Sting - In Darkness Let Me Dwell

In Shakespeare's time, actors learned to sing in order to use their talents to enhance the plays in which they acted as well as to give them another skill to take on the road.  Sting might have been a rock star even then. . . .

Give us some music; music, moody food. . .(Antony & Cleopatra)

One of the best traditions in the Elizabethan/Jacobean theater, one to which Shakespeare was very sensitive, is the use of music to create mood, heighten or relieve tension, to create an audio backdrop or simply to entertain.  Productions of Shakespeare's plays often included vocal and instrumental music, especially when the plays were performed as special occasions before royalty.

In many of the plays, though not necessarily in Macbeth, dances enliven the action in much the same way a fight scene does.  The music and the dance, then, underscore the characters' intentions, their motivations.

Minor characters were often chosen to sing vocal selections, and instrument players were members of the ensemble; they played such instruments as the viol, the trumpet, the hautbois -- our oboe -- and the lute.

Anthony Bez, ASC Music Master, is responsible to see that our production of Macbeth continues the tradition and does the Bard proud.

Some Witchly Trivia

Macbeth's witches are so familiar in popular culture that they show up in all kinds of reinterpretations, including children's cartoons.

Yet in most productions, much of what was written for the witches is cut because it is extraneous enough that whole segments can be lopped off without leaving holes in the plot structure.  Some experts decry this practice, finding many of Shakespeare's thematic stances in their scenes.  But the witches we know are so easily dispatched for a very good reason. . . they are not entirely original to Shakespeare's first folio text.

One monologue that is almost universally cut from American productions of Macbeth is that of the Witch Goddess Hecate.  Hecate, and many of the oft-cut pieces of the witches' scenes, were lifted from Thomas Middleton's The Witch, incorporated into Macbeth in 1618, along with some songs from the same play, perhaps as much as ten to twelve years after Shakespeare's play was begotten(1603-7). Some experts believe that Middleton and Shakespeare were collaborators, which would perhaps, in part at least,  explain why Middleton's material so easily folds into the play.

The Witch was performed by King's Men, Shakespeare's theatre troupe, as early as 1609 but wasn't published till 1778; it has been said that Shakespeare was a bit jealous of his younger contributor and that he credited himself for Middleton's work and then blocked its publication.  But the Bard's envy does not explain why he had to be dead for 162 years before it could see the light of distribution.

Here's the seldom-heard monologue, where Hecate (usually played by the same actor who portrays Lady Macbeth and believed to have been intended as LM's alterego at the very least) instructs her followers:

HECATE: Have I not reason, beldams as you are,

Saucy and overbold? How did you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth
In riddles and affairs of death;
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never called to bear my part
Or show the glory of our art?
And, which is worse, all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,
Loves for his own ends, not for you.
But make amends now: get you gone
And at the pit of Acheron
Meet me i' th' morning. Thither he
Will come to know his destiny.
Your vessels and your spells provide,
Your charms and everything beside.
I am for th' air. This night I'll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end.
Great business must be wrought ere noon.
Upon the corner of the moon
There hangs a vap'rous drop profound;
I'll catch it ere it come to ground:
And that, distilled by magic sleights,
Shall raise such artificial sprites
As by the strength of their illusion
Shall draw him on to his confusion.
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace, and fear:
And you all know security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy.

[Music, and a song.]


Hark! I am called. My little spirit, see,
Sits in a foggy cloud and stays for me.