Macbeth’s transition to a non-feeling monster

Having a personal reaction to Macbeth, I think it’s astounding. You kind of admire the man at the end of it; you can’t believe that he still has the balls at the end to say “Right, I’m going to die anyway”. And it’s a miracle that you do. You miss him when he’s gone, and yet there is no redeeming feature except that he is brave. What redeeming features are there? And he loves her. What is there? He turns into a cruel monster which he knows he is going to do. When he says to her “I dare do all but may become a man who dares do more is none”, what he is saying is, anything a man can do I can do probably better than most men, but if I do more, I am no longer a man, I’m a monster. And he says that right at the beginning, “I know where we are going to go”, and where does he end up?

And I tried to at the end of it, to not play for sympathy, I tried to play him as a non feeling monster. But the beauty of the play is that he recognises that he can’t feel anything, and when he hears the news of his wife dying, he says, “She should have died hereafter”, which means she would have died any way. He can’t feel anything, and that speech tomorrow and tomorrow is not about him going, oh I’m sad, its about him going, God lifes just crap and I know it, and that’s all there is to it.

And so yeah, having a strong reaction….I don’t have a personal strong reaction to Macbeth per say, my strong reaction is to Shakespeare himself, and how a man could write that amazing stuff. And that’s what gets me my power and passion and commitment and all of that is just simply that.