watertightvines:

what-hos-there:

jenniferrpovey:

national-shitpost-registry:

butchhamlet:

butchhamlet:

butchhamlet:

butchhamlet:

macbeth is shakespeare’s funniest tragedy and mr. macbeth is the funniest character in macbeth. he listens to these creepy old women tell him he’s gonna be king and IMMEDIATELY decides the only thing he can POSSIBLY do is kill a guy and then he waffles about it for a full act and finally comes to the conclusion that it’s morally wrong and then HE DOES IT ANYWAY and his entire fucking life falls apart with an inevitability that is genuinely hilarious

the other exceedingly funny thing is that he doesn’t even cover his ass that well like??? sure the morning right after the murder he gets away with it but even then he almost straight fucks it by killing the guys he framed. and then within a few months everyone in scotland independently comes to the conclusion that he did it ANYWAY because like. WHO else would it have been

funniest moments in macbeth:

• “o? by whom?” (a classic)
• “what, you egg” (also a classic)
• “twas a rough night”
  
• macduff telling lady macbeth he can’t say what happened because she’s a woman and then spinning around and IMMEDIATELY telling banquo within FULL earshot of ladymac
• “that i did… kill them… 👉👈”
• macbeth giving the whole “blood will have blood” speech and then going “…….what time is it”
• the witches, whom we’ve just seen making a potion of baby parts, saying “something wicked” about macbeth. your king steps onto the scene and these literal actual witches go “oh, bitch? a bitch?”
• malcolm’s I Fuck Too Much Speech
• and then. when he takes it back. he says “why are you silent?” which implies macduff is just. sitting there.
• “take thy face hence”
• macbeth absolutely wrecking young siward’s shit and then just going “thou wast born of woman” to his corpse

in honor of this post getting an absurd and terrifying amount of notes here are my favorite tags

also, for those of you asking to see macbeth as a dark comedy: i haven’t seen a production specifically billed as such but definitely the funniest macbeth i’ve seen is the folger 2008 one which, by the way, is free on youtube! it definitely leans into the horror aspect but it also is just. laugh-out-loud funny sometimes like these actors know how to punctuate their lines to get at that absurd humor! and i’ve watched it twice in like two months

was anyone gonna tell me Macbeth was a comedy or was i supposed to read that here myself?

Okay, look. There’s something modern readers don’t understand, because definitions have changed.

To us, a comedy is a funny play and a tragedy is a cathartic one.

In Shakespeare’s time, a comedy was a play with a happy ending.

A tragedy was a play with a sad ending.

That is it.

Shakespeare was a comedic writer. All of his plays are funny to some degree and I suspect the man couldn’t write seriously if he tried.

A lot of the time modern troupes miss this and play the tragedies straight. They aren’t supposed to be. They are supposed to be darkly, ironically funny.

Because after all, these plays were written to be performed in inn yards where everyone was drunk. That did not necessarily exclude the actors.

A performance of Macbeth that makes you laugh is an authentic, correct performance. One that understands the basic fact that Shakespeare is more like Taika Waititi than Quentin Tarantino.

@watertightvines?

All of this is correct! The production I was in last year purposefully went for laughs on all of those lines. The other two major sources of comedic gold in the play are:

-Lady Macbeth’s deeply extra “Woe, alas! What? In our house???” when she’s trying to play it cool after Duncan’s death. (Honestly, playing Lady Macbeth as Moira Rose for the entirety of 2.4 would be INSPIRED.)

-The Murderers that Macbeth hires both being total dunces and Macbeth just dissing them constantly.

-THE ENTIRE BANQUET SCENE IS STRAIGHT OUT OF A SITCOM. Yes, even the “it will have blood, they say” is darkly hilarious if you time it right. The thanes are all sitting there awkwardly while their king screams at the air and has a deeply Surburban White Couple argument with his wife, and neither he nor she will let them acknowledge that it’s weird, and it’s GREAT.

I remember being told in high school that Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s darkest texts because the Porter is the only comic relief. The Porter scene is the only bit of clowning (which is why I detest the Porter as an audience member no matter how well he’s played—the Clown characters bore me!), but I love situational dark humor, and the text of Macbeth is rife with it.

And that makes the tragedy of it hit much harder! When we see Macbeth be a himbo who is Trying His Best, and Ross and Lennox exchanging Pointed Looks, and Macduff get emails every day, and Lady Macbeth snark at her husband… then it hurts much, much more when Macbeth’ is forsaken in his vulnerability again and again, and Ross and Lennox bring news of atrocities they’re powerless to stop, and Macduff grieves, and Lady Macbeth unravels. Grimdark productions fall flat for me because they deny the characters the humanity the text enables.

The comparison of Shakespeare with Taika Waititi is spot-on, especially for the tragedies and histories. I’ve railed plenty of times about how The Hollow Crown tries so hard to be Dramatic™ that it sucks all the fun and humanity out of the history plays, which in turn sucks out all the pathos because we have literally no reason to care about anybody. Shakespeare’s a delight for actors and directors who bother to put in the work because he gives you a lot to play around with, without the constraint of the lengthy descriptions you find in screenplays and modern stage plays. Macbeth and Richard III are both bloodbaths that will make you upset for the character. They are also morbidly hilarious. Embrace it!