i had no idea. antiques roadshow, only on pbs. announcer: coming up shakespeare's darkest tragedy. fair is foul... all: and foul is fair! ethan hawke: even the name of it is supposed to conjure the dregs of the universe.

announcer: ethan hawke explores the black heart of the scottish play. hawke: you can watch polanski's "macbeth," you can watch orson welles' "macbeth," and of course the trick is then you have to forget all that and live it. man: ethan, over there is dunsinane hill. history is always written by the victors. as the loser, macbeth is invented as a tyrant. "it is a tale told by an idiot, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." announcer: "macbeth" on "shakespeare uncovered." captioning made possible by friends of nci major funding for "shakespeare uncovered" is provided by... the national endowment for the humanities... exploring the human endeavor...

the howard and abby milstein foundation. shakespeare is an enduring treasure of western art. bringing new audiences to his work is a key reason we're funding "shakespeare uncovered." please join us in supporting your public television station. announcer: major funding is also provided by: rosalind p. walter; the polonsky foundation... virginia and dana randt; the luesther t. mertz charitable trust; and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ethan hawke, voice-over: when you think of violent murders, brutal crimes, and nightmarish horrors, you might think of a big city, you

might think of manhattan. or if you're like me you might think a little bit past that to about a 400-year-old play named "macbeth." this is the story of one man who will kill his way to win the scottish throne. "macbeth" is a play that you're not even supposed to say the name of it because even the name of it is supposed to conjure witches and the dregs of the universe. this tale of serial murder is the darkest and strangest of all shakespeare's plays. the play may be 400 years old, but anybody paying attention can recognize everybody in it. they can recognize the evil in the heart of man. ohh. hawke: it's probably never drawn a more beautiful portrait of a broken, greedy heart than the

bloody heart of "macbeth." maybe foolishly, it's a part i've always wanted to play. i feel like if you're gonna play one of these parts you have to... seek out some truth about it. when shakespeare wrote "macbeth," he explored the darker side of the human psyche. macbeth will become a traitor, a butcher, a serial killer and yet what's so powerful is that shakespeare hasn't written a play about a monster. he's written a play about a man. "macbeth" explores our

capacity for violence and evil, and for an actor that can be scary. i never wanted to play it. when i was younger i was petrified of the play because, to be honest, i thought i might go crazy if i did it but now for some reason, i'm not as scared of it as i was and i'm not saying that i'm braver. it's just i--i realize that there is that aspect to life and it isn't really worthwhile to pretend it's not there. playing this part would mean asking myself some tough questions so the essential thing for me would be to work out how to prepare for it. i think--and this is something that nobody really wants to say, but the best way that i can ever prepare for a part is to surround myself with really smart people. i'd seek advice and wisdom from historians, scholars, directors who have their

own knowledge and experience. the other thing i would do to begin work on this is watch as many as i could find. you can watch polanski's "macbeth," you can watch orson welles' "macbeth," and of course the trick is then you have to forget all that and live it and make it real for yourself. welles: it isn't often one gets a chance to do these plays. this is great. i've done this one. through my long career i've played it on both sides of the atlantic, i've done a textbook on it. i don't know what i haven't done about this play except do it as well as i'd like to. it's a great feeling to be dealing with material which is better than yourself, that you know that you can never live up to. it's weird to see such ego and such humility at the same time. what a bizarre guy orson welles is. however you play macbeth this is the story. so foul and fair a day i have not seen. hawke: macbeth starts out

as a warrior rewarded by the king for his bravery. the king hath happily received, macbeth, the news of thy success. we are sent to bring thee from our royal master thanks. macbeth: speak. hawke, voice-over: then 3 witches or weird sisters as shakespeare calls them, prophesy that he himself will be king. all hail macbeth! thou shalt be king hereafter. hawke: macbeth and his wife decide to make it happen. he murders the king himself and then all other possible rivals. ohh! there's so much violent gore in the play, but it's the supernatural element these witches or weird sisters that trigger macbeth's dark dissent into murder. their prophecy will fire his ambition. when shall we

3 meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? when the hurly-burly's done when the battle's lost and won. that will be ere the set of sun. where the place? upon the heath. there to meet with macbeth. the funny thing about the witches is it's just the most genius piece of writing. the language is so evocative and strange. macbeth will murder to satisfy his ambition but the evil inspiration comes from the witches. they tell him he will be king, so the current king must die. that fatal decision is the pivot of the drama of "macbeth." first witch: when shall we 3 meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? hawke: at the globe in london, a replica of the theater shakespeare

actually worked in they are running the opening scene. where the place? upon the heath. there to meet with macbeth. fair is foul... all: and foul is fair: hover through the fog and filthy air. most of this scene here you don't speak. so the rest of the--if you do turn back... hawke: now macbeth and his close comrade banquo encounter the witches for the first time. all right. let's see it one more time. ok. so foul and fair a day i have not seen... hawke: the witches deliver their prophecy. the thane will bypass his rivals to become king. macbeth's reaction will drive the action of the rest of the play, but had he always desired the crown, or have the witches planted that idea? all hail macbeth! hail to thee thane of glamis! all hail macbeth! hail to thee thane of cawdor! all hail macbeth! thou shalt be king hereafter!

heh heh heh! man: it's like reading a horoscope, which i never do and the horoscope saying, "this is going to happen to you," and however sensible you might be and however much you might not believe in horoscopes, this thing has been planted in your head and we're quite susceptible to that, i think. hawke, voice-over: what's so unsettling about this play is that the one characteristic that undoes macbeth is simply ambition. what's scary about is what lives inside each one of us, and, you know, yeah, not all of us want to be king, but, you know, there's a ton of actors out there that would lie, cheat, and kill their mother for an oscar or an olivier award, whatever it is, you know. we have these ambitions,

and we want to set ourselves apart so much that we're willing to forego all kindness and all the best parts of ourselves in the name of achieving the goal. as we've seen, the trigger for macbeth comes from witches. today, everyone's going to react to that differently, but i'd like to know what shakespeare's audience made of witches. this is an age in one sense of witchcraft. everyday lives are injected with... hawke: champion is an expert in the 17th century world. champion: for the early modern audience, witches are everywhere. they would have read about it, the would have sung about

it discussed with their neighbors in the alehouses. she may not have been caught or she may have been executed, but you would know about a witch. so the magic and the witchcraft and the ghosts in shakespeare are not sort of frilly extras making it all a little bit more exotic. these are very powerful languages that the audience would have connected with almost straightaway. hawke: in shakespeare's time writing about witchcraft had major political implications. witches were taken seriously by almost everyone even by the king himself. in 1597, king james i had written a book on demonology correcting and reworking some passages, and he did so because he was convinced that witches could bring down the divinely ordained monarchy. so this play about killing a king was clearly a dangerous idea.

the great anxiety that dominates 16th and 17th century political history is that the devil, normally through the agency of the pope and the antichrist are going to somehow topple protestant government in england. so this is, again, a very, very sensitive play. hawke, voice-over: the play questions where precisely dark forces come from. why does macbeth commit horrific acts? is it really because of witches, or is the darkness and evil already there in the man? even scholars aren't sure. woman: the real question that they raise of course is to what extent they plant or only see the evil that's in him. that's the question that the play really asks about the supernatural. does the supernatural

cause anything in the play or does it simply forecast what is already going to happen. woman: this is really a play about the danger of interpretation, about the human desire to interpret to find certainty, to find meaning. man: part of the cunning of "macbeth" lies in the difficulty that everyone has in determining what it is that these creatures are doing and how much responsibility they have for what you see unfolding. hawke: in other words, is the driving force supernatural and external or the human character of macbeth? well, the first question i would have is who is he in the beginning? i mean, how noble is he when it starts, you know? on one level the strongest choice would be that he's a very noble person, that then the witches come on, and he just unravels. that might be kind of-- but it doesn't sound true to me.

exactly what turns macbeth from a merely ambitious warrior into a conspiratorial murderer seems to be a tricky question to answer. shakespeare's wonderfully ambiguous, and it's up to the actor to decide. so to make up my mind, i thought it would help to know who shakespeare based him on. who was the real macbeth? because there was a real macbeth. macbeth is known to have lived in scotland in perthshire nearly a thousand years ago. no one knows for sure exactly where, but dunsinane is the most likely spot. let's see. we'll watch this thing. i've heard that name so often, but i've never actually seen an image of it. the historian justin champion has gone there. champion: ethan, i'm in scotland, and as you'll know from the play,

behind me here is dunsinane hill, somewhere that's connected very much with macbeth. macbeth of course was a real figure and very closely associated with this area. so if i turn and let you have a look, over there is dunsinane hill. it's exactly like i pictured it. champion: so i'm right to the top of dunsinane hill now, which is a pretty dramatic sort of panorama and this is the site of a fortress we know from archeological records. it wasn't a castle. they didn't have castles a thousand years ago but the top of this would have been fortified. this would have been an absolutely almost impregnable defensive point. from the top here, we can see right over to the north sea we can look

that way to birnam wood so it's an incredibly brilliant natural place to fortify. hawke: it's the perfect place to see some witches. i mean, that's for sure. even the moon out in the daytime is kind of creepy. so that's the place where macbeth probably lived but what about the actual man macbeth and the reigning king duncan that he kills in the play? champion: in shakespeare's account of duncan's death, macbeth is very much the tyrant, the deceitful host who murders his godly king in his sleep. in fact, we know that macbeth defeated duncan on the battlefield and it's more than likely that in that particular episode duncan was the aggressor. so he was invading macbeth's kingdom, and macbeth did as all good kings of their own lands would do-- defend his own rights and privileges. so in one sense,

duncan's death was just a casualty of war. so macbeth does not display the sort of deceit and traitorous treason that shakespeare delivers to us in the play. hawke, voice-over: well, the question i wonder about is how much of a historian was shakespeare? did he just kind of know a few names and make this stuff up or did he study it and deliberately do it? is this what he kind of thought happened? did somebody tell him a story about how macbeth was actually a bad guy and so he just ran with it, or-- that i'd be curious to know. it's true shakespeare had a reputation for adapting and embroidering historical facts but here it seems the historical facts had already been adapted and embroidered. so why? i think we have to blame the historians. we need to think about how history

is always written by the victors and macbeth lost. he was executed. malcolm took over the reign of scotland, so almost straightaway as the loser macbeth is invented as a tyrant, and that's the material that shakespeare has to work with. hawke: ruling kings were determined to show their claim to the throne was better than that of any rivals' and the historians were expected to help. we have historians who deliberately set out to invent tradition, but as long as they work as long as they suit the powers that be they are regarded as as credible as any other history that you might encounter. hawke: scottish history may not reflect the real macbeth but it does show the brutal, cutthroat world that kings lived in and their queens. i also need to understand macbeth's soul mate lady macbeth who is as

notorious as her husband. she is his partner in crime, so how actor might play macbeth will depend a lot on who he thinks she is and on the influence she wields. lady macbeth: "they met me in the day of success"... hawke: she first enters, reading a letter from macbeth, where he can't contain his excitement about the witches' prophecy. lady macbeth: "when i burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air"... hawke: the question is is he likely to act on it alone, or will his wife push him over the line to dire actions in the hope of glory? then shalt be what thou art promised. hawke, voice-over: the nature of lady macbeth's role in their crimes has sparked a fierce debate. so

this is the evil vampire judith anderson. it would be cool to do it as vampires. she was apparently described as a vampire. hawke, voice-over: i'm meeting with a performance historian to talk about the variety of different lady macbeths. we have ellen terry here in a famous pre-raphaelite painting. some of the really successful lady macbeths that the public has loved have been incredibly powerful and assertive and have really bullied their husbands into action. so one of the most popular in the 19th century-- charlotte cushman-- was a woman who was famous for towering over her macbeths. in fact, i do have a picture of that. she's quite powerful and you can imagine her playing this role-- she tells you to go kill somebody, you're gonna go kill them. you're gonna do it. or she's gonna kill you. edwin booth, who played macbeth to her apparently complained that he felt like saying, "why don't you just kill him yourself? you're a great deal bigger than i am." but she was a colorful woman. she lived openly as a lesbian which was not entirely typical at that time and she played the role tough.

people were scared of her but people were also impressed by her because she knew what she wanted, she knew how to get there she knew how to get her husband there. hawke: apparently an alternative approach was sarah bernhardt's. she played up the inherent sexuality in the play. pollard: sarah bernhardt was seen very much as a sex symbol, and she really played that in lady macbeth to the hilt to the point where some people found it distasteful. they thought, "no. this woman's evil. "don't make her so appealing. don't make us feel so allured by her." and theirs was a very kind of lusty relationship. mm-hmm. which i think is in the text. i think that works really well. ironically, it's one of the happiest marriages that we see... that we see. i know. in a shakespeare play. i know. it's the only really happily married couple we get. we get people falling in love and breaking up a lot but rarely a portrait of a steady couple. hawke, voice-over: but whether you play her bullying or seductive, this idea of a manipulative woman pushing her man to excess has become iconic.

you might remember in 1990s there was an article written about hillary clinton titled "the lady macbeth of little rock." and there's been a long tradition-- people saw her as lady macbeth a lot, as always manipulating him and bullying him. people want to be able to use her to explain away what they see as the failings or the drive or the mistakes made by a powerful man. there's a way that she can become an excuse for a man that you want to forgive, i think. men particularly like the idea of "i wouldn't have done anything wrong if it wasn't for that eve." absolutely. it's been done... hawke, voice-over: as we've seen, however lady macbeth is cast the one big question that has to be answered is does she make him a killer? who wields the power in this relationship? absolutely. how now! what news? he has almost supp'd: why have you left the chamber? hath he ask'd for me? know you not he has? just to see that change... hawke: back at the globe in london,

they are working on the scene in which this question is most central-- who is in control? i think you've got to come right back at him physically. yeah. hawke: after the witches' prophecy, the couple had plotted to kill the king themselves but then macbeth has a complete change of heart and rejects the plan. his wife is furious. she knows him to be an ambitious man and she's more-- in a way, she's more realistic about what it will take to achieve what they both want and that's really what shakespeare's written here. he's written this couple that both want the same thing at a certain point. we will proceed no further in this business: he hath honour'd me of late; and i have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people that would be worn now in their newest gloss, not cast aside so soon. was the hope drunk wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since? and

wakes it now to look so green and pale at what it did so freely? art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valour as thou art in desire? garber: lady macbeth raises the question of what a man is and is a man someone who dares to take what he is promised, who dares to challenge authority who dares to kill the king? i dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none. what beast was't, then, that made you break this enterprise to me? when you durst do it then you were a man; and, to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man. paster: he's really poised at that moment of possibility.

he might go forward with it, he might not go forward with it, and yet it's the sense that if he doesn't do it he will be shamed in the eyes of his wife forever. if we should fail? we fail. but screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail. well, it certainly feels that she's dominant that she has the power in the relationship in the beginning and that in many ways you can feel her manipulating him, but i think he's a person who wants to be manipulated. i mean, it's easy to say that she talks him into it but it's also he's not such a hard sell. fired up by his wife macbeth is on

the brink of doing the deed. his thoughts are racing, he's hallucinating. he's about to give us one of the most famous speeches in the play, the dagger scene. so how would i play that? is this a dagger that i see before me? i see thee still. i see thee still! ha ha ha! ah... hawke, voice-over: one of my good friends actor richard easton has played macbeth and is gonna help. all right. so i'll read this and you teach me about it as you do. i mean, just help me with it. impertinent. yeah. "is this a dagger which i see before me, "the handle toward my hand? come, let me"-- i think that's an advance. you know, "is this a dagger that i see before me... the handle toward my hand?" that means it's being offered for you to use. right. so it's-- it's not just a thing floating in the

air. hawke, voice-over: i think that one of the things that somebody needs to do if you really are gonna play any of these roles is not only break down all the language not only need to understand how it was meant to be played, you need to really understand all the rules that shakespeare was setting up before you can break them. ...of time we'll jump the life to come! part of the challenge is always just understanding the words. what does that mean, "proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain"? the heat-oppressed brain... because my brain's so hot. it's so hot, i'm-- i'm sweating i'm feverish. right, right, right. it's not fancy poetical. it's actually literal. it's actually his head his hot. yeah, right. ok. i get it. ok. "and on that blade and dudgeon gouts of blood." is that the right-- "gouts"? yes. "which was not so before." "hec-tate's offer"-- "hec-et's." "hec-et's." "hecate's offrings and wither'd murther." what's "murther"? murder. oh. oh. ok. will you read it for me? hawke: there's always a certain magic that happens when you start to say the lines out loud that you can't

anticipate. it feels like a spell. "is this a dagger "that i see before me? "the handle toward my hand? "come, let me clutch thee. "i have thee not "and yet i see thee still. "art thou not, fatal vision, sensible "to feeling as to sight? "or art thou but a dagger of the mind "a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? i see thee yet..." "i go, and it is done; "the bell invites me. "hear it not, duncan; "for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell." see, what i find amazing is whenever i first start reading these, it does seem...

it seems so hard to reach. you know, when you first start studying him i don't know what marshall'st means or i don't know what murther means and it cuts me off from it. but then, listening to you do it it's so obvious when you know what you're playing-- yes. but also i have played it. i know you have. so, and when you have played it, even when you've rehearsed it, you'll know that this is the beginning of act 2. you know, there are 3 more acts to go. so it can be... it hasn't...done it. it hasn't been there yet. hawke, voice-over: up until this point in the play, macbeth is still an innocent man. he's thought about killing, but he hasn't done it. the next time we see him he's a murderer emerging bloody-handed from the scene of the crime.

i have done the deed. didst thou not hear a noise? i heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. did not you speak? when? now? as i descended? ay. hark! who lies in th' second chamber? donalbain. this is a sorry sight. woman: shock and numbness and denial are the first stages of human response after a massive trauma. hawke: gwen adshead has spent years working with people who have committed murder listening firsthand to their experiences. the fascinating thing about this is that shakespeare demonstrates this in the language. if you look at the language of "macbeth," the language falls apart into these staccato half-sentences. and shakespeare's really showing us through the language

in exactly the way that happens in real life, 'cause people's language does fall apart when they're agitated or distressed. go get some water and wash this filthy witness from your hand. why did you bring these daggers from the place? they must lie there. go carry them, and smear the sleepy grooms with blood. i'll go no more: i am afraid to think what i have done; look on't again i dare not. hawke: in his panic, macbeth has emerged clutching the incriminating murder weapons and is frozen. lady macbeth steps in, returning them to the scene of the crime and now they're both covered in blood. adshead: you can never go back and that, i think, for me, rings very true in terms of working therapeutically with people who've killed. it's the absolute finality of this act. you've changed the universe and you can't ever go back to how it was

before and that is so profound. hawke: the act of killing changes everything something macbeth must now face. the problem for macbeth is i always think, is that he gets caught up in this idea of whether to do it or not to do it and feels like once he does it, it'll be done. but, of course, it's not done. it's actually just beginning, and i think that's what hits him after the murder's over. he realizes he's entered some new part of his life, that he can never return to the old one and he has no idea what's coming now. [bells tolling in time with the traffic signal]

movement and dance are not what we immediately think of with shakespeare. we think about words. here in new york, they're rehearsing a version of "macbeth" that relies on dance movement, and mime. i want to see how these performers portray the huge change that macbeth has to undergo without the help of language. yeah, amazing. unbelievable job. i will challenge myself if i ever get to play, do the scottish play to get buck naked.