“From his mother’s womb untimely ripp’d” sounds way cooler than C-section.

All the aspects of Felipe’s play that I’ve discussed so far (time here and the supernatural here) are particularly significant  because of the gossiping effect, which I mentioned in the introduction). Again, this effect only exists for the knowing audience. But I do want to point out an element of Macbeth o el asesino del sueño that affects both knowing and unknowing audiences: the exploitation of dramatic irony. Here’s where my wild theories get to come to the fore; it’s my opinion that when a work is performed repeatedly – either through multiple productions of the same play or in adaptation – a secondary dramatic irony is produced, that can only exist after the story becomes familiar. This is why people watching a movie version of their favorite book or a play they’ve seen in a different production will feel a spark of recognition and extra knowledge when they watch a character act or speak without knowledge of their own fate,[1] and Felipe sometimes deliberately amplifies this effect of the text’s palimpsestic doubleness. I honestly cannot find this theory written about elsewhere, but it’s possible that I’ve not looked hard enough, so if there’s a work that touches on this idea of secondary dramatic irony, as I’ve decided to call it, please comment! Though Hutcheon does not mention dramatic irony, I do think it contributes to her notion of what makes adaptations  enjoyable: “Like ritual, this kind of repetition brings comfort, a fuller understanding, and the confidence that comes with the sense of knowing what is about to happen next.”[2] I hold that dramatic irony’s implied disparity between the audience’s and character’s knowledge adds to this pleasure because it affords the audience a smug sense of superior understanding. Not only do they know what will happen, which is comforting, but they also know that this knowledge is their special privilege of which the characters onstage/screen are ignorant.

Felipe’s text displays this secondary dramatic irony, for example, after the first, successful battle when Macbeth has been named Cawdor; instead of “More is thy due, than more than all can pay” (I.iv.21), Duncan says to him, “Te debo tanto, que pienso que no te pagaría/ ni con mi cetro y mi corona [I owe you so much, that I think I would not be able to pay you back/ even with my scepter and my crown].”^[3] Of course, knowing audiences are aware that Macbeth will have taken both from Duncan by play’s end. The king’s first meetings onstage with the Macbeths are also full of similar dramatic irony, rendering Duncan almost comically naïve. Macbeth enters just after Duncan complains, “Jamás pensé que en el rostro de Cawdor/ se agazapasen la traición y la mentira…/ Pero aquí llega Macbeth [I never thought that in Cawdor’s face/ were hidden treachery and lies…/ But here comes Macbeth].”[4] (This is a complete side note, but what I’m doing by including the English translation of Felipe’s text is  called a back translation. They’re generally used as a teaching/academic tool for translation and the point is not generally stylistic flair, but rather as strict as possible a rendering of what was written in the other language. For an excellent example of how back translation can be contentious/hilarious, you should go read up on Mark Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. It’s the last item on this list of translation anecdotes from Slator, and I do recommend giving the whole thing a read.) Anyway, back to it.

The knowing audience, unlike Duncan, is aware that he has even more cause to distrust the new Thane of Cawdor than the old. The same occurs when he greets Lady Macbeth after observing a swallow making its nest in her home: “Bajo sus alas y su vuelo viven siempre/ almas inofensivas./ Pero aquí está la castellana que esta noche/ su castillo hospitilario nos brinda. [Beneath his wings and flight always/ reside harmless souls./ But here is the hostess who will tonight/ offer us her hospitable castle.]”[5] He will find neither the lady harmless nor her castle hospitable. Such statements therefore exist for the knowing audience as moments of dramatic irony and foreshadowing, while an unknowing audience will not experience them as such.

Such inside jokes are not the only way in which Felipe plays with dramatic irony, however. He manages to include his entire audience with certain structural changes that create new (primary?) dramatic irony for unknowing audiences in ways that do not depend on prior knowledge of Shakespeare’s play. The result is an increase in dramatic irony for both types of spectator. We can observe this change in the revelation of the circumstances of Macduff’s birth. In an added scene early in act V, the doctor tells Lennox that he delivered Macduff via C-section, and that “el recién nacido/ traía dibujada en el pecho una espada./ Desde Jesucristo, todos los príncipes que matan al dragón,/ al nacer, en la carne traen esa misma espada dibujada [the newborn/ had a sword depicted on his chest./ Throughout Christendom, all princes that kill the dragon,/ at birth, on their flesh carry this same sword mark].”[6] This scene, occurring immediately after Macbeth learns of his invulnerability to all men born of women, alerts even the unknowing audience to the circumstances of Macduff’s birth and their implications for Macbeth whereas, in  Shakespeare’s text, this information is not revealed until the final battle just before Macbeth is killed. The prematurity of this revelation later creates dramatic irony when the doctor has the following exchange with Macbeth:

MACBETH: …Ningún hombre nacido por la boca del
cántaro materno

podrá
matar ni herir a Macbeth.

MÉDICO: No
obstante… Pónle la armadura, Seyton.

 

[MACBETH: …No man born from the mouth of the maternal
vessel

Will be
able to kill nor wound Macbeth.

DOCTOR: Even so… Put on his armor, Seyton.]^[7]

The doctor knows that Macbeth is doomed, but instead of warning him, he replies ominously that he should wear armor despite  this perceived invulnerability. In this moment, unlike the audience, Macbeth remains ignorant, so the doctor’s
advice to put on armor, though it has extra meaning for the audience, will be innocuous to Macbeth, providing that smug  moment of enjoyment in privileged knowledge.

However, Felipe then complicates the revelation of this information even more. Instead of allowing Macbeth to enter the battle still confident in his invulnerability – as he does in the original – Felipe’s doctor, rather than Macduff, gives Macbeth the fateful information slightly earlier in the play:

MÉDICO:

Macduff no nació por la boca del cántaro materno…

Yo rompí el cántaro… con un estilete que manejaron estos dedos.

Murío la madre y se salvó el infante porque las estrellas predijeron…

MACBETH:

¡No digas lo que predijeron! Has abatido la mejor parte de mi ser.

¡Maldita sea la lengua que me ha revelado ese misterio!

 

[DOCTOR:

Macduff wasn’t born from the mouth of the maternal vessel…

I broke open the vessel… with a dagger wielded by these fingers.

The mother died and the infant was saved because the stars predicted…

MACBETH:

Don’t say what they predicted! You have demolished the better part of my being.

Cursed be the tongue that has revealed this mystery to me!]^[8]

It is immediately after the doctor’s revelation that Macbeth also learns of his wife’s death, priming his mental state as he enters the battle. In Shakespeare, he goes to fight saying, “I ‘gin to be aweary of the sun,/ And wish th’estate o’th’world were now undone./ Ring the alarum bell. Blow wind, come wrack,/ At least we’ll die with harness on our back” (V.v.48-51). Felipe’s Macbeth, armed with his extra knowledge about Macduff, instead says:

MACBETH:
Si es verdad lo que afirmó ese médico, poco

importa que huya o que me quede… Comienzo a cansarme del sol,

y ya quiero tan sólo que se desplome el universo.

¡Venga la destrucción! Haré, sin embargo, frente a la embestida.

SEYTON:
¿Sin arnés?

MACBETH:
¿Para qué?

 

[MACBETH:
If what this doctor says is true,

It little matters whether I flee or stay… I begin to tire of the sun,

And wish the universe would give way.

Come
destruction! I will, despite all, face the onslaught head on.

SEYTON:
Without a harness?

MACBETH:
What for?][9]

Felipe has added the first and last lines of this exchange, in which Macbeth expresses his full awareness of his impending death. The difference between the reactions is subtle, but Shakespeare’s Macbeth only suspects the witches’ equivocation (after receiving news of Birnam wood’s approach to Dunsinane) and decides that if he must die, he’ll do it fighting, fully armored. Conversely, Felipe’s Macbeth, along with his audience, knows the witches have tricked him, and acknowledges the futility of his final stand, which is why, when Seyton asks if he will wear his harness (or armor), he responds “what for?”[10] His fate is already sealed. By changing the source of this revelation and placing it earlier in the play, Felipe makes sure that his entire audience is aware of Macbeth’s fate well before he is, and thus somewhat closes the gap between knowing and unknowing audiences. But he also changes the way in which Macbeth learns the information, creating a sense of fatalism for the character as well as the audience, a further distinction that aggravates the palimpsestic doubleness of the translated play and its original. He also therefore robs the knowing audience of some of the dramatic irony that they would have experienced if these changes had not been made, and then goes on to subvert their expectations again by revealing the information sooner and in a different way. Because of this, both knowing and unknowing audiences are surprised by the way the plot develops, and how they react is entirely up to them. But more on that next time. Read it here.