

549
00:34:23,446 –> 00:34:27,282
assumption, and probably an erroneous one,

550
00:34:27,881 –> 00:34:30,434
that most people just know who Shakespeare is.

551
00:34:31,818 –> 00:34:35,472
But you’re the Shakespeare expert. Talk to us about who Shakespeare was. Talk to us

552
00:34:35,472 –> 00:34:38,542
about sort of What kind of creative was he?

553
00:34:39,328 –> 00:34:42,842
What was he seeking to do with, with his plays? Was he seeking to,

554
00:34:43,339 –> 00:34:46,820
as Steve Jobs would say, you know, make a dent in the universe? Or was

555
00:34:46,852 –> 00:34:50,237
he just seeking to, like, entertain people? So

556
00:34:50,398 –> 00:34:53,783
that’s the great mystery. So we

557
00:34:54,168 –> 00:34:57,938
can’t know what his intentions were. He— we can make

558
00:34:58,323 –> 00:35:02,125
assumptions, we can make speculations, but we’re never going to

559
00:35:02,125 –> 00:35:05,555
know how he was as a creative. Um,

560
00:35:06,100 –> 00:35:09,480
the only thing that we have a record of really is his plays, and we

561
00:35:09,480 –> 00:35:13,181
can’t assume that he was trying to say anything with them.

562
00:35:13,950 –> 00:35:17,058
We can’t assume that the characters that were in

563
00:35:17,731 –> 00:35:21,480
the plays represented a part of himself. We can

564
00:35:21,480 –> 00:35:25,101
look at the sonnets and make assumptions, but we can never know

565
00:35:25,261 –> 00:35:28,978
because none of us were there. Um, so that’s really the great mystery. I wish

566
00:35:29,090 –> 00:35:32,439
I had more information for you. Like, there are, you know, books written,

567
00:35:32,695 –> 00:35:36,372
um, Paul Menzer, who was one of the professors

568
00:35:36,870 –> 00:35:40,467
at the Shakespeare Performance Program, he was a previous director, and he actually was

569
00:35:40,579 –> 00:35:44,225
just recently selected as the inaugural chair in

570
00:35:44,273 –> 00:35:47,887
Shakespeare studies at the Folger Library. He

571
00:35:48,047 –> 00:35:51,564
wrote a book, and I think it was called Shakespeare: A Life.

572
00:35:51,998 –> 00:35:54,230
So it’s— let me just look that up real quick.

573
00:35:54,969 –> 00:35:58,727
Okay. He wrote that, and I

574
00:35:58,727 –> 00:36:02,569
think— I haven’t read it yet. Um, but that I think is

575
00:36:02,601 –> 00:36:06,313
the closest thing we’re really going to get as to his intentions. We can look

576
00:36:06,602 –> 00:36:10,139
into what was happening in the Elizabethan and Jacobean

577
00:36:10,139 –> 00:36:13,472
periods at the time, um, the Elizabethan worldview,

578
00:36:14,325 –> 00:36:18,060
um, and kind of try to like put the pieces

579
00:36:18,060 –> 00:36:21,519
together as to what he was trying to say, but we’re never going to really

580
00:36:21,519 –> 00:36:24,847
know it, it in terms of like his

581
00:36:24,879 –> 00:36:28,166
creativity and what he was trying to do with it. Mm-hmm. My assumption,

582
00:36:28,586 –> 00:36:32,398
he’s just trying to make some money. Like, and he

583
00:36:32,398 –> 00:36:34,805
was an artist, you know, his father was a glove maker.

584
00:36:37,016 –> 00:36:40,506
Um, we don’t know if his father wanted him to also continue in the line

585
00:36:40,554 –> 00:36:43,735
of glove making. Maybe, I don’t know. These are all just

586
00:36:43,880 –> 00:36:47,666
speculations and assumptions, and you can use your imagination and, and, you

587
00:36:47,666 –> 00:36:51,507
know, kind of think. Um,

588
00:36:51,523 –> 00:36:55,074
see, let’s see. Sorry, I’m just— No, you’re fine.

589
00:36:55,784 –> 00:36:59,609
A Brief Life. William Shakespeare: A Brief Life. He wrote that in 2023.

590
00:37:01,675 –> 00:37:03,161
It kind of talks about

591
00:37:05,619 –> 00:37:09,144
kind of like tracking Shakespeare’s life as much as we possibly can. So

592
00:37:09,338 –> 00:37:13,036
if you want to understand maybe a little bit more about Shakespeare’s

593
00:37:13,213 –> 00:37:16,817
life and his creativity and what influenced him, that might be a really good

594
00:37:16,913 –> 00:37:18,941
place to start in reading that book.

595
00:37:20,721 –> 00:37:24,333
So to repeat, it is William Shakespeare: A

596
00:37:24,333 –> 00:37:28,087
Brief Life by Dr. Paul Menzer. Got it. Yeah, we

597
00:37:28,103 –> 00:37:31,900
will, we’ll put a link to that book in the show

598
00:37:31,900 –> 00:37:35,334
notes. Yeah, for this, for this episode.

599
00:37:35,399 –> 00:37:39,202
Yeah. All right, let’s, let’s go ahead and pick

600
00:37:39,202 –> 00:37:42,206
up. Let’s go back to the play. Let’s pick up a little bit here

601
00:37:43,135 –> 00:37:46,888
from Act 1, Scene 5. And then we’re gonna

602
00:37:46,888 –> 00:37:49,986
skip and we’re gonna go to scene

603
00:37:50,115 –> 00:37:53,888
7. We’re gonna talk about a person who I think is

604
00:37:53,936 –> 00:37:57,373
probably the most compellingly interesting person in

605
00:37:57,806 –> 00:38:01,419
the entire play, but not for the

606
00:38:01,419 –> 00:38:05,015
obvious reasons that you may think. So let’s pick up with

607
00:38:05,353 –> 00:38:08,291
Macbeth. We’re still in Act 1,

608
00:38:09,046 –> 00:38:12,674
Scene 5. Enter Macbeth’s wife

609
00:38:12,820 –> 00:38:14,924
alone with a letter.

610
00:38:16,542 –> 00:38:20,184
Reading the letter. They met me in the day of success, and I have

611
00:38:20,184 –> 00:38:23,908
learned by the perfectest report that they have, they have more in them than mortal

612
00:38:23,908 –> 00:38:27,470
knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made

613
00:38:27,470 –> 00:38:31,207
themselves air into which they vanished. Whilst I stood rapt in the wonder

614
00:38:31,223 –> 00:38:34,755
of it, came missives from the king, who all hailed me

615
00:38:35,077 –> 00:38:38,838
Thane of Cawdor, Which— by which title before these weird

616
00:38:38,838 –> 00:38:42,019
sisters saluted me and referred me to the coming

617
00:38:42,520 –> 00:38:45,540
on of time with, Hail, King that shall be!

618
00:38:46,656 –> 00:38:50,457
This I have thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that

619
00:38:50,457 –> 00:38:54,241
thou mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing by being ignorant of

620
00:38:54,241 –> 00:38:58,061
what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and

621
00:38:58,159 –> 00:39:01,695
farewell. Glamis thou art, and

622
00:39:01,695 –> 00:39:05,467
Cawdor thou. And caudor, and shalt be what thou art

623
00:39:05,467 –> 00:39:09,231
promised. Yet do I fear thy nature. It is too full of

624
00:39:09,248 –> 00:39:12,983
the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldest

625
00:39:12,983 –> 00:39:16,705
be great, art now without ambition, but without the illness

626
00:39:16,705 –> 00:39:20,055
should attend it. What thou wast highly, that thou wast thou

627
00:39:20,752 –> 00:39:24,366
holily, would thou not play false, and yet wouldest

628
00:39:24,463 –> 00:39:27,687
wrongly win. Thou’st have great gladness, that which cries,

629
00:39:28,376 –> 00:39:32,163
Thus thou must do, if thou have it, and that which rather

630
00:39:32,163 –> 00:39:35,485
thou dost fear to do than wishest should be undone.

631
00:39:36,721 –> 00:39:39,834
Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear and

632
00:39:39,866 –> 00:39:43,606
chastise with the valor of my tongue all that impedes thee from the

633
00:39:43,622 –> 00:39:47,088
golden round which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to

634
00:39:47,409 –> 00:39:50,956
have thee crowned withal. Enter Messenger.

635
00:39:51,581 –> 00:39:54,807
What is your tidings? The king comes here tonight.

636
00:39:56,605 –> 00:40:00,290
Thou art mad to say it. Is not thy master

637
00:40:00,290 –> 00:40:03,670
with him, who, were so, would have informed for

638
00:40:03,670 –> 00:40:07,497
preparation? So please you, it is true;

639
00:40:07,625 –> 00:40:11,418
our Thane is coming. One of my fellows had the speed of him, who, almost

640
00:40:11,418 –> 00:40:14,295
dead for breath, had scarcely more than would make up this message.

641
00:40:16,413 –> 00:40:19,398
Get him tending; he brings great news.

642
00:40:20,083 –> 00:40:23,909
Messenger exits. The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the

643
00:40:23,909 –> 00:40:27,727
fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements. By the way, pause.

644
00:40:27,839 –> 00:40:31,513
I love that line, by the way.

645
00:40:32,074 –> 00:40:35,619
I love that line. Back to the, back to the play. Come, you spirits that

646
00:40:35,619 –> 00:40:39,197
tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here and fill me from the crown

647
00:40:39,373 –> 00:40:43,159
to the toe-top full of direst cruelty. Make

648
00:40:43,159 –> 00:40:46,849
thick my blood, stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no

649
00:40:46,849 –> 00:40:50,268
compunctions Visitings of nature shake my fell purpose,

650
00:40:50,782 –> 00:40:54,186
nor keep peace between the effect and it. Come to my

651
00:40:54,298 –> 00:40:57,895
woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

652
00:40:58,810 –> 00:41:02,454
wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature’s mischief.

653
00:41:03,289 –> 00:41:07,062
Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of

654
00:41:07,062 –> 00:41:10,675
hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor

655
00:41:10,675 –> 00:41:13,677
heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to cry, hold,

656
00:41:15,556 –> 00:41:18,957
Hold! Enter Macbeth. Great Glamis, worthy

657
00:41:19,022 –> 00:41:22,503
Cawdor, greater than both by the all-hail hereafter!

658
00:41:23,148 –> 00:41:26,854
Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present, and I feel now the

659
00:41:26,854 –> 00:41:30,237
future in the instant. My

660
00:41:30,237 –> 00:41:33,912
dearest love, Duncan comes here tonight. And when goes

661
00:41:34,010 –> 00:41:37,325
hence? Tomorrow, as he purposes.

662
00:41:39,210 –> 00:41:42,680
O, never shall Son, that morrow see. Your

663
00:41:42,680 –> 00:41:46,219
face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange

664
00:41:46,219 –> 00:41:49,831
matters. To beguile the time looks like the time.

665
00:41:50,317 –> 00:41:53,213
Pause. I love that word beguile, by the way. Love that word.

666
00:41:54,909 –> 00:41:58,408
Uh, back to it. Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue.

667
00:41:58,768 –> 00:42:01,901
Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it.

668
00:42:02,925 –> 00:42:06,741
He that’s coming must be provided for, and you shall put this night’s

669
00:42:06,741 –> 00:42:10,279
great business into my dispatch. which shall to all our

670
00:42:10,279 –> 00:42:14,042
nights and days to come give solely sovereign sway and

671
00:42:14,058 –> 00:42:17,732
masterdom. We will, we will

672
00:42:17,765 –> 00:42:21,163
speak further. Only look up clear.

673
00:42:21,487 –> 00:42:25,159
To alter favor ever is to fear. Leave all the rest to

674
00:42:25,159 –> 00:42:27,498
me. They exit.

675
00:42:29,256 –> 00:42:31,450
I’m gonna stop there.

676
00:42:34,268 –> 00:42:37,894
It’s a lot to read, and I’m not Shakespearean

677
00:42:37,894 –> 00:42:41,520
enough probably for it. Lady Macbeth is

678
00:42:41,553 –> 00:42:44,575
probably the most interesting character in this entire tragedy.

679
00:42:46,738 –> 00:42:50,485
When I first encountered her, I immediately thought of all

680
00:42:50,550 –> 00:42:53,750
of the female CEOs I’ve ever heard of. I immediately thought of Oprah.

681
00:42:55,020 –> 00:42:58,816
I immediately thought of Martha Stewart. I immediately thought of

682
00:42:58,929 –> 00:43:02,754
the social media exaggeration of

683
00:43:02,754 –> 00:43:06,529
the boss babe, in air quotes, right, that floats around social

684
00:43:06,529 –> 00:43:10,112
media. Um, and I don’t know why those

685
00:43:10,160 –> 00:43:13,743
associations came unbidden into my brain, but reading the

686
00:43:13,759 –> 00:43:17,535
words of Lady Macbeth and how she was written, uh, particularly when

687
00:43:17,535 –> 00:43:21,150
she talks about, you know, dashing a child’s, a

688
00:43:21,214 –> 00:43:24,733
child’s head, you know, against a rock, right, or the

689
00:43:24,765 –> 00:43:27,795
milk of human kindness turning to gall in her breast.

690
00:43:28,700 –> 00:43:32,275
When I, when I read these things, I immediately think of, oh, she’s a

691
00:43:32,275 –> 00:43:36,023
fully, she’s a fully and totally empowered woman. Macbeth isn’t telling her

692
00:43:36,023 –> 00:43:39,713
what to do. The man is not telling her what to do. She’s not— okay,

693
00:43:41,056 –> 00:43:44,681
modern feminist theory would say she’s operating under a patriarchy and isn’t it terrible?

694
00:43:45,362 –> 00:43:45,961
Except

695
00:43:49,070 –> 00:43:52,357
that’s not the way Shakespeare wrote her, at least not in the

696
00:43:52,373 –> 00:43:55,962
first part of the play, to Katie’s point. We’ll talk about the second part of

697
00:43:55,979 –> 00:43:59,314
the play in a minute. A.C.

698
00:43:59,380 –> 00:44:02,157
Bradley, in his famous book of essays on Shakespearean tragedies,

699
00:44:03,356 –> 00:44:07,106
asserted— and I agree with this— that Lady Macbeth was driven by courage and force

700
00:44:07,106 –> 00:44:10,533
of will, but that such drives came from a lack of imagination

701
00:44:11,131 –> 00:44:14,497
and left her unable to repent of her deeds when they visited her again.

702
00:44:16,280 –> 00:44:19,351
Now, the fact is

703
00:44:19,465 –> 00:44:23,184
that We look at people like this, like Lady

704
00:44:23,184 –> 00:44:26,267
Macbeth, and she could stand as an avatar for a lot of other

705
00:44:26,267 –> 00:44:30,086
people in our modern era. And we wonder—

706
00:44:32,734 –> 00:44:36,414
we wonder where their imagination is. Like, we already mentioned the rich guys,

707
00:44:36,527 –> 00:44:40,182
right? But what about the rich guys’ wives? What about

708
00:44:40,296 –> 00:44:44,001
Melinda Gates? What about Mackenzie

709
00:44:44,033 –> 00:44:47,724
Bezos? What about Hillary Clinton?

710
00:44:49,975 –> 00:44:51,190
What about Nancy Pelosi?

711
00:44:53,930 –> 00:44:57,731
Where is the milk of human kindness, or is it turned to gall?

712
00:44:58,718 –> 00:45:02,277
Where are these things, right, that we expect from women leaders? The,

713
00:45:02,536 –> 00:45:05,818
the canard is always, if women were in charge, everything would be better.

714
00:45:07,201 –> 00:45:10,753
Lady Macbeth kind of puts paid to that a little bit. I don’t think

715
00:45:10,753 –> 00:45:14,595
everything would be better. I just think it would be the same nonsense we

716
00:45:14,595 –> 00:45:15,570
just have differently.

717
00:45:18,374 –> 00:45:21,773
But I want to know what Katie thinks

718
00:45:21,773 –> 00:45:25,037
about Lady Macbeth. And

719
00:45:25,037 –> 00:45:28,477
I’m going to ask her this question. What can leaders,

720
00:45:28,734 –> 00:45:32,142
female or male, we’re going to be agnostic on this, we’re going to unsex this

721
00:45:32,190 –> 00:45:35,972
question, such as it were. What can they learn

722
00:45:36,086 –> 00:45:39,688
from her example? Go ahead, Katie. All right, so

723
00:45:39,688 –> 00:45:43,365
first, I, I do want to kind of like— I’m gonna like tangent off of

724
00:45:43,365 –> 00:45:47,138
this because there’s a lot of— Absolutely. There’s a lot of historical context

725
00:45:47,813 –> 00:45:51,506
associated with who Lady Macbeth represented. So I’m

726
00:45:51,506 –> 00:45:55,150
not sure if you’re aware of this, but Macbeth was written

727
00:45:55,600 –> 00:45:59,277
essentially to flatter King James. He had just, uh,

728
00:45:59,518 –> 00:46:03,307
ascended to the throne, um, a few years ago, a few years prior to

729
00:46:03,307 –> 00:46:06,390
this coming out. Banquo essentially

730
00:46:06,486 –> 00:46:09,778
represents, you know, the line of Scottish kings. It’s flattering him

731
00:46:10,275 –> 00:46:13,695
in that it plays with his obsession

732
00:46:14,129 –> 00:46:17,164
and fear of witchcraft and the occult.

733
00:46:18,127 –> 00:46:21,949
And then also it was associated with the Gunpowder Plot. Now,

734
00:46:22,960 –> 00:46:26,573
the Gunpowder Plot, if you know, that was the Guy Fawkes thing where they,

735
00:46:26,653 –> 00:46:29,591
you know, all planned together. But

736
00:46:30,732 –> 00:46:34,505
I— so just for background, my master’s thesis,

737
00:46:34,987 –> 00:46:37,796
I did my master’s thesis

738
00:46:38,374 –> 00:46:41,570
about— it was a feminine— it was a feminist—

739
00:46:42,870 –> 00:46:46,692
sorry, it was a view of Shakespeare’s female characters.

740
00:46:46,820 –> 00:46:50,561
Mm-hmm. But it was a comparison of the ones he wrote when

741
00:46:50,561 –> 00:46:54,399
Elizabeth was queen versus the ones he wrote when James

742
00:46:54,976 –> 00:46:57,973
was in power. That’s a good point. And if you look, and if you look

743
00:46:58,101 –> 00:47:01,899
at those women that when James was in power, they were

744
00:47:01,899 –> 00:47:05,729
much more villainized. So in going back to

745
00:47:05,729 –> 00:47:09,014
the Gunpowder Plot, um, I was in my

746
00:47:09,319 –> 00:47:13,020
thesis research, I was reading a chapter in Frances E. Dolan’s book,

747
00:47:13,485 –> 00:47:17,235
um, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and 17th Century

748
00:47:17,331 –> 00:47:20,553
Print Culture, and she theorizes that the

749
00:47:20,553 –> 00:47:23,810
conception, the idea of the Gunpowder Plot was heavily

750
00:47:23,906 –> 00:47:27,484
connected to the threat of Catholicism,

751
00:47:28,158 –> 00:47:31,945
because I believe the people who were planning the Gunpowder Plot were Catholics,

752
00:47:32,892 –> 00:47:36,438
which the Protestants at the time, the rulers, did not like the Catholics. They were

753
00:47:36,438 –> 00:47:40,193
persecuted. They hated anything to do with Catholicism. But with

754
00:47:40,209 –> 00:47:43,787
Catholicism held with it the fear of the inversion of the gender

755
00:47:43,819 –> 00:47:47,493
hierarchy, and thus the disruption of the social

756
00:47:47,654 –> 00:47:51,340
order. So in theory, because Catholics put women on

757
00:47:51,340 –> 00:47:54,720
top, meaning, you know, women were more in charge and men were in the subordinate

758
00:47:54,720 –> 00:47:58,373
role, the women were supposedly influencing their men

759
00:47:58,806 –> 00:48:02,619
to kill James. Does that sound familiar in terms

760
00:48:02,731 –> 00:48:06,272
of the plot of Macbeth? Mm-hmm. So Lady Macbeth, in my

761
00:48:06,336 –> 00:48:10,070
opinion, represents this subversion from these

762
00:48:10,166 –> 00:48:13,482
gender norms and capitalizes on the fear of her

763
00:48:13,787 –> 00:48:17,472
emasculating Macbeth and taking— and having him taking a

764
00:48:17,472 –> 00:48:20,877
subordinate role to her, as well as James’s fear

765
00:48:21,471 –> 00:48:24,909
of feminine power deposing his masculine rule,

766
00:48:25,182 –> 00:48:29,005
especially with him taking the throne after 44 years

767
00:48:29,358 –> 00:48:33,020
of a female monarch. Um, so with that being said,

768
00:48:34,177 –> 00:48:37,710
I find it very fascinating that you, you know, refer to her as a boss

769
00:48:37,710 –> 00:48:41,549
babe, because I usually associate that term with a woman who

770
00:48:41,646 –> 00:48:45,067
is kind of taking her life into her own hands and creating something positive

771
00:48:45,099 –> 00:48:48,869
despite that patriarchal undertones of society, right? You know, like starting a

772
00:48:48,869 –> 00:48:52,701
small business or something, not, not regicide. Um, not

773
00:48:52,701 –> 00:48:56,453
to say that, like, you know, not to say Lady Macbeth did not take things

774
00:48:56,469 –> 00:49:00,222
into her own hands. She did. And then those hands were then covered in blood

775
00:49:00,254 –> 00:49:03,846
for the rest of the play. But if you consider that historical

776
00:49:03,862 –> 00:49:07,278
context, she is, in my personal opinion,

777
00:49:07,855 –> 00:49:11,367
written as the main antagonist of the play. Hmm. It is

778
00:49:11,543 –> 00:49:15,361
her decision to kill Duncan that

779
00:49:15,490 –> 00:49:19,260
drives the plot forward. So Macbeth would have otherwise accepted

780
00:49:19,260 –> 00:49:22,807
his fate regardless of his actions. Um, he didn’t have to do

781
00:49:22,855 –> 00:49:26,642
anything to earn Thane of Cawdor. Um, he tells— he, he, you know, has a

782
00:49:26,642 –> 00:49:30,413
conversation with himself in, in, um, Act 1, Scene 3, where

783
00:49:30,413 –> 00:49:34,248
he’s like, all right, what should I do? Should I take any actions? And then

784
00:49:34,264 –> 00:49:38,067
he decides to himself, if chance will have me king, while chance

785
00:49:38,115 –> 00:49:41,372
may crown me without my stir. So he has already

786
00:49:41,485 –> 00:49:45,160
decided for himself, all right, I’m not going to do anything because

787
00:49:45,240 –> 00:49:47,696
obviously I didn’t have to do anything to get Thane of Cawdor. I’m just going

788
00:49:47,696 –> 00:49:51,435
to excitedly tell my wife, hey, this happened, guess what? And for some

789
00:49:51,435 –> 00:49:54,950
reason, upon reading the letter, Lady Macbeth has already decided that the

790
00:49:55,046 –> 00:49:57,967
only possible way forward now is obviously we have to kill

791
00:49:58,802 –> 00:50:02,574
the king, right? Like, that’s a very unreasonable thing, and

792
00:50:02,670 –> 00:50:06,217
this is our first impression of her, right? Mm-hmm. So the way

793
00:50:06,930 –> 00:50:10,745
it’s written in that way. Like, she wants to

794
00:50:10,777 –> 00:50:14,416
rule and she wants it now. She wants it, you know, she sees her future

795
00:50:14,464 –> 00:50:18,312
in the instant and she’s ruthless, whether

796
00:50:18,344 –> 00:50:22,192
or not that’s influenced by the supernatural. So like, you could say, well, maybe like

797
00:50:22,192 –> 00:50:25,456
the witches enchanted the letter that went to Lady Macbeth, and that could be some

798
00:50:25,505 –> 00:50:29,081
kind of reasoning as to what happens. But we will never know because we can’t

799
00:50:29,081 –> 00:50:31,178
really do psychological realism on these characters.

800
00:50:32,856 –> 00:50:36,683
But she knows that Macbeth is too full of the, the milk of human kindness

801
00:50:36,813 –> 00:50:39,961
to get the job done, right? She, she also knows, but she also notes that

802
00:50:39,961 –> 00:50:43,802
he’s not without ambition. The illness, but he’s

803
00:50:43,818 –> 00:50:47,425
without the illness that should attend it. So she’s referencing ambition

804
00:50:48,088 –> 00:50:51,662
as, as being sick, and she’s passing that

805
00:50:51,662 –> 00:50:54,863
sickness on to Macbeth, like in, in her

806
00:50:55,058 –> 00:50:58,701
pep talk to him in, in 1.7, you know. Right. Um,

807
00:50:58,878 –> 00:51:02,587
she tears them to pieces. She emasculates them. You’re like, you’re not a man if

808
00:51:02,587 –> 00:51:06,119
you can’t do this. And the talk about her bashing the child’s brain in,

809
00:51:06,344 –> 00:51:10,133
she’s saying essentially like, if I— if you— what did she

810
00:51:10,133 –> 00:51:13,360
say? I would have just— I would have

811
00:51:13,360 –> 00:51:16,507
sacrificed the life of my child before I

812
00:51:17,439 –> 00:51:20,762
backed out on this deal between you and me, because you and me, we are

813
00:51:20,810 –> 00:51:23,700
a unit. We are a team. So

814
00:51:26,863 –> 00:51:30,543
I, so, um, I’m glad you brought all this up because

815
00:51:31,321 –> 00:51:34,591
17th century England and Scotland.

816
00:51:34,880 –> 00:51:38,640
Mm-hmm. Um, and remember I said at the beginning, like, I try to

817
00:51:38,640 –> 00:51:42,399
look at things within the context of the century that, that they

818
00:51:42,415 –> 00:51:45,652
are in, right? That was much more of a

819
00:51:47,088 –> 00:51:50,912
warrior ethos kind of culture than even we have now.

820
00:51:51,869 –> 00:51:54,707
I mean, at that point in time on the European continent,

821
00:51:55,770 –> 00:51:59,401
there had been 1,000 years of war since the end of the Roman

822
00:51:59,401 –> 00:52:02,482
Empire. The Carolingians came in,

823
00:52:04,113 –> 00:52:07,083
you know, the invasion of— well, not the invasion of

824
00:52:07,099 –> 00:52:10,671
Normandy, but the Norman invasion of France had occurred,

825
00:52:10,818 –> 00:52:13,886
right? Where, you know, the English were trying to get the French to do certain

826
00:52:13,918 –> 00:52:17,696
things and the French were like, sacre bleu. And, you know, try

827
00:52:17,744 –> 00:52:21,355
to run them off the continent. We hadn’t yet made the

828
00:52:21,419 –> 00:52:24,886
turn into the, what we, what we tend to think of as the modern world

829
00:52:25,528 –> 00:52:29,315
because the Renaissance hadn’t quite washed

830
00:52:29,315 –> 00:52:33,070
up on the shores of England. We actually read Francis Bacon, The

831
00:52:33,070 –> 00:52:36,762
Great Instauration, at the beginning of this year. And I’m fascinated by

832
00:52:36,762 –> 00:52:40,581
Francis Bacon because he’s the first, for lack of a better term,

833
00:52:40,613 –> 00:52:43,245
he’s the first shot across the bow of the Age of Enlightenment in England.

834
00:52:44,545 –> 00:52:48,253
He’s where that sort of, that sort of really begins to really sort of click

835
00:52:48,381 –> 00:52:52,153
in where, oh, science can be the thing that drives us

836
00:52:52,153 –> 00:52:55,411
rather than religion, to your point, religious fervor or,

837
00:52:56,085 –> 00:52:59,311
or any of these kinds of, any of these kinds of things. And I, it

838
00:52:59,311 –> 00:53:02,907
isn’t, I don’t remember this, but isn’t part of the plot of

839
00:53:02,907 –> 00:53:06,373
Shakespeare in Love, like Francis Bacon was really Shakespeare or something like that? I heard

840
00:53:06,373 –> 00:53:09,311
that theory somewhere, or maybe I’m confusing 2 things together in my head.

841
00:53:10,452 –> 00:53:14,147
I think he was— one of the things is Shakespeare was

842
00:53:14,147 –> 00:53:17,779
actually the Earl of Oxford and that like there’s like a whole Oxfordian and like

843
00:53:17,779 –> 00:53:21,418
the Stratfordian things. Yeah. Okay. Right. That’s what I’m— okay. Yeah. Again,

844
00:53:21,563 –> 00:53:25,321
multiple things sort of flopping around together in my head there. And so

845
00:53:25,710 –> 00:53:27,136
when I look at that world,

846
00:53:31,412 –> 00:53:35,245
on the one hand, you could say, wouldn’t it have been great

847
00:53:35,245 –> 00:53:38,920
if women were treated equally then? Yeah, it would have been great.

848
00:53:39,964 –> 00:53:43,224
I don’t know what that would have meant in that culture and at that

849
00:53:43,256 –> 00:53:47,014
time, because we look

850
00:53:47,014 –> 00:53:50,371
at that through the lens of industrialization and a whole bunch of assumptions

851
00:53:50,885 –> 00:53:54,065
that, quite frankly, if we took them back 400 years, would seem weird to those

852
00:53:54,161 –> 00:53:57,277
people. Like, they just, they just, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t be able to wrap their

853
00:53:57,454 –> 00:54:01,244
arms around those assumptions because there’s too much water under the bridge. I

854
00:54:02,433 –> 00:54:05,742
also think that That, to your point about not being able to

855
00:54:06,449 –> 00:54:10,256
psychologically examine our characters, I think we read

856
00:54:10,256 –> 00:54:14,016
something like this and it seems weird to us because we don’t know

857
00:54:14,176 –> 00:54:17,598
kind of what their psychology, their psychology was.

858
00:54:18,032 –> 00:54:21,470
And of course, psychology didn’t exist then. So, you know, I’m not saying they didn’t

859
00:54:21,486 –> 00:54:24,667
have— they didn’t have an understanding of interiority. They did.

860
00:54:25,904 –> 00:54:29,390
But they were also, to your point, navigating all

861
00:54:29,534 –> 00:54:32,989
of the sort of spiritual and religious elements that were, that were around them. Because

862
00:54:32,989 –> 00:54:36,723
I think they also lived in a much more, a world that was much more,

863
00:54:38,953 –> 00:54:42,768
not focused, but a lot more familiar. That’s the term I’m going to use.

864
00:54:42,913 –> 00:54:46,737
There’s a lot more familiar with the sacred in ways that

865
00:54:46,769 –> 00:54:49,581
we have sort of abandoned for good or ill. And we talk about that on

866
00:54:49,581 –> 00:54:53,094
the show all the time, but that we have abandoned in

867
00:54:53,191 –> 00:54:56,965
our, in our time, 400 years later. So I think you kind of

868
00:54:56,965 –> 00:55:00,399
got to put some of that context around it. I find it

869
00:55:00,415 –> 00:55:03,977
interesting though that, and maybe this is the question,

870
00:55:05,240 –> 00:55:06,926
I’ll frame what I find interesting as a question.

871
00:55:09,700 –> 00:55:12,695
So when I saw the 2 performances or watched the 2 performances that I watched

872
00:55:12,808 –> 00:55:16,284
of Lady Macbeth, one from Marion

873
00:55:16,284 –> 00:55:19,491
Cotillard and then the other one from the David Tennant, the David Tennant version of

874
00:55:19,507 –> 00:55:23,296
Macbeth, what struck me was In the stage

875
00:55:23,411 –> 00:55:26,866
version, she was much more

876
00:55:29,512 –> 00:55:32,030
what I would associate boss babe-ish.

877
00:55:33,528 –> 00:55:37,153
She came off much more as, I’m gonna run this thing,

878
00:55:37,590 –> 00:55:40,633
I’m gonna run this town, to paraphrase from Jay-Z. Mm-hmm.

879
00:55:41,313 –> 00:55:44,796
Whereas in the film version, she was much more,

880
00:55:45,409 –> 00:55:49,165
while vicious, much more subdued. Now that could just

881
00:55:49,197 –> 00:55:52,953
be different actresses just interpreting it differently, which I’ll grant

882
00:55:52,969 –> 00:55:56,532
that. But I find it interesting that there’s enough in her, there’s

883
00:55:56,532 –> 00:55:59,694
enough meat there, at least in the first part of

884
00:56:00,469 –> 00:56:03,874
her appearance in the play. There’s enough meat there to kind of get that

885
00:56:03,874 –> 00:56:06,776
continuum inside of that character,

886
00:56:08,308 –> 00:56:11,485
which is why I find her to be interesting because the

887
00:56:16,517 –> 00:56:19,606
Well, what are the associations? Let me frame this as a question. I’m finally gonna

888
00:56:19,606 –> 00:56:22,859
get to the question. What are the, what are the

889
00:56:22,859 –> 00:56:26,472
associations we, we could make with Lady

890
00:56:26,489 –> 00:56:29,070
Macbeth, at least in the first part of the play? And we’ll get to the

891
00:56:29,070 –> 00:56:31,912
second part of the play in just a second here. But what are the associations

892
00:56:31,912 –> 00:56:34,274
we could make with her? Should we,

893
00:56:37,915 –> 00:56:40,302
should we hold her to be a villain, or should we be more

894
00:56:41,719 –> 00:56:45,424
Forgiving of her? I think that

895
00:56:45,488 –> 00:56:48,951
we can be more— and so I was giving the background of historical context

896
00:56:49,031 –> 00:56:52,798
just in reference to the boss babe thing, so, and in reference to like

897
00:56:52,798 –> 00:56:56,596
leadership qualities. Um, I think we

898
00:56:56,660 –> 00:56:59,671
could definitely like view her

899
00:57:01,524 –> 00:57:05,165
in either way. Like, so the same way like you said that these 2

900
00:57:05,277 –> 00:57:09,098
actresses played her differently a director could have a different vision for

901
00:57:09,146 –> 00:57:12,502
what he want— what story he wants told there.

902
00:57:12,889 –> 00:57:16,503
So he could say, I want to frame Lady Macbeth as the villain in this

903
00:57:16,503 –> 00:57:20,038
because I want to, you know, which is essentially what, you know, the

904
00:57:20,038 –> 00:57:23,815
original intent could have been, was we’re gonna show

905
00:57:24,120 –> 00:57:27,432
King James, oh, obviously women and the associations with

906
00:57:27,432 –> 00:57:31,240
witchcraft, witchcraft, you know, like they’re bad, you know, don’t

907
00:57:31,256 –> 00:57:34,835
let a woman be in control, obviously. because, you know,

908
00:57:34,916 –> 00:57:38,711
men are better leaders. So that was kind of like that lesson,

909
00:57:40,847 –> 00:57:44,299
I guess you could say, that was to be taken from this play for King

910
00:57:44,412 –> 00:57:47,655
James. Like, you know, it was still all entertainment. Like I said, this play was

911
00:57:47,704 –> 00:57:51,187
written to flatter him. It was obviously also like a good, a good

912
00:57:51,187 –> 00:57:54,925
drama for other people to, to watch. Um, but

913
00:57:55,038 –> 00:57:58,647
in terms of relating to the time period, like, it— and it really

914
00:57:58,663 –> 00:58:02,266
like you know how some plays or some

915
00:58:02,362 –> 00:58:06,151
movies play off of current events, you know, kind of? Yeah.

916
00:58:06,295 –> 00:58:09,666
So it was the play off of the Gunpowder Plot. So like taking some of

917
00:58:09,666 –> 00:58:13,407
those themes, like, oh, this— we don’t like Catholics, so don’t let your

918
00:58:13,503 –> 00:58:17,260
women control you kind of a thing. Um, but to go back to Lady Macbeth

919
00:58:17,452 –> 00:58:21,096
in our modern era, we obviously don’t have to take any of that

920
00:58:21,385 –> 00:58:24,997
information and, and use it towards her performance.

921
00:58:25,398 –> 00:58:29,023
We can look at her um, as, you know,

922
00:58:29,328 –> 00:58:32,999
a lead, like a good, powerful, strong character. She’s

923
00:58:33,192 –> 00:58:36,799
a great character. She’s— I would love to play her one day. She’s a

924
00:58:36,863 –> 00:58:40,214
coveted role for many a Shakespearean actress because she has

925
00:58:40,695 –> 00:58:43,998
all that meat and her language is so rich and she’s so

926
00:58:44,062 –> 00:58:47,429
powerful. But in terms of leadership

927
00:58:47,445 –> 00:58:51,133
qualities, Lady Macbeth in the,

928
00:58:51,293 –> 00:58:54,596
in the context of the play, in the context of the time period, as you

929
00:58:54,596 –> 00:58:57,353
said, you like look at things within the context of the time period that they’re

930
00:58:57,369 –> 00:59:01,072
written. She’s playing the patriarchal game,

931
00:59:01,697 –> 00:59:05,352
and she’s lusting for power and prominence through Macbeth’s

932
00:59:05,865 –> 00:59:09,471
promised position of king. So Tina Packer, who

933
00:59:09,647 –> 00:59:13,334
was— and she just recently passed away— she was the founding artistic director of the

934
00:59:13,334 –> 00:59:16,396
Shakespeare and Company, and she was a prolific

935
00:59:17,678 –> 00:59:21,284
director and actress and Shakespeare— in her book

936
00:59:21,349 –> 00:59:25,120
Women of Will, which she talks about experience with every single one of Shakespeare’s

937
00:59:25,120 –> 00:59:28,655
women, that Lady Macbeth, like other women at the time

938
00:59:28,655 –> 00:59:32,318
married to men in prominent positions, or even modern times

939
00:59:32,415 –> 00:59:35,226
where, you know, maybe we have some women who still feel like they can’t,

940
00:59:36,206 –> 00:59:39,115
you know, be more— be equal to the men that they’re with—

941
00:59:40,287 –> 00:59:43,870
she joined with their husband’s ambition, empowering their men

942
00:59:44,063 –> 00:59:47,614
to get further than they could themselves. So

943
00:59:47,614 –> 00:59:51,161
she is kind of living vicariously variously through

944
00:59:51,241 –> 00:59:54,944
Macbeth in these instances because she can’t do it

945
00:59:55,232 –> 00:59:58,983
on her own. She’s not in a social position to get what she

946
00:59:58,999 –> 01:00:02,767
wants. But Packer says the story of Macbeth

947
01:00:02,847 –> 01:00:06,518
is a story of what happens when a powerful woman loses herself and

948
01:00:06,598 –> 01:00:09,868
plays the patriarchal game. It ends in fascism.

949
01:00:10,701 –> 01:00:14,501
Hmm. So the lesson to be learned needs to be kind of treaded

950
01:00:14,549 –> 01:00:17,895
a little bit lightly, right? We currently live in a patriarchal

951
01:00:17,895 –> 01:00:21,607
society, which has been recently exacerbated by current

952
01:00:21,607 –> 01:00:25,295
leadership. We’re essentially— we’re going back in time

953
01:00:25,489 –> 01:00:29,137
in terms of women’s rights in some instances. So if we want to look

954
01:00:29,201 –> 01:00:32,978
to Lady Macbeth as an example of leadership and what we can learn from this

955
01:00:33,477 –> 01:00:37,133
today, we need to be really careful about how we

956
01:00:37,230 –> 01:00:40,874
handle it, considering the historical context of what feels a little

957
01:00:40,955 –> 01:00:44,724
anti-feminine. So we could simply say we need to look at not being

958
01:00:44,756 –> 01:00:48,185
blinded by our own ambition and losing ourselves in the rabble. But it, you know,

959
01:00:48,265 –> 01:00:51,454
it doesn’t have to be that simple. Um, like I said, witchcraft was

960
01:00:51,903 –> 01:00:55,429
so often connected with women not

961
01:00:55,429 –> 01:00:59,226
adhering to their gender roles. You know, even in the beginning of Macbeth,

962
01:00:59,883 –> 01:01:03,441
um, Banquo says, are you women? You know, your beards would make me

963
01:01:03,970 –> 01:01:07,784
call you otherwise. So they’re kind of like androgynous creatures, like

964
01:01:07,896 –> 01:01:11,652
Because, you know, true women, um, in the, in the eyes

965
01:01:11,844 –> 01:01:14,861
of, um, Protestant, um,

966
01:01:15,760 –> 01:01:19,531
early modern England at the time were supposed to adhere to

967
01:01:19,531 –> 01:01:23,126
specific gender roles. They didn’t always, obviously, you know, like you have laws and rules

968
01:01:23,222 –> 01:01:26,464
today, but people do whatever they want. They just pay fines for it, right?

969
01:01:26,705 –> 01:01:30,043
Mm-hmm. Um, but James’s obsession with

970
01:01:30,059 –> 01:01:33,172
witchcraft may have been incredibly influential to

971
01:01:33,172 –> 01:01:36,704
Shakespeare. and essentially designed the

972
01:01:36,800 –> 01:01:40,317
fate of Lady Macbeth as somewhat of a warning to the perils of women in

973
01:01:40,333 –> 01:01:43,030
power. We don’t want to take that lesson.

974
01:01:44,106 –> 01:01:47,815
We— contrarily, it may have also been a lesson for the men as to

975
01:01:47,863 –> 01:01:51,283
what happens when your masculine and your feminine powers are not

976
01:01:51,332 –> 01:01:55,025
balanced, meaning the hierarchy is swapped, like, which we

977
01:01:55,025 –> 01:01:58,686
said was anti-Catholic fear, right? So, but for our modern listeners,

978
01:01:59,810 –> 01:02:03,377
The balance of feminine and masculine powers should not be

979
01:02:03,377 –> 01:02:06,703
interpreted as external, but

980
01:02:06,831 –> 01:02:10,479
internal, right? So in order to be a great leader, you

981
01:02:10,527 –> 01:02:14,239
need to be a balanced leader. You need to balance your ambition with your

982
01:02:14,239 –> 01:02:17,934
humanity. You need to be both strong and soft. You

983
01:02:17,999 –> 01:02:21,662
need to have a tender listening ear as well as a strong

984
01:02:22,000 –> 01:02:25,647
moral judgment. Otherwise, it could devolve into chaos.

985
01:02:25,936 –> 01:02:29,546
and anarchy and mutiny. And, you know, obviously, we saw the

986
01:02:29,642 –> 01:02:33,396
fate of the Macbeths. So we want to, you know, do

987
01:02:33,412 –> 01:02:36,845
we want to take what, you know, face value what Lady Macbeth is doing at

988
01:02:36,845 –> 01:02:40,615
the beginning of the play, especially considering what happens to her at the

989
01:02:40,696 –> 01:02:44,530
end? So there’s an element here that we also miss

990
01:02:45,460 –> 01:02:48,284
in thinking about this that I would like to throw into the pot as well.

991
01:02:48,476 –> 01:02:51,669
Yeah, it occurred to me when we were talking, or when you were talking,

992
01:02:54,467 –> 01:02:57,866
We don’t talk a lot in our modern times

993
01:02:59,388 –> 01:03:02,480
about the nature of marriage between men and women.

994
01:03:03,834 –> 01:03:07,346
We actually don’t talk a lot about that. We talk a lot about divorce. We

995
01:03:07,346 –> 01:03:11,179
talk a lot about divorce. We talk a lot about separation. We talk a

996
01:03:11,228 –> 01:03:14,006
lot about single parents. We talk a lot about

997
01:03:14,700 –> 01:03:18,512
stepparents. We talk about same-sex parents.

998
01:03:18,593 –> 01:03:22,101
We talk a lot about all these other kinds of different

999
01:03:22,101 –> 01:03:25,797
arrangements. But it is,

1000
01:03:26,299 –> 01:03:28,062
it is, it is almost

1001
01:03:30,990 –> 01:03:34,160
deafening, the lack of noise around.

1002
01:03:35,626 –> 01:03:39,036
And I’m married. I’ve been married for many years. I don’t know if you’re married

1003
01:03:39,036 –> 01:03:42,027
or not, but we’ll just leave that aside. I am. Yeah. Okay. All right.

1004
01:03:42,689 –> 01:03:46,338
So being married in a, in a to frame it in

1005
01:03:46,338 –> 01:03:49,601
modern, postmodern terms, a long-term committed

1006
01:03:49,633 –> 01:03:53,313
relationship with children and property and all of

1007
01:03:53,410 –> 01:03:56,988
these other kinds of things going on and been married for a long

1008
01:03:57,036 –> 01:03:59,037
time and planning on staying married for a long time.

1009
01:04:01,476 –> 01:04:04,840
We don’t talk about the dynamics of what happened between men and women in marriage.

1010
01:04:06,360 –> 01:04:07,330
And Macbeth,

1011
01:04:10,337 –> 01:04:13,733
Shakespeare touched on this. Shakespeare, He didn’t, he didn’t

1012
01:04:13,733 –> 01:04:16,876
specifically put his whole hand on it because that might have been too much for

1013
01:04:16,956 –> 01:04:19,875
him. And maybe, maybe he didn’t need to because

1014
01:04:20,404 –> 01:04:23,964
everyone in the crowd who was watching the play, even

1015
01:04:23,964 –> 01:04:27,733
including the king, knew what the deal was. So they had a different

1016
01:04:27,733 –> 01:04:31,406
set of social assumptions than what we have, right? Yes.

1017
01:04:32,111 –> 01:04:35,880
Um, and you could talk about the Catholic Church and the Catholics versus the

1018
01:04:35,880 –> 01:04:39,491
Protestants and the Protestant Reformation, which had started in, you know,

1019
01:04:39,571 –> 01:04:43,282
15-whatever with Martin Luther and

1020
01:04:43,282 –> 01:04:47,074
had spread across the continent, and it’s proceeded to rack and ruin, you

1021
01:04:47,074 –> 01:04:50,753
know, religion along with the printing press, by the way,

1022
01:04:51,557 –> 01:04:55,075
which allowed all of these kinds of dynamics around Protestantism to

1023
01:04:55,075 –> 01:04:58,755
spread. Without the printing press, there would have been no Protestantism.

1024
01:04:59,012 –> 01:05:02,836
It wouldn’t have happened. And so you

1025
01:05:02,948 –> 01:05:06,796
have a situation where People are knowing what

1026
01:05:06,796 –> 01:05:10,230
the deal is. The church has already explained to them for

1027
01:05:10,230 –> 01:05:13,842
1,000 years what the deal is with marriage, and people just accept it.

1028
01:05:14,020 –> 01:05:16,643
They’re just like, okay, this is, this is fine. So he wouldn’t have had to

1029
01:05:16,643 –> 01:05:20,351
explain it. Yeah. Because we live after all of

1030
01:05:20,351 –> 01:05:24,069
that, and

1031
01:05:24,102 –> 01:05:25,834
we do live in an era where

1032
01:05:28,393 –> 01:05:32,204
women vote, There is, there

1033
01:05:32,204 –> 01:05:35,769
is literally no door. And I have daughters too. There’s literally no door closed

1034
01:05:36,122 –> 01:05:39,382
to women. There’s literally no door. You can walk through any door you want. Now,

1035
01:05:39,414 –> 01:05:42,368
what happens after you walk through that door? That’s a different thing altogether. But you

1036
01:05:42,529 –> 01:05:45,515
do have the option to walk through that door.

1037
01:05:46,720 –> 01:05:50,461
Because of a country that didn’t exist during

1038
01:05:50,493 –> 01:05:54,186
Shakespeare’s time called the United States of America, where we just sort of took

1039
01:05:54,330 –> 01:05:57,879
all of the We did. We took all the Enlightenment promises and we kind of

1040
01:05:57,879 –> 01:06:01,620
pushed— we have been for the last 250 years of our existence. We’ve been pushing

1041
01:06:01,636 –> 01:06:04,189
them all the way out further and further and further. You can see this in

1042
01:06:04,221 –> 01:06:07,850
the expansion of the franchise, who gets to vote, who doesn’t,

1043
01:06:08,219 –> 01:06:11,896
all these kinds of things, right? All the kinds of arguments we have here, we

1044
01:06:11,912 –> 01:06:15,461
wouldn’t have had— they didn’t have in England. Again, going back to what I said

1045
01:06:15,461 –> 01:06:19,074
previously, the previous segment, they wouldn’t have understood what we were even

1046
01:06:19,074 –> 01:06:22,912
talking about. It wouldn’t have Like natural

1047
01:06:22,912 –> 01:06:26,463
rights of man. What? I don’t know what even that means, right? So

1048
01:06:27,990 –> 01:06:31,414
we start from a different set of assumptions looking at Lady Macbeth,

1049
01:06:32,011 –> 01:06:35,738
but we also start from a different set of assumptions looking at the marriage of

1050
01:06:35,786 –> 01:06:39,481
the two of them. Mm-hmm. And I think that this is

1051
01:06:39,739 –> 01:06:43,394
really one of the key things. You asked why Macbeth is still popular. I

1052
01:06:43,475 –> 01:06:47,036
think this is the thing we can’t put our hands on. We don’t have a

1053
01:06:47,263 –> 01:06:50,841
good way, particularly in our

1054
01:06:50,841 –> 01:06:54,614
movies, because again, remember I said our novels have all gone to our movies

1055
01:06:54,647 –> 01:06:58,292
now. When was the last good movie you saw about what happens in a

1056
01:06:58,292 –> 01:07:01,914
person’s marriage? Not their divorce, not the breakup, the actual

1057
01:07:01,995 –> 01:07:02,639
marriage itself?

1058
01:07:06,281 –> 01:07:09,788
Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know. Because that’s not something that’s like, you know, right,

1059
01:07:09,836 –> 01:07:12,988
present in my mind. Right? Right. Because we all, we know what happens in a

1060
01:07:12,988 –> 01:07:16,727
marriage. It’s The thing is, it’s not compelling. It’s not exciting. Like,

1061
01:07:16,743 –> 01:07:19,949
it’s just like, oh, we’re married. It’s just no big deal. Like, so that’s why

1062
01:07:19,949 –> 01:07:23,668
it doesn’t really show up in a lot of stories. Except it is compelling.

1063
01:07:24,165 –> 01:07:27,756
Except it is compelling. Like, think about, I think about the way my wife

1064
01:07:27,788 –> 01:07:31,347
talks to me, not about murdering a king that may come visit my house.

1065
01:07:31,779 –> 01:07:35,546
We’re not there. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. But the way she talks to

1066
01:07:35,546 –> 01:07:39,314
me about picking up the groceries, I’ll

1067
01:07:39,314 –> 01:07:43,123
use something very simple. Picking up the groceries. We had a conversation today on the

1068
01:07:43,123 –> 01:07:46,910
phone, pardon me, 15 minutes about picking up

1069
01:07:46,910 –> 01:07:50,752
the groceries. There’s all kinds

1070
01:07:50,752 –> 01:07:54,455
of dynamics going on in that 15-minute conversation that

1071
01:07:54,777 –> 01:07:57,998
if I were to novelize those or turn those into a play,

1072
01:07:58,973 –> 01:08:02,737
I’m not saying my wife is Lady Macbeth, not even close, nor am I saying

1073
01:08:02,753 –> 01:08:05,403
I’m Macbeth, but it touches on

1074
01:08:05,436 –> 01:08:08,928
dynamics Of how do I

1075
01:08:08,928 –> 01:08:12,639
persuade and convince my husband to take action? How do I push

1076
01:08:12,752 –> 01:08:16,334
back and resist my wife if I don’t want to take action? How am I

1077
01:08:16,334 –> 01:08:20,182
gradually persuaded and convinced to take action? How is she

1078
01:08:20,182 –> 01:08:23,740
gradually persuaded and convinced to take action? Because by the way, just so you know

1079
01:08:23,740 –> 01:08:27,245
the full, like, some of the full stack of the dynamics in there, we’ve also

1080
01:08:27,294 –> 01:08:31,074
got a home renovation going on. Mm-hmm. We’ve got like 3 kittens

1081
01:08:31,106 –> 01:08:34,561
living on our back porch that came out of nowhere. We’ve got, you know,

1082
01:08:34,884 –> 01:08:38,402
kids getting ready to go back to school. We’ve got a vacation coming

1083
01:08:38,580 –> 01:08:42,389
up. We— my wife was sick over the weekend. I’m just getting over

1084
01:08:42,389 –> 01:08:45,713
being sick. Um, I had a death in the family recently,

1085
01:08:46,342 –> 01:08:49,957
you know, a sibling, you know. Um, we’ve got

1086
01:08:49,957 –> 01:08:53,046
birthdays coming up, literally 3 birthdays, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, in a row while

1087
01:08:53,046 –> 01:08:56,750
we’re out of town. We’re traveling. There’s a lot of dynamics going

1088
01:08:56,864 –> 01:09:00,577
on. All of that is To paraphrase from

1089
01:09:00,577 –> 01:09:03,975
Bob McKee, who I mentioned at the beginning in the open here, that’s all human

1090
01:09:04,040 –> 01:09:07,792
drama. Mm-hmm. And it’s all layered

1091
01:09:07,824 –> 01:09:11,330
underneath there in a 15-minute conversation about groceries.

1092
01:09:13,274 –> 01:09:15,846
The fact that we can’t find drama in that stuff

1093
01:09:17,067 –> 01:09:20,872
is a sad commentary on our time, not

1094
01:09:20,872 –> 01:09:24,508
on Shakespeare, because Shakespeare could find the drama in it. We can’t

1095
01:09:24,508 –> 01:09:28,157
find it. What are we doing? I don’t know. We’re finding

1096
01:09:28,414 –> 01:09:32,234
more and more sensationalized things to talk about. I

1097
01:09:32,346 –> 01:09:35,941
think we’re losing the connection with, like, just living

1098
01:09:36,775 –> 01:09:40,129
because we’re not living. We’re

1099
01:09:40,290 –> 01:09:43,532
trying to survive. We’re trying to, like, get through this

1100
01:09:43,837 –> 01:09:47,624
hellscape together. So, like, all the things we, we don’t have time

1101
01:09:47,624 –> 01:09:50,609
to think about, oh, how nice it is to be married and look at all

1102
01:09:50,641 –> 01:09:54,453
the fun things, you know. that’s happening in the dynamic with my, you

1103
01:09:54,453 –> 01:09:58,291
know, my marriage. People— I mean, and maybe it, you know, maybe that

1104
01:09:58,340 –> 01:10:00,688
will like calm people down, but like most of the time people want to be

1105
01:10:00,688 –> 01:10:04,501
distracted. So they want distraction from real life now

1106
01:10:04,647 –> 01:10:08,285
because real life is too heavy to bear. So,

1107
01:10:08,705 –> 01:10:12,313
so like having those like, oh, you know, we’re gonna, you know,

1108
01:10:12,637 –> 01:10:16,293
watch a husband and a wife have a conversation, for, you know,

1109
01:10:16,536 –> 01:10:20,300
for the people involved, it’s very exciting. Because obviously you love this person, you

1110
01:10:20,300 –> 01:10:23,665
know, but for outside people, it’s like, I don’t care about groceries right now.

1111
01:10:23,890 –> 01:10:27,383
The world is on fire, you know? So that’s

1112
01:10:27,639 –> 01:10:31,229
where we’re losing that in our modern time. Well,

1113
01:10:31,325 –> 01:10:33,681
this is— and this ties back to something that I said at the beginning, right?

1114
01:10:33,745 –> 01:10:37,591
My, my opening. We are so confronted in our algorithm

1115
01:10:37,591 –> 01:10:41,244
with tragic circumstances, and

1116
01:10:41,501 –> 01:10:44,609
yet we struggle to put a narrative to those circumstances.

1117
01:10:46,079 –> 01:10:49,191
Just like to your point you just made, we are

1118
01:10:49,256 –> 01:10:52,917
struggling with all of these externalities

1119
01:10:52,949 –> 01:10:56,695
that it could be argued historically have

1120
01:10:56,695 –> 01:10:59,550
always been there. But let’s just leave it at that. We’re struggling with all these

1121
01:10:59,550 –> 01:11:03,388
externalities, which is the same thing as tragic circumstances. Let’s just put

1122
01:11:03,388 –> 01:11:06,791
it all in the same box, right? But we

1123
01:11:06,953 –> 01:11:10,259
don’t have a creative narrative structure

1124
01:11:11,827 –> 01:11:15,546
to make meaning or significance or sense of these things. And I think that this

1125
01:11:15,546 –> 01:11:19,105
is what Shakespeare does so brilliantly. And this is why Macbeth survives, along with

1126
01:11:19,458 –> 01:11:22,905
Othello and King Lear and Hamlet, right?

1127
01:11:23,289 –> 01:11:27,137
Like the, the Iago in Othello.

1128
01:11:28,259 –> 01:11:31,321
I, I could go on a

1129
01:11:31,625 –> 01:11:35,168
3-hour tangent on how much I love Othello

1130
01:11:35,970 –> 01:11:39,706
because First of all, the story

1131
01:11:39,802 –> 01:11:42,640
is so compelling. Iago is the

1132
01:11:43,506 –> 01:11:47,291
perfect villain because Iago is like, he’s a

1133
01:11:47,291 –> 01:11:51,059
guy you’d meet on the street. Mm-hmm. He’s so charming. And I

1134
01:11:51,124 –> 01:11:53,577
think one of the— and I’ll say this now, and I’ll try not to go

1135
01:11:53,593 –> 01:11:56,752
on a tangent because I could talk about Iago forever. I think one of the

1136
01:11:57,057 –> 01:12:00,761
things that happens in casting of Iago is that they always make

1137
01:12:00,761 –> 01:12:04,249
him much older than he is canonically. In the play,

1138
01:12:04,768 –> 01:12:07,456
he’s like 27 or 28 years old.