Macbeth: A modern love story

a modern love story...or is it?

Macbeth

What is it? What’s going on?

He’s almost started dinner. Why did you leave the dining room?

Please, stop it! I am willing to do everything fitting for a man. Anyone who dares to do more is not a man.

Was it drunken confidence you felt earlier? Did this drunken confidence sleep it off and does it now feel hungover and sick thinking back on what it eagerly said before? From now on this is how I’ll measure your love to me. Are you afraid to act as brave as you talk? Are you going to want the crown more than anything else in life, but live considering yourself a coward, letting that voice which says, “I dare not” overrule the voice that says, “I will do it”? Are you like the proverbial cat that wants the fish but is afraid to get her feet wet?

Don’t you know he did?

Did he ask for me?

We’ll go no further with this business. He has given me a lot of honors recently, and all sorts of people have high opinions of me. I should be bathing in this glow now instead of throwing it away so soon.

Lorem...

And if we fail?

Then what kind of animal were you when told me about this plan? When you dare to do it, then you will be a man. And by becoming more than what you are, you will be so much more of a man! Then, when you made these plans, the time and place weren’t yet right, but you would have made them work. Now, when they’ve fallen into place by themselves, you’ve lost your nerve by being provided with the perfect situation. I have nursed a child, so I know how it feels to love the baby who drinks my milk. I would take that baby while it was smiling at me, pull my nipple out of its mouth, and smash its brains out, if I had sworn to kill it as you have sworn to do this deed.

You should only have sons so that your fearless genes would only be passed along to male offspring. Once we’ve used the sleeping servants’ daggers for the murder and smeared them with Duncan’s blood, won’t everyone assume they’ve done it?

If we fail! You need to resolve to be courageous, then we won’t fail. When Duncan is soundly asleep — which should be soon, since he's had a hard day’s journey — I’ll get his two servants so drunk with wine and toasting that their minds will be in a fog. Their memories will turn to vapor and their reasoning brains will lose control. When they’re drunk as pigs, and dead to the world, we can do whatever we want to the defenseless Duncan. What can’t we blame on his drunk servants, who will take the blame for the murder?

I’ve decided. I’ll give it everything I’ve got to see this terrible thing through. Let’s go, and let’s put on a pleasant show. Our lying faces must hide what our lying hearts are about to do.

a modern love story...or is it?

Macbeth

Who would dare interpret it otherwise? Especially after we have expressed our grief and shock so loudly upon hearing of his death?