1 - The Writer and the Story

Summary

The process of reading the text in order to turn it into a story produces these complex connections between the play and the work. The Folio text names the characters and their speeches with occasional stage directions and the reader has to connect them to create a narrative out of the imagined action. For example, the opening stage direction of the Folio text reads ‘Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches’. It presents a characteristic combination of a sound effect and figures on the stage. At this stage in the text, the reader is given no hint about what ‘witches’ are and in spite of the overload of meaning and commentary that they have received, it is important to hold off from interpretation in order to see how the Folio text (rather than subsequent interpretative theatre productions) structures the information that it provides and the range of effects it makes possible.

The opening line begins with an interrogative: ‘When?’ It rhymes with ‘again’ and the rhyme reinforces the idea of repetition. Immediately we are drawn into the time-frame of the play: the past of the witches’ meeting, the present of the ‘hurley burley’ (not a common expression before Shakespeare used it) and a future that will involve someone called ‘Macbeth'. In performance, of course, the costume and style of the witches could communicate much more. However those choices of costume and style are matters of directorial intent and throughout the play's long production history, they have pre-empted the reading of the play with presentations that were distracting, if not tendentious. The reader, on the other hand, can keep a more open mind, following the information that the text provides in its own time.

In the following scene, Act 1, Scene 2, we are given a new perspective on the ‘battle lost and won’ and the exploits of Macbeth. King Duncan hears Macbeth praised by the wounded sergeant, a much clearer form of reportage than the witches’ puzzling allusions. Once again, the past affects the future, as Duncan responds to the wounded sergeant's story by stripping the traitorous Thane of Cawdor of his title and conferring it on Macbeth. All this information about the action's past, present and future is gathered before Macbeth and Banquo appear in the next scene.