Love, Power, Respect

The Shakespeare Company did a nice job in depicting a setting which would be found in Shakespeare time with the universal lighting, the audience on three sides and the use of doubling. Macbeth is known for the bloody brutal images and over time the imagination of some people has come alive in plays and movies which try and capture the feeling and image a Shakespeare had, which to me is nearly impossible. I attended the play in MacManus in hopes for the Shakespeare Company to live up to my standards. I am an English nerd and have no problem listening to the plays of the great Shakespeare all day; I do not however wish to hear people TRY and read Shakespeare in a way to be understood. I felt like during the play the actors were trying too hard for the audience to hearing the rhyming couplets and were pushing a theme or feel of a scene. They were very entertaining with their own attitudes thrown in and their side comments though which made the two hours fly right by. The characters which I thought were accurately and effectively played were: Macduff – being that he seemed to have known his lines the most and his actions came natural instead of pushed, Lady Macbeth- being that she really went 100% in the scene of her making herself a man so to speak, and of course the three witches- being that they made my skin crawl and scared me a little (which is what Shakespeare wanted I’m pretty sure.) I wanted so bad to like the actor who played Macbeth and get into the scene but I couldn’t help myself from thinking he looked like Duce Bigalo. So personally the text is always better in that I can think and picture the images myself.
I thought the song Just a Spoon Full of Sugar was an odd choice of song to begin the story of the brutal Macbeth, but then after reading A Good Man is Hard to Find, that spoon full of sugar, to me, symbolized the grandmother. She was the sweetness of a bitter family and she made the story go down and flow in reading. She was the humor just as the witches were in Macbeth, giving the story background and interest. A Good Man is Hard to Find really captures the whole disturbing feel in which you feel when watching or reading Macbeth. When the two men bring Bailey and John Wesley into the woods you know that there is going to be bloodshed, and when you read there were two shots your heart freezes. You want to run into the pages and rip the bad guys out of the story and make things right, but you can’t. When reading that I thought back to the scene in Macbeth when the men raided the house of Macduff and killed his wife and child. The Shakespeare Company did a great job this scene and really got the innocence of the family and the cruelty of the men down perfectly.
Hamlet is man who wants to be the power of all things, but when the unworldly world gives him some insight to his future of king, it is not enough. He must have more. This need to know and be more than what is meant and given to us as humans is a main theme in both Macbeth and Gods Grandeur. Macbeth’s power was oozing with enough oil to loosen his wife’s grip on his manhood, but was seen to be cut short the same as the peoples hold on God. Though the natural world in the poem God’s Grandeur seems to be the consistent source of knowledge, the unnatural world holds the truth in Macbeth, but both is seen to know what is to come. Humans are seen as mere objects in the scheme of it all who are brought down to nothing, though they think they have the power, which is seen in both of these works
In the poem Happiness, nature plays a key role in telling of the consecutiveness to understanding. The animals, to St. Francis, opened him up to an understanding and respect towards nature. Shakespeare was also very keen into telling the powers of nature in Macbeth. Nature demands our respect just as the witched demanded Macbeth, but we see time and time again how humans disrespect and mistreat nature.
All three of the poems share themes and ideas with Macbeth, being: love, power, or respect. They all show human imperfects and invite the reader to take a step back and think about their own lives and actions. Just as the reader is given this opportunity, I have been given as well here at Loyola. Here I am open up to so many new opportunities to show my love for God, power in myself and respect for the environment and I plan to reach the expectations of Shakespeare, Hirshfield, O’Conner, and Hopkins.