Saturday, November 2, 2024

Lady Macbeth is one of literature’s biggest female villains, two new works plug the gaps in her story

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Lady Macbeth is one of the most famous female villains in all of literary history. Yet, despite her infamy, her tale has glaring gaps and misrepresentations.

For the uninitiated, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is an epic tragedy, first performed in the early 17th century. In Shakespeare’s telling, the titular Macbeth rises to the throne of Scotland by killing King Duncan, egged on by his ambitious wife Lady Macbeth.

As the murders begin to stack up, Macbeth and his bloodthirsty partner-in-crime unravel.

Enter two new versions of the story. The first is a stage play — Macbeth (An Undoing) — now on at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre. And there’s Queen Macbeth, a book by Scottish writer Val McDermid.

“It is quite galling to see that [violent] image of Scotland [as shown in Macbeth] being passed around the world,” says McDermid.(Supplied: NewSouth Books)

These two retellings of Macbeth — one interested in adhering more closely to history, the other intent on filling narrative gaps — give Lady M some overdue depth and agency.

Lady Macbeth aka Gruoch Macbethad

McDermid is best known as a crime writer but, in Queen Macbeth, she attempts to set things right by history.

Queen Macbeth is part of a series of books by Scottish authors that re-imagine their myths and legends in a more positive light, released under the name the Darkland Tales.

“[Shakespeare’s Macbeth] has sunk into our psyche as a picture of what … the people who ran [medieval] Scotland were like: bloodthirsty, psychopathic, driven by ambition to do terrible, overreaching things,” McDermid told ABC RN’s The Book Show.

“It’s not a very satisfying picture to have as part of your history … [and] it really couldn’t be more different [to the truth].”

The real Lady Macbeth’s name was Gruoch and the Macbeths were actually the Macbethads (though McDermid sticks with Shakespeare’s spelling in her historical fiction).

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