Macbeth

Presented by Le Théâtre de l'épée de bois« The fears we feel are nothing compared with the terrors we imagine.  » What Shakespeare says so radically is that what is not, what is made only of the stuff of our dreams, our reveries, our desires – that alone is, and forms the secret weave of our lives.

This quotation brings about a fundamental reversal: Macbeth ceases to be a play about a murderous king and becomes the portrait of a man devoured by the anticipation of his own deeds. As A. C. Bradley points out, Macbeth possesses a "poet's imagination": it is this that turns ambition into hallucinated visions, making the floating dagger or Banquo's ghost more real than the throne itself….This reading is anchored in recent studies of pathological imagination in the Renaissance. Suparna Roychoudhury shows that the play probes "the thin line between hallucinatory fantasy and ordinary subjectivity" and poses a crucial question: to what extent do our mental images belong to us? She also wagers that the secret weave of Macbeth (his dreams, his anticipated fears) is the only true character in the tragedy. The real (the court, the battles) is merely the blurred backdrop. By giving body to what is not, Shakespeare shows that the imaginary does not prepare for action: it is action, and it consumes. Birnam Wood does not advance: it rises from Macbeth's terrified gaze, because it is there, in his eye, that the only fate that matters is woven…

Jérôme Méla*The historical context: witchcraft, politics and royal patronage.

This plunge into the imaginary takes on particular relief in light of the play's sources and context. Shakespeare draws on Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), but takes major liberties. He transforms Banquo – an accomplice to the murder in the chronicle – into an upright figure, a direct tribute to King James I, supposed descendant of Banquo.