Remember to bring a newspaper to class on Friday.

Also, we will have a short quiz on Acts II & III on Monday.  Make sure you have completed your quotation sheets.

Ambition often leads to downfall and this is the case in William Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. The play is centered around the rise and downfall of the play’s most prominent character, Macbeth. Although Macbeth’s ambition did strongly contribute to his downfall, there were also many other factors which heavily influenced the path Macbeth chose. Beyond his intoxicating ambition, he was influenced by Lady Macbeth’s strong will for power, the confusing prophecies of the Witches and the strange appearances of the supernatural.

Macbeth’s ‘vaulting’ ambition was indeed a driving force behind his downfall. His ambition to become king was at first a ‘horrid imagining’, however due to the strength of his ambition, it soon became reality. At first, Macbeth doubted the murder because he felt that as he was ‘his kinsman’ he should not ‘bear the knife’ against Duncan, but again, his ambition was too strong. After Macbeth committed the irrevocable deed of murdering the King, he did not expect to feel emotionally unstable. This was because as a soldier loyal to the King, he had ended the lives of many men before. Soon after Macbeth’s ambition drove him mad, he murdered many innocent beings, such as his good friend Banquo. This action made Macduff suspicious that Macbeth ‘playedst most foully’ to gain the throne. Macbeth’s ambition to remain in power pushed him to muder Macduff’s whole family which provoked Macduff’s revenge and therefore Macbeth’s death. Thus, ambition certainly contributed to Macbeth’s downfall.

From the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth displays herself as a forceful and pushy character. Her skillful manipulation was one of the highly influential factors which drove Macbeth to murder Duncan. When she first read the letter informing her of the Witches’ prophecies, she immediately resolved to help her husband achieve the position of King through murder. It was she who led Macbeth down the spiral of evil and to his downfall. Although Macbeth called Lady Macbeth ‘my dearest partner of greatness’, it was really Lady Macbeth who manipulated and provoked her husband to murder Duncan. She was willing to sacrifice her femininity and humanity to be the ’serpent undert’ who dragged Macbeth to downfall. Macbeth’s attempts to refuse murder were seen as feeble fears and were easily squashed aside by Lady Macbeth’s violent persuasion and questioning of his manhood. ‘When you durst do it, then you were a man’. Lady Macbeth was a highly influential driving force behind Macbeth’s intial actions and therefore contributed to his downfall.

Recurring appearances of the supernatural pushed Macbeth to his downfall. The first confusing prophecy of the witches was the first strike against Macbeth. If the ‘midnight hags’ did not ‘meet with Macbeth’, Macbeth himself may not have murdered Duncan, thus not leading him to downfall. However, supernatural appearances were not solely confined to the Witches’ coven. When Macbeth doubted the murder, he saw the bloody dagger which ‘marshall’st’ him to Duncan’s chamber to commit the evil deed that marked the beginning of his downfall. Macbeth’s second meeting with the ‘imperfect speakers’ further pushed Macbeth to his downfall. The second prophecy led Macbeth to believe that he ‘bore a charmed life, which must not yield to one of woman born’. As a result of this, he was blinded to the fact that there were some who were from their ‘mother’s womb untimely ripped’, such as Macduff. If Macbeth had not heard the second prophecy, he may have chosen a different path to prevent his downfall, thus, supernatural appearances contributed greatly to Macbeth’s downfall.

Macbeth’s ambition undoubtedly contributed to his downfall however there were other influences, such as Lady Macbeth’s manipulative arguments and the confusing appearances of the supernatural. Ultimate responsibility for Macbeth’s downfall nonetheless like all human activity rests upon the individual. Macbeth chose his own path and therefore it was Macbeth who led himself to his downfall.

A play that explores superstition and the uncanny the most of any by Shakespeare, it is also historically the most unlucky play in performance. More actors literally “break a leg” in this play than in any other. There have been more onstage accidents associated with this play than any other in history (and some more off-stage and bizarre accidents amongst people involved in the play), including a famous actor playing Lady Macbeth, who decided that she could best convey her sleepwalking sequence in Act 5 by closing her eyes, which resulted in her falling into the orchestra pit and breaking her hip.

Although some would argue that there truly is something spooked about performing this play, the more likely explanation is the nature of the play itself. Almost the entire play takes place at night, and performances enhance the darkness, making it more difficult for characters to find their way around the stage.

But I would also suggest that the ruthless brevity, the sense of contractedness to the play adds to the difficulty it endures in performance. It is Shakespeare’s shortest play, which has raised a great deal of speculation that parts of the text are missing. I’m of the camp, however, that argues that the play is meant to be short and swift because of the dominant theme of the ruthless nature of time that runs throughout the play. And I will make this assertion for you all to bracket off for the moment, and which I will return to: Macbeth does not just want to kill humans, he wants to kill time.

No sooner has the play begun than Macbeth is suffering a mental breakdown. If one imagines the witches as symbolic of mental aberration, they are the dark, controlling force of the ID working beneath not just the surface of Macbeth’s life, but all our lives. I argue otherwise that the witches exist with the same substance as Hamlet’s Ghost. First of all, notice that, although we always call them “the witches,” they are only referred to as so once in the play. In the play they are known as the “weird sisters.” It is important to know that the word “weird” is an Anglo-Saxon derivation of the word Wyrd, which means “fate.” The weird sisters are integral to Macbeth’s sense of contracted time. Everything the weird sisters utter is couched in equivocation. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” “Double, double, toil and trouble.” In fact, like “nothing” in King Lear, “double” is one of the key words in this play. To be doubled is to be equivocal. Three tends to represent stability, a trinity, whereas Two represents duality or duplicity. The characters and us, the audience, are being told to not trust everything we see or hear. In short, the weird sisters force upon us immediately the necessity of interpretation.

As soon as Macbeth comes off the battlefield, where supposedly he was up to his knees in bloods, and had disembowled and beheaded his enemy, he and Banquo run into the weird sisters. Equivocation rules as they cannot tell if they are women or men. They seem to be women, Banquo comments, except that they have beards.

Working as the voice of Wyrd, or fate, the weird sisters hale Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor,” and then as “king hereafter!” Macbeth is instantly mesmerized by the fantastic prediction, since at the moment he is only the Thane of Glamis.” Even Banquo notices right away the change in Macbeth’s mental stability, “Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear / Things that do sound so fair?” (1.3. 50). Notice the use of “fair,” and remember that fair is foul.

Angus, Ross and Banquo all notice how distracted Macbeth becomes, as he stands off by the side and talks to himself. Yes indeed, such a prediction that Macbeth will soon raise up in the ranks and then become king should make him feel astounded, as Banquo claims, but Macbeth’s soliloquy tells another story, of a man haunted by the prediction.

This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,

Why hath is given me earnest of success

Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor.

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

Against the use of nature? Present fears

Are less than horrible imaginings.

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,

Shakes so my single state of man

That function is smothered in surmise

And nothing is but what is not.

In this first soliloquy, we can see what is so unsettling about this play. First the rampant equivocation. If this is a bad omen, Macbeth asks, why does he feel so drawn to it with excitement? If it is a good omen, why is he so terrified? And then the soliloquy leaps (there are many such leaps in thought, as the word “leap” and “vault” are prevalent in the play) to Macbeth contemplating murder. But this is more than contemplating murder. He suggests that he has already decided to commit murder–what horrifies him, he claims, is not murder itself, but the “horrible imaginings” that come between the thought and the action. The whole play becomes dominated by Macbeth’s desire to “kill” the space between thought and action, for the act of murder to happen in and instant, propelling him to the future he desires. Macbeth has what is called a proleptic imagination. He imagines where he wants to be, and functions as if he has already arrived there. We saw the proleptic imagination in Henry IV, Part 1. In Act 1, Prince Hal already sees himself sitting on the throne, and has already vaulted over his father and banished Falstaff in his imagination–in as sense, Hal is the king before he assumes the throne.

Then Macbeth’s soliloquy ends with the dominant theme of equivocation in the play: “function is smothered in surmise/And nothing is but what is not.” We’ve seen this equivocation at the heart of identity in other plays. Edgar’s “Edgar I nothing am.” Iago’s, “I am not what I am.”

From the moment Macbeth steps off the battlefield and is given a vision of the throne, he becomes enthralled by his imagination–he becomes driven to reach the telos of his existence in and instant, and becomes propelled to murder both those who stand in his way, and, unbelievably, time (which is ultimately in his way) itself. One of the things that makes Macbeth (a serial killer) sympathetic nonetheless is the fact that his actions seem somewhat out of his control–he comes across swept up in what I would call an emotional temporality. Consider the fact that he does not seem to be that hungry for power–he’s not a Richard III, or an Edmund, or a Prince Hal. Macbeth himself wonders why the prediction of his power would horrify him. And when he returns home behind the letter of events he sends his wife, he wants to back down from partnering up with her to murder the king. Lady Macbeth, however, cajoles her husband to follow through on their dark plans by questioning his manhood. So I would assert to you all that Macbeth is a mass-murderer whose heart is not really in murder.

Truly great art makes me want to make art myself. Knowing me for the conceited bastard I am, you’d think the opposite: that I’d be inspired by Dan Brown novels or Oliver Stone movies or Nickelback songs to create my own rebuttals, showing them up. But bad art just depresses me. Good art entertains me. And great art compels me to run and catch up.

I thought I’d have a handle on Sleep No More, the interactive theater installation sponsored by the American Repertory Theatre. The CCE, the premier collegiate-level interactive murder mystery theater troupe, did this sort of thing twice a year. Sure, Punchdrunk Theatre, the British troupe that originated Sleep No More, probably had a higher budget and better actors. And taking Macbeth as inspiration would make things creepy. But I knew what to expect.

I had no idea what to expect.

After idling in a packed bar, Misch and I, along with twenty other audience members, were ushered into a long hallway. We were given white plastic masks, instructed not to talk but to touch anything we liked, and then led up a flight of stairs. What had been an abandoned Brookline high school a moment ago became a decaying hotel, covered with odd photographs, stuffed chairs, marked-up books and other knicknacks. Misch and I poked around the hotel lobby and the adjoining sitting room until a Hitchcock blonde with a pillbox hat hurried through the hall outside. We followed her.

We followed her down two flights of stairs, where she ducked into an office. A dozen audience members crowded along the walls, watching her rifle through a desk for something – a photograph. She stared at it, lost in shock, until a short man with a small mustache, dressed in dinner jacket with suspenders, stalked in. He snatched the photograph from her hands. He glared at her; she smiled at him, pleadingly; no words were exchanged. He seized her in his arms and kissed her. The air filled with feathers.

The two of them separated. I followed the man; Misch followed the woman.

And that’s the real genius behind Sleep No More. Not (just) the atmospheric minutiae with which they strew every room in the “hotel” they’ve created. Not (just) the wordless performances, acrobatic gyrations and haunted looks that recreate the story of MacBeth. Not (just) the nightmarish surreality created by the artful use of light, sound and space. What makes Sleep No More work is that the story changes drastically depending on whom you follow.

And you have to choose, because the characters don’t wait for you. The man I followed most of the night (Malcolm, I believe) took off at a sprint several times, forcing me to hurry in turn. This led to the image of a man in a dinner jacket fleeing down the halls of a hotel, pursued by white-masked figures: a bit of theater which the audience helped in creating. I followed Malcolm as he and the other courtiers carried off the King’s body, where it lay in state. When Malcolm and the others went to drink in a basement speakeasy covered in sawdust I followed them. Therein they played a card game of unclear meaning, which I endeavored to understand until one of them charged me with a hammer. I backed out of the way, but he wasn’t going for me: he was going for the wall behind me, to which he tacked a Nine of Spades.

And this was all before the banquet.

If these proceedings sound like a nightmare, that was the effect intended. Every element – visuals, sounds, staging, timing – contributed to a reality that looked recognizable but jerked to a different rhythm. At times I found myself standing in a crowd, watching one woman try to feed another poison. At time I found myself alone in a room with a woman and an empty crib. Had I been in another room, I might have seen a murder, or a still birth, or a drunken dance. Without a meticulous attention to detail and a genius grasp of the surreal, it wouldn’t have worked. But it worked perfectly.

See it with someone you trust.

I first heard of this show from Kate, and figured worst case scenario, I would kind of enjoy the show for all the theater junk.  I watched the first season maybe a year or so again, and for the most part really enjoyed it.  Cute, interesting characters and relationships, all tossed into the theater world, which is something that I can relate to and really enjoy.  Also Rachel McAdam’s is so hot.  Anyway, I was excited to sink my teeth into Season 2, which dealt with Macbeth, one of my favorite plays.

Unfortunately, this season ended up being that worst case scenario.  First off, the show lost Rachel McAdams, which was a big blow for me.  But beyond that, the story-lines got stale, contrived, and goofy.  Theater people are dramatic and goofy enough, and the first season was really able to feed off of these people’s quirks without bringing in too many unnecessary silly things.  This season never hit a comfortable stride like that.  For whatever reason, they felt it necessary to inflate the show with stupid story lines that put the characters into unrealistic situations.  There was also no real sympathetic characters.  They were almost all obnoxious, mean, and immature, and there was very little respect for anything being done.  The last episode was ok, but it was still too little too late.

So now I’m stuck.  There’s one season left, so I feel like I kind of need to finish those last 6 episodes.  But it’s just not a great show, and they are doing Lear, which is a play I’m not as familiar with.  So one day, hopefully I’ll watch it.  But I’m not gonna be excited for it.

Lesson Plan:

Day 44 – Scene Adaptation Performances

Handouts:

Scene Adaptation Rubric

Student Task for Presentations

Today we started the Macbeth unit. We are taking as our first text, the Selfmade Hero Manga Shakespeare Macbeth. This is a shortened adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, with added Manga!

What we did today!

Considered 3 key questions:

• What do you know about Shakespeare?
• What do you know about Macbeth?
• What do you know about ‘manga’?

The timescale is flexible, but I anticipate between 5 -8 weeks for the unit… and that should give plenty of time to consider and create something to demonstrate what you have learned…

What do we do next?

What happens next is going to be pretty much up to you! We need to start thinking about the information we will need to give answers to the above questions. I’d like YOU to think carefully about what you discussed in your groups, and start thinking about the information you will need to find to answer…

Who are we doing this for?

Please remember that you are not doing this for me, your teacher. You will be expected to share what you do with everyone… and I mean EVERYONE! Whatever you come up with will be shared online for the world to see and to comment on… or maybe even to participate in if that is what you want.

NEXT LESSON

On Wednesday, we will be:

Sorting out team names/colours/logos/chants/songs/etc…

Hitting the books to see what we can find the old fashioned way…

Feel free to post any questions or comments on this post!

Lesson Plan:

Day 43 – Act IV Quiz, Skit Performance, Group Work Time

Handouts:

Act IV Quiz

Student Task for Presentations

Lesson Plan:

Day 42 – Mini Project Work Time

On Monday, we will finish our overview of Act II when pods present their BIG IDEA questions to the class.  The bulk of this week will be spent on “acting”.

Assignment:  The class will be divided into several small groups who will be assigned a scene (or a portion of a scene) from Act III.  Groups will be responsible for translating the text into a script which is manageable and understandable.  On Wednesday, groups will presents their “skits” to the class–see the rubric posted on the board for an idea of where your marks will come from.  Remember to have some props, costumes and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse!

The latter part of the week will be spent completing Act III.

For help understanding Macbeth, try visiting Sparknotes.com.  This is a pretty helpful website.

Abi Titmuss, of whose fame and fortune The Bard has remained blissfully ignorant until now, is exercising her talent in a production of Macbeth. For the story, click here. And more details about Macbeth can be found in The Shakespeare Diaries.

Whereas King Lear takes place over a vast landscape and involves numerous characters, Macbeth is a far more compact play, dominated by the figure of Macbeth. King Lear is not only one of Shakespeare’s most challenging plays, but one of the anomalies of his high tragedies in that there are virtually no minor characters. Every character is in some way a major presence, demanding all of our attention; and each character exhibits extremes–none of theme have any emotional equanimity.

In Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, one major character generally dominates the play. Hamlet engulfs the play, speaking more than a third of the lines, all of the characters in some way subordinate to him. In Othello, Iago frighteningly controls the entire play. Although Lady Macbeth herself is endlessly fascinating, all of her actions in some way depend upon her husband’s destiny.

Shakespeare derived the notion of a single character dominating and engulfing a play from Christopher Marlowe, whose antagonists tended to be these larger than life, ferocious over-reachers, like Taumberline, or Faustus. Shakespeare first practiced the use of a major, engulfing character with the outrageous figure of Richard III in that early history play.

There is no doubt that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth as a sort of tribute to King James, who became the new monarch of England in 1603 after the death of Elizabeth. Both King Lear and Macbeth are plays that mark the end of the Elizabethan era in literature, and the beginning of the Jacobean era. James was Scottish, and he was famously obsessed with the occult. A pseudo-scholar (he is the king who authorized and oversaw the King James Version of the Bible), James wrote voluminously on many issues, including ghosts, spirits, witches and anything else supernatural. Although he could be prescient at times, much of the writing is pretty wild and, at times, gobbledygook. But there is no doubt that the preponderance of ghoulish subject matter and events in Macbeth–and, of course, the Scottish setting–was inspired by the new king of England.

Just as in King Lear, the thunder and lightning that opens Macbeth reflects the tumultuous mood of the play. The difference, however, is that the play foregrounds the supernatural. Although it feels supernatural, there are no supernatural events in King Lear. There is such extreme of emotion in King Lear, it feels as though the supernatural could break out at any moment–ghosts, demons, monsters–but everything in that play exists on a real and existential plane. Macbeth opens with three witches involved in an incantation and brewing a cauldron of spells.

A challenge in the play is to determine how we are supposed to understand the three Witches, of the Weird Sisters. Are they real? a hallucination? symbolic? Like the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, Shakespeare wants us to suspend disbelief and to accept their existence; at the same time, the Witches seem to occupy a supernatural realm. Although, like the Ghost in Hamlet, they do speak to other characters at the beginning of the play, they seem to exist for Macbeth’s benefit / curse.

A large issue to focus on is the ruthless economy, the speed and brevity of the play. All of the action becomes contracted, as thoughts and events seem to occur almost breathlessly, on top of each other. When we first meet Macbeth, he has just come from the battlefield bloodied, weary, but victorious, and right away he meets the witches, who prophecy his rise in power. Instantly, Macbeth is drawn into mental aberration to the point that even his war-mates recognize how distracted he is. The lust for power immediately ignites his darker imagination–more than that, he becomes immediately drawn into the vacuum of his imagination itself, obsessed with its power.

I have often taught how Shakespeare portrays the emotionally damaging and corrupting power of violence and war. Macbeth is a warrior, battle-weary. The description of him on the battlefield in the conflict that occurs before the play indicates his involvement in the brutality and atrocity of war. The play seems to begin with an image of Macbeth mentally succumbing to what we would call today the trauma of war. As in King Lear, the tragic hero in Macbeth appears to be fallen–or at least falling–the moment that the play begins. In the inverse of ancient tragedy, the more that Macbeth falls–falls into insanity–the more that he rises in power. But each role of leadership, including when he becomes king, involves what the play frequently refers to as “borrowed clothes.”

King Lear challenged us to love a figure who we initially disliked. Macbeth poses even more of a challenge in this realm. The play uncomfortably explores the mind of a mass-murderer. Yet, somehow, parallel to the empathy Aristotle claimed we always feel for a tragic hero, we come to sympathize with Macbeth.

Hail Macbeth, Lord of Polo Mints.  Please see next entry, for suggestions and equal opportunity policy.

Hold up sensed as affirmative.

Proceeding with caution.

English title:  Throne of Blood

I’m not a Shakespeare scholar, but I know what I likes, and of his plays, I like MacBeth best. and of the film versions of MacBeth, I like Kumonosu-Jou best.  it is a fantastic movie that rates among Kurosawa’s best

Throne of blood poster 3

Throne_of_Blood_poster

Throne_of_blood_2

set in medieval Japan, filmed in b&w, and with fog everywhere, Kumonosu-Jou begins with the two feudal lords, Taketori Washizu (Toshirô Mifune) and Yoshiaki Miki (Minoru Chiaki) encounter a ghostly witch in the foggy forest. she makes future predictions for both.  upon arriving at Spider Castle, Washizu tells his wife, the Lady Asaji Washizu ( Isuzu Yamada), of what the witch predicted, and she encourages him to make it happen.

the best of the movie is the Lady Washizu.  it takes a lot to outact Toshirô Mifune, but Yamada does it. and how. her figure is overwhelming and her presence is everywhere. she drives the action in a way that Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth could only hint at.

from a serene, calculating, planning

Lady washizu

to a desperate wreck

Out damned spot!

his fate is not any better

Arrows

clips

original trailer:

Throne Of Blood – Original Trailer 1957

short trailer with voiceover:

Throne Of Blood trailer

the entire movie is available at video.google.  no subtitles.

Nablopomo 2009 badge

The title of this blog post is the name of the “production company” my good friend Brittney and I started my senior year of high school. It’s one and only project produced and released? A high school English assignment of epic proportions.

The assignment? We were all paired off and given passages of Shakespeare’s Macbeth which we were instructed to perform as a live (or taped) sketch re-enactment.

Brittney and I, being the smart alecs we are, decided to tape our sketch and use puppets. (<– What the-? Did she just say puppets?) Shakespeare for the layman!

The video below is the result of Shakespeare puppetry when the only puppet-like objects you have to use are a stuffed Pillsbury Doughboy and a miniature Betty Blow-Up doll. Hang in until about 3:30sec for the best part – Bloopers; though the bloopers won't make much sense unless you sit through the slightly more boring Shakespeare re-enactment part.

Brittney and I most likely do not have a career in acting ahead of us. Here’s a link to the actual Shakespeare text we are reading, since it’s very hard to understand my lame and inaccurate “British” accent.

Enjoy!

EDIT: The Flickr link I had here earlier cut the video short from about 7 minutes to 1 minute. Should be fixed now! Thanks for your patience!

Lesson Plan:

Handouts:

Week 10 & 11 Calendar (the last weekly calendar)

Scene Rewrite Handout

How to format a screenplay

Act III Content and Vocab Quiz

According to Google Images, this is what a Sleeping Child should look like:

Isn’t it lovely? Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t almost like there should be fairy dust and twinkly stars around their beautiful little head??

Currently our wittow angel is snoring, (I can hear her through the baby monitor) but the whole point of this post is that She Has Not Been Sleeping Enough in the last week. Seriously, this is how our evenings are supposed to go:

1. Daddy gets home and takes the babby, and they play lovingly while Mummy makes dinner.
2. Fambly has dinner, and Daddy clears away while Mummy and Babby have a bath, get into our jim-jams and nurse ourselves to sleep. (OK, maybe that was an inappropriate use of the collective – that just sounded weird.)
3. Mummy and Daddy actually find their real names and spend the evening talking to one another like adults (read: watch lots of telly) until it’s time for bed.

Except since Sunday, there have been a few addenda:

• Babby wakes up after about an hour, and nurses back to sleep again.
• Babby wakes up again and wants to PLAY!
• Babby may or may not go back to sleep.
• Cat yowels loudly outside sleeping babby’s door for no discernible reason and WAKES HER UP!!
• Babby doesn’t want to go back to sleep again until at least 11.00. Last night IT WAS 12.30 PEOPLE (THAT”S AM!!) and Mummy gave up and called in Daddy for reinforcements. Then slept fitfully for an hour about being chased by a grizzly bear. (No, I am not kidding…)

Mummy is now shattered and is not quite sure of her name, address, or serial number. Or rank. Or whatever it is that you’re supposed to give to the enemy. Except, frankly, if the enemy would let me sleep, I’d probably sell out several governments and international corporations for a small kip at the moment…

* That’s Macbeth, BTW. Act 2, when M has just committed regicide and he and Lady M are planning more nefarious perfidies (like, really bad murders and stuff). (If you want me to use less high-falutin’ lingo, LET ME GET SOME SLEEP!!!)

UPDATE: OMG, she went to bed on time! And slept! And woke up for normal feeds, and then went back to sleep again!! And she had a nap again today!!! I may faint…

Lesson Plan:

(upload lesson plan)

Other Materials:

Macbeth Act IV Discussion Notes (for myself)

I am in the midst of memorizing my little soliloquies for Macbeth.

“Two truths are told,
as happy prologues to the swelling act
cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill,
why hath it given me earnest of success,
commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
if good, why do I yield to that suggestion
whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
and make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
against the use of nature? Present fears
are less than horrible imaginings:
my thought, whose murder is yet but fantastical,
shakes so my single state of man that function
is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is
but what is not.”

I have that mostly memorized, but I still need prompting on some parts… and, I have two more of those. Similar in length and content. All to be memorized and performed for my English/History class/whoever shows up that day. Bleh. I don’t want to do this. Any of this. I have no interest in memorizing Macbeth. I have no problem reading the play, I love the play, the play is lovely. However- I do not feel like memorizing and performing it should be required. We made cardboard pistols in class the other day and some little froshies in the hall thought it was funny when I pretended to off myself, and well, it was. We also made cardboard horse heads and borrowed some yardsticks from the nearby Geometry room and then rode around on them in the middle of the hallway. People thought we were weird- I didn’t mind. I saw someone in the hallway today and he looked and me and I looked at him and I think we were both thinking the same thing. I didn’t say anything to him and he only said one word to me and it didn’t even matter and I’m so happy I have changed. At Starbucks today I ventured away from my usual “Tall, cafe americano” and got a tall gingerbread latte… It was weird. It was way too sweet and I am sticking with my americano from the point onward. It was 27 degrees this morning as I waited for the bus and my fingertips turned blue. I ate a muffin at LEAD because I didn’t eat breakfast. I have been very tired lately. My usual shots of espresso in the morning don’t seem to wake me up very well anymore and I have found myself almost-falling-asleep in a few classes. During advisory today Bill wasn’t there so I went and hung out with Jazz for longer than usual. They had brownies. Then her advisory was like “Why are you always here?” “My advisor doesn’t really like me.” “Sure she does! Who is your advisor?” “Claudia” “Oh, she loves you!” “Okay. I guess I will go over there then.” So I walked across the hallway to my advisory where we had banana bread. It was not exciting.*