Lady Macbeth

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In the Globe Theatre Company's production of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth was played by Eve Best.

About Eve Best

Eve's previous work includes the roles of Varya in The Cherry Orchard and Yelena in Uncle Vanya at the Royal National Theatre. Eve was the recipient of the Evening Standard, Outstanding Newcomer award in 1999 and the Most Promising Newcomer from the Critics Circle, for her betrayal of Annabella in ‘Tis A Pity She's A Whore. Eve graduated from RADA in 1999.

Click on the numbered links to follow Eve's journey as she creates and plays the character of Lady Macbeth in the Globe Theatre.

Eve Best - Character Notes 1

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and change frequently as the rehearsal process progresses.

It's been a really extraordinary week. I always knew before taking the job that the Globe was a completely different theatre to every other theatre in London and in the country, because of its extraordinary history and its architecture. The fact that it's a circle, that it's open-air, and the actor's relationship with the audience make it an extraordinary place.

I’ve seen about three plays at the Globe. The first one I saw was Henry V with Mark [Rylance]. I went with a group of schoolchildren – sixteen-year-olds who hadn’t really seen any Shakespeare before – and I stood right at the front, as a groundling, and I was just absolutely ‘blown away’ by the experience. It was like being at a rock concert, in that you’re there and you can practically touch the performers if you wish. It is very, very exhilarating as an audience member because you’re so engaged – so much more engaged than in a ‘normal’ theatre when you’re sitting in the dark with the lights on the stage. At the Globe you feel really engaged with the whole process and you’re very active. It seems to me that that is the point of the theatre, as opposed to TV and films. TV and films are very passive mediums - you just sit back and a lot of the information is just given for you to absorb.

In theatre, and particularly the Globe, you are required to be incredibly active and use your imagination, which makes the experience of seeing something at the Globe exhilarating in a way that I haven’t experienced in a long time. Having felt this way as a member of the audience meant that I was very, very terrified about actually being an actor on the Globe stage. Every time I went to see a play at the Globe I thought, ‘this is incredible but I don’t want to be doing that – I’m too scared!’ If people don’t like it, you can see their reactions. In seated dark auditoriums the audience will often stay even if they don’t like a play, at the Globe they can walk out if they wish.

When I first arrived at the Globe I was overwhelmed by the warmth and openness of the organisation. Basically the whole of the first day was spent being introduced to everybody. Every single person gave a speech, and so you got a real sense of the whole life of the building, and of how much the people working there loved working there. Everyone seemed to be giving so much to this project, all led by Mark, who is clearly a tremendously inspiring person. You really felt you were being welcomed into a huge family, and part of the theatre, which was a lovely experience.

The second week of rehearsal very strange, because we didn’t have Tim [Carroll, the director] as he had a prior commitment to another project. We did a lot of general movement work with the choreographer, that was actually really exciting, because it was like being back at drama school in a way. Because the last play I’d done was very unphysical, it was very nice just to do random physical moves for no apparent reason - just make up silly dances and stuff like that.

We also worked on some marvelous stuff with Mark [Rylance, the Artistic Director] - some improvisations. Mark thought it would be good to help us experience what the atmosphere of the play is like in a completely real, not theatrical way. This is particularly important at the Globe because there are no lights and everything has to be perhaps bigger than it might in a smaller space. The first improvisation we did was the first Bloody Sergeant scene [I.ii]. First of all Mark asked us to do an exercise in which you don’t have a script and somebody stands behind you and whispers the lines into your ear. That means that you don’t have to worry about performing, the person is just giving you the lines and you’re just saying them. You’re not reading ahead, planning what you’re going to do, and you’re also hearing the lines, which is rare because normally you’re the only person who speaks your lines.

As Macbeth begins at the end of a battle the company talked about the wars that are going on in the world at the moment - the reality of war. It's very tempting on a big stage, with a big audience, to just shout ‘What bloody man is that?’ in a very over-the-top way, and it becomes very unreal. Mark asked us to imagine that this place where we were, this underground rehearsal room where we were, was actually a retreat - there were bombs going off all around outside and nobody knew anything - nobody knew where anybody was. You suddenly realise how much you don’t trust the people around you in that kind-of situation, and that you become very aware of sounds.

There were also improvisations between myself and Jasper [Britton, who's playing Macbeth]. Mark asked us to switch off the lights and play the scene just after Macbeth has murdered Duncan. The whole session was in the dark, and it gave me a good sense of the atmosphere of this scene - what it really was like to be up in the middle of the night knowing that your husband was killing somebody else, and every sound being terrifying. One of the main things that came out of this improvisation was how banal Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's conversation is when they have just done killed their King.

We did a lot of work last week with Giles (Block, Master of Verse) - going through the text and sorting out any problems with meaning and pointing out anything interesting - any differences between the Folio version and the edition of the text which we’re using. Sometimes line endings were different, so that's quite interesting to see - if they are different we ask is the line more revealing or interesting in the Folio or in the version we have.

Giles talked about he and Tim's [Carroll, the director] approach to language and verse. When speaking verse we are trying to always move towards the end of the line. This sounds quite a strange idea…. the end of the line is where you are trying to get to - when I’m talking now, I aim towards a point in the sentence - and it might not be the most obvious point - it might not be at the full-stop; it might be, quite often, in the middle of something that you’re saying, because you pause for thought, or because you don’t want someone to interrupt you, or for all kinds of reasons.

There's an exercise we did with Tim in which the aim was for the company to try to interrupt everyone else's speech. There wasn’t allowed to be a gap between their speech and yours and you had to follow through to the end of the line; you couldn’t pause at any punctuation, you were only allowed to pause at the end of a line. That discipline is a very interesting one to follow. Quite often, where the line makes you pause is in a more interesting, and probably a more realistic place than you would have thought, because my tendency, is to follow the sense of the line onto a full-stop and then start again, trying to make sense of it. That's not how people talk. You pause to choose the best word, and then you say it, or you pause because you can’t bear to say that word. There was one particular line of Lady Macbeth's where the sense of the exercise really struck me. I say,

Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both.
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me;

(l.vii.51-5)

Instinctively, I said, ‘Does unmake you, I have given suck’ all in one phrase, and then I had to stop myself and go back and say, ‘Does unmake you, I have given suck and know...’ And the thing of having to head for ‘and know’ - partly because it's a sound - ‘o’ - which is a terribly emotive sound to say because it's the basic sound that you make of pain Instead of, ‘I have given suck,’ which is quite a hard sound to say, it's ‘I have given suck, and know’ - that's the focus - ‘I know what it's like’ - and it immediately makes you feel it, rather than have to imagine it. It just really struck me when I said that line twice - the second time I suddenly understood the point of the line. I’ve found this type of work to be very helpful.

Activities

Lady Macbeth's journey

Eve must ensure she has a clear picture of Lady Macbeth's journey through the play and how she is effected by the action that takes place when she is not present. Chart your own version of Lady Macbeth's journey - write down each stage clearly marking how each event in the play might effect Lady Macbeth. Send your ideas to Eve.

Rehearsal Exercises

Re read Eve's description of the improvisations and exercises used by Mark. In small groups try any of these exercises which might be appropriate for your class. Do you find them helpful? What do they help you discover about language, situation and character?

Speaking to the end of a line

Re read Eve's comments about the methods that Giles is using to work on verse. Chose any speech or lines and experiment with Giles's method for yourself – speak the verse through without pause to the end of the line. Then try the same lines again, this time observing the editor's punctuation. What is the difference between each reading? What is revealed about character and the meaning of the lines by each approach?

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Eve Best - Character Notes 2

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
Tim (Carroll, Master of Play) has been doing lots of exercises with us about the rhythm of the verse. One of them was to try and really get the rhythm of the iambic pentameter, ‘de dum de dum de dum de dum de dum’. We had to throw a ball up in the air on the last stress of the line and then catch it on the first stress of the next line:

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be - chuck the ball
What thou - catch the ball - art promised. (I.v. 12-13)

I found it very hard, but once I got used to it, it was very helpful. Tim's point was that if you throw the ball, you’re carrying on the thought, so you’re not stopping dead at the end of the line, and the action of the ball makes you feel that forward movement a bit. Then we had to stomp out the rhythm -

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature:
It is too full o’the milk of human-kindness
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it. (I.v.12-18)

I got ‘It is too full’ wrong - I stressed it ‘It is too full’ - because the tendency is to run ‘It’ and ‘is’ together, but if you make yourself stress it properly, it stops you from throwing words away.

I felt very frustrated last week because I had forgotten how patient you have to be when rehearsing a play. I want everything to work immediately, which of course it doesn’t. Glynn (Macdonald, Master of Movement) has been trying to help me find both the masculine and feminine sides of Lady Macbeth. I need to try and make my masculine side more assertive. I find it very difficult to be assertive.

Tim conducted a very interesting exercise. We had to perform the sleepwalking scene in a variety of strange manners. We did an opera version, a ballet version, a jazz version and a version with Tamara (Harvey, Assistant to the Master of Play) reading the lines and us just doing the actions. Lastly we did a version with Terry McGinity (Duncan and the Doctor) and Hilary Tonnes (Lady Macduff and the Gentlewoman) playing the Doctor as Duncan and the Gentlewoman as Lady Macduff to see how that affected the scene. This was mainly just a warm up exercise but it was very interesting.

I am very nervous about this scene because I am wary of falling into the trap of ‘mad’ acting. Coincidentally, I met a woman on Sunday who was crazy. She began talking to me about having a breakdown and being beaten up. She asked me if I would come and visit her in hospital. What struck me was how normal she sounded. She was talking to me with the same tone as she would have if we had been discussing the weather. I wondered whether that was something I could use truthfully in the sleepwalking scene.

I am finding it difficult to work with the doubling of parts that we are using in the sleepwalking scene. The actors playing Duncan and Lady Macduff are also the actors playing the Doctor and the Gentlewoman. It's potentially interesting because a lot of what is going on in Lady Macbeth's conscience is related to the murders of Duncan and Lady Macduff. At the moment I think Tim wants me address the fact that they are the same people in order to show how much the murders are on my mind. I think it's an extraordinary scene and for me the challenge is to get to grips with what is going on inside this woman's head that has reduced her to the state of walking in her sleep and talking the way she does.

Activities

Verse

Eve has been looking at the rhythm of the verse.

Re read the first two paragraphs of Eve's notes where she describes the exercises they did. Choose a short piece of verse from the play and try the exercises for yourself.

Do the exercises help you to follow the rhythm of the verse? Do they help you to understand its meaning more clearly.

Sleepwalking scene

Eve describes an exercise where they performed the sleepwalking scene as a ballet, an opera and a jazz concert.

Try this for yourself. Try and think of other scenarios to try. Do the different situations make you realise anything new about the scene?

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Eve Best - Character Notes 3

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and change frequently as the rehearsal process progresses.
I have spent a lot of time having individual sessions with Jasper (Britton, Macbeth). We did our scenes in lots of different ways with specific tasks to accomplish, which is always very good. Tim (Carroll, Master of Play) wants to be able to not set anything particularly for the actual performances, literally not to ‘block’ the scenes. I find that very scary, as well as exciting.

We looked at the scene just after the murder when Macbeth has ‘done the deed’. First of all, we had to just say it as fast as we could, which is just a good warm-up. Then Tim asked us to say the lines so that he couldn’t hear them. He followed us around, so we had to speak very quietly but with intensity. The other person needed to hear what you were saying even if Tim wasn’t supposed to. At the end of the exercise, Tim said that he could hear mostly all of it, and how interesting it was to realise that you actually need very little volume and stress. What makes things clear is the intensity with which the lines are said.

I write everything down in a notebook because there are so many things that are really good and I don’t want to forget them. I always find that you go through a scene many different and fantastic ways, and then as soon as you have to act it in a run, it can go completely ‘pear-shaped’. All the specific detailed work can be forgotten.

We have worked on scenes trying to identify one ‘action’ or intent each for the whole scene in order to give it more focus. Jasper's action was trying to frighten me and mine was trying to belittle him. These actions yielded some interesting things in terms of the power balance and the reality of the scene. Lots of these exercises are about trying to make it real. Any time the scene works, I know it has worked because Tim says, ‘That was very real, that was just like a couple’. All this work is trying to get away from doing ‘Macbeth acting’. You can’t believe this situation would ever happen; whereas, in fact, it's written so precisely and so well observed in terms of how people relate to each other.

After the murder, the conversation that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have is terribly banal. You think that after a murder the conversation might be huge and extreme.

We have experimented playing Act 2 Scene 2 with me acting hysterically while Jasper remained calm, which supposedly reverses the expectations of the scene. The scene worked. For me, hysteria is definitely there and influences my desire to organise and to say, ‘come on, get a grip, wash your hands.’ That line comes from some level of absolute hysteria. It was interesting to see Macbeth being played very cold. Probably because it wasn’t the reaction Lady Macbeth would expect from him, which makes her more hysterical. It was almost because Macbeth had performed the murder, he had reached another level of understanding about it and because Lady Macbeth hadn’t actually done the deed, she was in an absolute panic.

Activities

Act 2 Scene 2

Eve and Jasper have experimented playing Act 2 Scene 2, firstly saying the lines as quickly as possible and then as quietly as possible. Try this exercise. What do you discover about the language Shakespeare uses after the murder and the way in which tension is created in this scene?

Actions

Eve and Jasper have also explored scenes by identifying one action each for the scene then playing that action above anything else for the whole scene. Re read Eve's description of this activity then try it for a scene of your choice. What do you discover and what can be lost by working on scenes in this manner?

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Eve Best - Character Notes 4

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and change frequently as the rehearsal process progresses.
I never imagined in my wildest dreams what it was going to be like. Secretly I thought, oh well, it's the Globe, it will be really scary of course. See all those people are going to be really scary. Deep down I thought, well it's going to be really scary but actually it will be really exhilarating and really fun, and it's all going to go marvellously. I had not bargained for how genuinely terrifying it was and is. It's not like any experience I’ve ever had in my life. It's like being on a roller coaster. It's completely exhilarating, but most of the time my stomach is in my mouth and I want to run away screaming.

The audience is such a powerful presence; it's as if they are in the play themselves. The difficulty is striking the balance of making sure that you’re communicating with them properly, so that it's neither them controlling you nor you controlling them. It's the thing of them not being in the dark. They are as much a part of the play as we are. They inform you by their response. Things that you think aren’t funny in rehearsal, become absolutely hilarious because the audience laugh at the irony of it. They’re laughing because they’re responding to some understanding of human folly.

If you stop concentrating, if you stop believing what you’re saying, the audience will know. In a normal play it's all in the dark, you can’t see anyone's faces; the audience doesn’t feel like they’re a part of the play. You’re divorced from them. You present something on a plate and push it towards them, and then they take it and either decide to eat it or throw it out. In this performance you’re there with them - finding out about each other.

We’ve had two very different responses from the audiences. On the first night the crowd went completely wild and they adored it. Then on the second night we were probably far more confident because we knew people had really liked it, so they were bound to really like it again. So, of course, they didn’t, and they were very restrained. We got to the end of the show and there was this shocked, stunned silence. It was a very different response. I think it's actually a really good thing, because then it continues to be terrifying and you don’t have the safety net of thinking, ‘well, I know I’ve got a top play and a top cast and I know the reviewers are going to love it.’ There's none of that safety about this show. Everyone talks on about the need to take risks and the need to be brave, but I don’t think that very many people do really.

Normally I would have made some decisions. For example, Lady Macbeth is very upset by the loss of her child, which has left her very depressed. I know that when I say to my husband, ‘I have given suck,’ it makes me want to cry. Although that is true, that information can inform how you say the line very differently each time you do it. David Mamet says it doesn’t matter how you say the lines as long as you know what you want, which is the most ideal situation. You can’t rely on thinking, ‘oh this is the bit when I shout,’ or ‘this is the bit where I lose my temper.’ You’ve got to be so in the moment that you might lose your temper or you might decide to control your temper. I still haven’t got to that stage of being so secure in what you think and feel that you can go in a myriad of different ways. Your emotions and your mind need to be working so clearly and you need to concentrate so hard on what you’re doing, so that you are absolutely on the ball all the time.

It's funny as well because you know that the audience have an idea of what Lady Macbeth is like, so they’re guiding you to behave in a certain way. It's very hard to stay true to your idea of who you are and to take them with you rather than be taken along by them. I feel like there are so many different jobs within this job. The first job is dealing with the character of Lady Macbeth herself. The second job is dealing with Macbeth, because the only things Lady Macbeth has to do in the play are really with him. She has to work out their relationship together and how the balance of power between them changes. The third job is dealing with the language of the play and learning to be comfortable with that so that you really feel that you’re speaking it rather than just reciting lines. Sometimes people ask you to try saying the lines very quickly so that you’re not actually working hard on what you mean, your brain switches off and you just concentrate on getting through the speech. The fourth job is learning about the nature of the Globe and its audience, how the relationship with the audience informs everything you do. And the fifth job in this production is coping with all of the group movement and choreography. Hopefully that will settle down and become second nature. What I think is good about it is that it's such a clear style that eventually, hopefully, it will allow us to play against it, which would be the ideal. Not to do scenes as if we are in dinner jackets and fancy frocks, but to play them as though we are just in jeans, sitting talking to each other.

Tonight I’ll be concentrating on creating a sense of danger. Last night I tried very hard to concentrate on not leaving pauses and on accepting things that happened. I was miserable on Sunday because I was trying to control the outcome of things that happened too much. Whereas on Tuesday night I just gave up and tried to accept whatever happened. As long as you give yourself a job in the moment, as long as you believe that all you have to do is try to affect the other person on stage in some way, nothing else matters. Having a specific intention is very important. If that intention doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and it's not a big deal. As long as your intention isn’t just ‘I want this to be good,’ then you’re all right.

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Eve Best - Character Notes 5

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and change frequently as the rehearsal process progresses.

We have just had a week of re-rehearsal. I felt that there wasn’t enough time to address all the things that needed to be addressed. Macbeth is a very extreme production and the choices that we made were very bold, so there are a lot of things that could be addressed. Re-rehearsal is not about starting from scratch, but I felt that there were things that could be done in order to make the story clearer. For instance, I felt it would be much better if Duncan were not on stage whilst he was being killed. It was very difficult, both for the audience and for us, to imagine that we were killing him when he was still in front of us. So we changed that moment and I think now it's much clearer to an audience that he is dead.

We started the re-rehearsal process by each having an individual session with Tim Carroll (Master of Play) where we could explain what we were finding difficult in the production . That was useful, but it took two days to get through everyone, so we didn't have any time to talk as a group. We had to plunge straight into getting on and changing things.

This production of Macbeth is very unconventional. Everything we do in it is about taking a big risk. Tim has taken a big risk by making a very bold directorial statement. The Globe has a very egalitarian environment - everyone has a say. The word ‘director’ isn’t even used – the director is called the ‘Master of Play’, and there's a sense that you’re invited and encouraged as an actor to have your own opinions and really be a part of a collaborative process. The problem with that is when you then decide to do something with a very strong directorial vision. It's fatal to invite the actors to feel as though they’re collaborating because then you enter into the problem of ‘too many cooks spoiling the broth’. Everyone wants to give their own opinion, but this can lead to the initial vision becoming confused.

We spent a lot of time re-rehearsing some of the scenes I have with Macbeth, which was very useful. These were scenes that Jasper (Britton, Macbeth) and I had been allowed to work on by ourselves. We had spent a long time looking at all the different options we had with the scenes, but in the end we never made any definite choices. We just got stuck in a rut, doing the same things over again. It was really helpful to talk to Tim and get an outside perspective on what we were doing. It gave us a chance to re-examine the scene and remind ourselves of the number of choices available.

During the re-rehearsal period we did a very useful exercise where we ran the play through in a rehearsal room without any props, costumes or choreography. We just tried to tell the story. Being in the rehearsal room meant that we could perform in a more natural way because we didn’t have to worry about being heard. It was a very liberating experience. It was wonderful to see how people can use their imaginations when they are allowed to let go. I found it to be a very intense experience.

Now that we’re back on the stage after the re-rehearsal process I feel much better about the production. I feel that the story is much clearer to an audience than it was before. I also think that there is a clearer through-line for Jasper and I. By this I mean that the development in our relationship is clearer.

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Eve Best - Character Notes 6

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and change frequently as the rehearsal and performance process progresses.

One of the hardest questions to be asked as an actor is ‘how do you get into character?’ because there is no clear answer. It is the job of an actor to try to get inside the skin of his character and there is no simple formula for this. Every play I have done has been different because the circumstances have been different – the cast, the director, the kind of play, the kind of part.

I think it's very important to think of Lady Macbeth as a ‘person’ rather than a ‘character’. She is not a ‘type’, and therefore she is not predictable, in the same way that a ‘person’ is not predictable. People can be hundreds of different things at the same time – vulnerable, strong, manipulative, naïve, angry, passionate or frightened. When I first started thinking about this part, I read a book called The Masks of Macbeth. It described many different productions and various actresses’ portrayals of Lady Macbeth. The book had a list, nearly four pages long, of adjectives that could be applied to her, which ranged from ‘tigress’ to ‘small bird’, ‘child’, ‘woman’, ‘villainess’ and victim. Clearly she is a rich and complex character and it is possible for her to be any of those things at one time. There is no ‘set’ character that you can easily find and step into.

Every time we rehearsed the play I felt different – sometimes in control of events, sometimes terrified, sometimes more powerful than Macbeth, sometime weaker than him.

I think that when you are playing parts as well written and real as those in Macbeth, you can only make choices based on who you are and what your own experience has been. If I were playing Lady Macbeth when I was fifty, I would have very different feelings about her than those I have now – I’d make sense of her actions in different ways. To be playing her as someone young (I’m 29) means that she is at the beginning of her life, when everything is possible.

Lady Macbeth is optimistic for her future, and her ambition comes from the feeling that anything is possible. I think it is a positive, forward thinking energy. At the age of fifty, I might be looking back on my life, and the decision to murder might be informed by other feelings – regret, resentment, bitterness or a sense of deserving something more from life.

That said, although I don’t think there's a specific ‘character’ that you can seek for and ‘find’, there are certain exercises and jobs you can do before and during rehearsal which I’ve found helpful in the past:

Ask questions

Before rehearsals start, I write down a list of everything my character says about herself, other people and everything other people say about her. This gives you specific information from the text about the kind of person you are playing and their relationship with others.

E.g.: I say about myself

"I have given suck and know
How tender tis to love the babe that milks me"

Macbeth says about me

"My dearest love"
"My dearest partner of greatness"
"Dear wife"

These are facts, so immediately I know

We have had a child.
Our marriage is a very strong one because her refers to me as his partner.
These facts then throw up more questions, which I also write down:

E.g.

  • If we’ve had a child, where is it?
  • Is it dead? If so, how? Was it Cot death? Or has it been killed in one of the wars in Scotland?
  • How do I feel about this?
  • How has it affected our relationship?
  • I’ve been through the whole process of pregnancy, birth and loss – what kind of a state has that left me in?
  • Is there a huge gap in my life? Can I have any more children?

These are questions to be discovered and explored in rehearsal – with the other actors, with the director, or on my own. The process of trying to answer them is the process of discovering the kind of person you are playing. It does not matter if some of them are left unanswered e.g. how has the loss of our child affected our relationship? For there could be many answers to this: we don’t speak to each other properly any more, it has brought us even closer together, he does not understand what I went through, or it has made me love him even more. All of these may be the case – as in real life there are no set answers to things. You can feel a myriad of different emotions in the space of a second – and so can your character. It is the asking of the questions that is the most important, not necessarily pinning down the answer.

Play imaginative games

E.g.

  • write a list of 10 things I love about my husband
  • write a letter to Macbeth while he's away in battle
  • write a proposal speech outlining why I think Macbeth should be the next king

E.g. Hotseating

(Have you done this in drama class? It's a wonderful exercise I think for making one think and feel as the character – and you come up with things you might never have thought of on your own. Because it is completely unplanned, and the answers are spontaneous, you sometimes come up with things that you never realised before.)

You sit in a chair in front of the rest of the characters and someone – usually the director – starts asking you questions. It is important that it is done sensitively and gently and that you answer in character at all times, and that anybody talking to you calls you by the character's name.

Unit each scene

Divide each scene (or speech if it's a long one) up into smaller units or sub-sections according to where you find a new thought, or activity, or character.

E.g. Act II, scene I

Unit 1: "That which hath made them drunk…had he not resembled/ My father as he slept, I had done’t" At this point in the play Lady Macbeth is alone and waiting for her husband.

Unit 2: Then the situation changes because Macbeth comes in. "My husband…Who lies in the second chamber? Donalbain" This is all one thought, and the two of them are focussed on the noises within the castle.

Unit 3: Then it changes back to focus on Macbeth's experience upstairs. "This is a sorry sight…Macbeth shall sleep no more"

Unit 4: Lady Macbeth tries to change the focus to practicalities: "Who was it that thus cried? Why worthy thane…for it must seem their guilt"

You can divide it up into even smaller sections, or choose different units. What is good about this is it defines each specific moment in the scene. At the beginning of rehearsal, a whole scene can seem a huge, complicated, unwieldy thing, but dividing it up into small chunks like this makes it more manageable.

Once you’ve found the units, try to work out an objective for each unit.

So, in the example above

Unit 1: keep a lid on your fear

Unit 2: prove to Macbeth your calmness

Unit 3: trivialise the situation

Unit 4: take control of the situation

You can have different objectives (or actions) for every single line, which can change every time you do the scene. An action ‘boils down’ to what am I trying to do to the other person? For example, am I trying to ennoble him, calm him, embarrass him, control him, immasculate him, encourage him, support him, seduce him etc.

Working in this way can stop you from thrashing about and vaguely "doing angry acting" (which I very often find myself doing!). It means that while you are rehearsing (and performing), you’re constantly thinking, "what could I do in this situation?" It also makes hundreds of different options available to you.

Do a warm up

If your body and voice are relaxed and supple, your mind will be calmer. The mind can play horrible tricks on you like "what are the audience like? Will they like me? Will they believe me? Will I believe myself? Above all will I be GOOD?" If you spend a few minutes before the show limbering up, your mind settles a bit – or at least has to spend some time focussing on stretching and breathing, rather than on worrying.

Having said that of course I am very inefficient about warming up and often fail to do it, so often find myself in a panic just before I go on stage. I take off my shoes and feel the wooden floorboards of the Globe beneath my feet and walk about a bit just sensing the floor. I breath as deeply as I can – partly to try to quell the nerves, partly because Lady Macbeth is a person of tremendous energy (I think), and for energy you need breath. Also, I feel she's very practical (that's why I take my shoes off), and also sensitive (that's why I want to feel the floor).

I try to think about Lady Macbeth's aims and objectives. Once I have completed the first scene, I have very little time offstage. I tend to sit quietly in the wings, waiting for my cue. I just try to keep myself in the situation of the play. I use things like the fact of having to wait (in the same way that my character has to wait for Macbeth to commit the murder) and the fact that the wings on stage are dark like the castle would be. I’m nervous like she would be; I want this moment to be over like she does!

The exercises above, are all things that acting teachers and directors in the past have taught me. I find they are useful building blocks.

I try to do these exercises (with a greater or lesser degree of success), but I do not think that there is a simple way to discover your character. On some nights I am distracted by the man in the front row yawning, sometimes a helicopter goes overhead in the middle of a speech, somebody faints or a pigeon lands on the stage during a scene! Sometimes I find myself wondering about shopping!

It is very difficult to free yourself from these distractions. The only thing to do is to try to forgive yourself (i.e. don’t spend the rest of the play annoyed that a scene did not go as perfectly as you might have liked). Concentrate on what you want from the other person, sense your physical surroundings (like touching the floor or a pillar), look the other person in the eye and listen to what they are saying.

There is a book by David Mamet called True or False? I think it is an excellent guide for actors – he talks about all the different issues that face actors and offers extremely useful and practical advice.

I loved Shakespeare at school – not just because of the extraordinarily beautiful language, but because his characters and ideas are probably the richest, complex, exciting, deeply human ever written. I think the fun of being an actor is in exploring the very nature of being human, exploring all different aspects of human behaviour and the human soul. Shakespeare presents you with amazingly rich, complex human beings like no other writer (except perhaps Chekhov). You can carry on exploring and discovering the characters for the rest of your life, always digging deeper, and never reaching the stage when you can sit back and think "that's it. That is Lady Macbeth/ Hamlet/ Cleopatra. I can stop now." That is the great thing – you’re always on the journey. I find that very exciting.

Why does Lady Macbeth work so hard to convince her husband to murder, rather than just waiting to see if the prophecy of the witches will come true? This is one of the fundamental questions of the play, and there are hundreds of different opinions about it. All of them are valid, because it's never actually stated in the text. Lady Macbeth doesn’t have the speech where she says to her husband "I want to kill Duncan because…" (If she did, it would be a much simpler, and probably much less interesting play). All we know is that Macbeth has sworn to do it (she says "had I so sworn / as you have done to this")

Personally I think she doesn’t want to just sit and wait because she is a person of action. She thinks she should seize the day. In her eyes, her husband definitely deserves to be king; he has worked harder for it and proved himself more deserving than any other man. They have been presented with this golden opportunity and if they do not take it now, they may never have it again. In the scene when he wants to back down and "proceed no further in this business", his final argument is "If we should fail". She replies "we fail" and I think this is the key to her character. She's basically saying ‘well all right, so we fail. So what? There's always that risk. The point is that we might succeed. If we don’t try it we’ll never know. It's better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all’. I think she's a risk-taker. I think she is the kind of person who, if she went on "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" and was on £500,000, with no life lines, would definitely answer and risk losing everything, rather than keep the money and go home rich instead of being a millionaire.

I also think Lady Macbeth has a very active, volatile imagination. Once the idea has been planted, it is impossible to ignore it, there is nothing to be done but follow it through. It's like in The Magician's Nephew (by CS Lewis): two children come across a mysterious bell with a hammer attached to it. On the bell is written something like

Welcome here adventurous stranger,
Strike the bell and bide the Danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad’
What would have happened if you had?

I think that for Lady Macbeth it seems as if there is no choice once the suggestion has been made. Otherwise, they will both wonder about it until it drives them mad.

However, how can she get to the state where the notion of Macbeth becoming King is such a strong need, that it overrides her basic moral instincts (i.e. murder is wrong)? I’m sure that the key to that is the loss of her child and since it never appears in the play, I think she must have lost it. To go through pregnancy, and childbirth, and feel the extraordinary bond that a mother feels for a child and then to go through the agony of losing the child must be unimaginably painful. I think it must have been torture, and have left her with an aching hole inside her. It has been researched that women who go through such loss often suffer from extreme depression. I think the idea of killing Duncan somehow replaces a child in her mind. It is a project, a goal, something that will enrich and ennoble the lives of her and her husband in the same way that a baby might have. In the same way that having a baby with someone is a proof of your ultimate love for your partner, so the act of murder becomes like a kind of proof of their love for each other. It is about them being a team.

I think she loves Macbeth more than life itself, and she wants to feel that he does too. When she is arguing with him in Act I, Scene 7, I think she is so angry because she feels let down – that he is putting his own scruples above his love for her. She says –

"I have given suck and know

How tender tis to love the babe that milks me;
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn
As you have done to tis"

I think that she is saying "I love you more than anything else in the world. I love you so much that, if I had promised you something then I would do it, even it was the most horrible, painful, evil, agonising thing such as killing a child. Because I love you. And your backing down means that you don’t love me. You don’t love me as much as I love you."

The murder becomes about their relationship and their love; it's like their baby. I’m sure that she doesn’t really consider the consequences. I think she imagines a wonderful rosy future for them - he will be a wonderful king, and their lives will take on a new golden glow. I don’t think she's just an ambitious woman who forces her husband to do something wrong. I think for her it's about love. She clutches at the witches’ prophecy almost as if it's a gift from God for a new start. Ironically, she thinks that killing Duncan is going to be the thing that makes their relationship stronger, however it's the very thing that breaks it.

You cannot justify Lady Macbeth's behaviour objectively – if she were on trial she would definitely be convicted. You can’t ever justify murder. She knows this, which is demonstrated by the fact that she never refers to the killing directly, but instead says "this night's great business", "the nearest way", "what cannot you and I perform upon the unguarded Duncan". However, if you are playing the part it is vital to try to make sense of someone's actions in a way that you can empathise with. You can’t ever pin people down to one simple motivation. There are hundreds and millions of different experiences, memories, and events in our lives that inform the way that we behave. It is your job to try and imagine what some of these might be.

I think that because the character is so richly detailed and so truthfully drawn, that everybody's opinion of her behaviour is valid. However, you couldn’t say, "I know the exact reason behind why Marilyn Monroe killed herself", so you couldn’t say that about Lady Macbeth. You can only imagine some of the things that contribute to her acting the way she does.

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