Category Archives: Literature

Arts, Books, History, Literature, Scotland

Scottish author says Shakespeare got Macbeth wrong

SHAKESPEARIAN TRAGEGY

AS generations of pupils learned in English classes, Lady Macbeth, the cold-hearted, scheming villain who casts her dark shadow over one of literature’s most famous plays, and driven by a lust for power, persuaded her weak-willed husband to commit murder most foul.

Yet, according to one of Scotland’s illustrious top crime writers, Shakespeare got the tragedy of Macbeth all wrong.

Novelist Val McDermid – with a helping hand from former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon – has written a book exploring the real story of the woman who became Queen Macbeth, first Queen of Scotland.

And part of her aim, she says, is “setting Shakespeare straight”.

According to the Bard of Avon, the Macbeths are motivated by merciless ambition which ultimately leads to their downfall. Their tragedy stems from their decision to seize the throne by killing King Duncan while he is asleep.

But McDermid, whose novels have sold more than 19 million copies and been translated into more than 40 languages, recasts the tale in a feminist light – as a historical romance seen from the perspective of a strong and determined woman fighting for life and love.

As befits a crime writer, the book contains a major plot twist. But in a departure from the gritty “tartan noir” genre for which she is highly acclaimed, McDermid also ventures into the realm of erotic fiction.

In the author’s notes at the start of the book, she claims the Macbeths were “not the power-hungry bloody tyrants that Shakespeare wrote of in his Scottish play”.

And in highlighting other inaccuracies, she says: “For a start, Macbeth wasn’t even his name – it was Macbethad. His wife wasn’t Lady Macbeth – she was Gruoch. If he couldn’t get their names right, how can we trust anything else he tells us?”

She also claims the Elizabethan playwright made an error about the death of King Duncan. “Yes, Macbeth did kill Duncan, but it was on the field of battle, not in the dead of night when Duncan was a guest in his castle.”

Queen Macbeth, to be released shortly, tells the fictionalised life-story of Gruoch Ingen Boite, who is forced into a loveless arranged marriage, but finds true love with a nobleman called Macbeth. In the acknowledgements, the author thanks her friend and fellow book lover Ms Sturgeon, “whose animated dinner conversation resolved an awkward plot point for me”. She added: “It’s amazing how a few glasses of red wine release the imagination…”

The novel contains echoes of Shakespeare but imagined from a feminist perspective. The witches who prophesy Macbeth’s doom are replaced by three women – a healer, weaver, and a seer – whose powers make the men of mediaeval Scotland deeply suspicious.

The tale starts with Gruoch and her companions fleeing from plotters who believe she stands in the way of their ambition for power.

As the narrative develops, Gruoch recalls the stirrings of her love for Macbeth, including a racy description of their first moment of intimacy, saying: “Where our bodies touched it was like a lick of flame running through me.”

Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth encourages her husband to commit murder, but McDermid’s version urges caution when Macbeth considers revenge against a rival, saying: “Better to be slow than to shed innocent blood, surely?”

The book is part of Polygon’s Darkland Tales – dramatic retellings of key moments from Scottish history, myth, and legend.

Pre-publication publicity promises McDermid will reveal “a new Lady Macbeth, bringing a schemer in the shadows out into the light and exposing the patriarchal prejudices of history.”

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Arts, Literature

Secrets of the heart

YOU MAY KNOW NOT

HE was a deeply unpleasant man. He brought out the worst in many people. It was clear to see.

One day I asked him to tell me about his childhood and he ridiculed the idea that there was anything to be learned that way. Then he agreed to tell me one story of no importance or significance.

While emphasising its irrelevance, he told me the one thing that explained everything about him. My heart still breaks when I think of the loss he so flippantly described.

It reminded me of the words Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in “Hyperion: A Romance”:

“Every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.”

UNCREDITED WORDS OF WISDOM

“Some stranger somewhere still remembers you were kind to them when no-one else was.”

Those are uncredited words of wisdom read on the internet.

The sentence will probably mean different things to different people in circumstances known to them. But it reminds me of a man I met in a church café. He insisted we’d met before, even though I had no recollection of it. He told me he was doing well, working, of good health, and much happier. It was good to hear, but I was still wary.

“That was a powerful talk we had back then. Those words made the difference,” he told me.

“Remind me,” I prompted, still unsure of him.

“You said, ‘Just because you’re down doesn’t mean you’re out’. I remembered those words and built on them over the years. You gave me hope.”

Not such profound words that they actually stayed with me, but they would have been honestly meant. Whatever kindness was contained in them meant they could go on and do their work after I had left.

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Arts, Books, History, Literature, Poetry

Book Club: Butler To The World

SYNOPSIS

SCATHINGLY, Oliver Bullough compares the UK to Wodehouse’s inscrutable butler, Jeeves.

Just as Jeeves tirelessly helped the “quarter-witted Bertie Wooster evade the consequences of [his] misbehaviour, Britain helps the world’s financial criminals and tax dodgers . . . enjoy the fruits of their crimes free of scrutiny”.

In January 2022, Lord Agnew of Oulton, the minister in charge of combating fraud, resigned, citing “arrogance, indolence and ignorance” within government.

Just a few weeks later, Russia’s invasion meant that political promises to deal with oligarchs were hastily remembered.

Yet, underfunded and demoralised law enforcement agencies face an unequal battle. Bullough’s highly readable account of the UK’s role in facilitating global financial wrongdoing is a call to action.

– Butler To The World by Oliver Bullough is published by Profile, 304pp

Isabella Whitney,

the pioneering poet

Isabella Whitney is not a name that is well known, yet she many have been the UK’s first female professional poet. She published two books of poetry (in 1567 and 1573) and, from the way she described herself, it seems that she was single, poor and suffering from ill health. Some of this may have represented an attempt to inspire sympathy in her readers. However, judging by her writing, it appears that she knew what it was to be living on the margins, plagued by anxiety and insecurity.

Whitney wrote of London’s beauties and riches, but also of its “stynking streetes”, its “lothsome Lanes” and its many prisons, including those that incarcerated debtors. Her depiction of the capital showed a city humming with mercantile activity and crammed with expensive goods for sale. Yet her verses also sketched out the damage that the pursuit of wealth had done to society as a whole.

As a poet and writer, she took inspiration from her male counterparts – but she wrote as a woman, painfully aware of the difficulties that women in London might encounter. She warned readers against flattery and deceit, and against those who shed “crocodile tears”; in particular, she advised young women never to trust a man at first sight. On this subject she made it clear that she was writing from her own personal experience of duplicity, describing herself as one “who was deceived”.

Whitney may not have been a poet to rank among the greatest names of the Elizabethan age but her voice was distinctive, eloquent, ironic and powerfully evocative of a woman’s experience.

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