“Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”

The linkage of the play’s ending with its beginnings has been accorded a kind of
aesthetic elegance by M.J.B. Allen, who cites Macbeth as an exemplar of
that sort of tragedy ‘whose ends are fully anticipated in their beginnings’ and
calls it the ‘most circular and self-contained’ of all Shakespeare’s plays.^[9]

They go on to acknowledge that, “Some stagings of the play have developed the disquieting implications of this circularity, bringing on the Sisters again at the end.”^[10] Felipe goes one step further and writes this staging into his play. He also  highlights this circularity with the language of the opening and closing scenes, which contain stark echoes of each other. The witches’ claims of an appointment with Macbeth in hell parallel their statement in the play’s opening scene: “Tenemos una cita con Macbeth en el yermo [we have an appointment with Macbeth on the heath].”^[11] In fact, the witches also open the first and  last scenes with the same exact lines: “Nos procede y nos anuncia el trueno./ Nos trae y nos lleva un viento negro,/ olaverum…  Volaverum… Volaverum [The thunder precedes and announces us./ A black wind brings and carries us,/ Volaverum… Volaverum… Volaverum].”[12] Volaverum is not a Castilian word, but many words can be extrapolated from it. There are the verbs volar (to fly) and volver (to return). Volveremos, which is phonetically similar, means we will return and verum is truth

in Latin (isn’t etymology fun?). Thus, the word carries associations of flying, returning, revolving, and speaking truth of what’s to come. Its repetition three times aids in its evocation of circularity and the cyclical nature of events. BUT where Shakespeare’s ending may hint at a cycle of political violence and the instability of the Scottish throne, Felipe has shifted his focus to the circularity of Macbeth’s individual fate. I already mentioned last entry that the witches tell Macbeth that what lies outside of his own story is irrelevant through their dismissal of Fleance’s role in history.[13] And it is Macbeth who is featured onstage at the play’s end, rather than the triumphant forces that defeat him (which we see in Shakespeare’s version). Felipe’s play can  therefore be viewed as a loop of his individual actions and the consequences thereof (a classic hell loop), both incited and  enforced by the witches. With this overt circularity, the clear links between Inverness and hell, and the indeterminate nature of both the past and future (i.e., when even is tomorrow?), Felipe creates a tragic poem concerned more with Macbeth’s actions  and guilt and their damning consequences than the sociopolitical context of his world.

Last thing, though this is more about Macbeth’s mental journey than the place it takes him (hell): Felipe also highlights the blurred line between reality and dreams engendered by Macbeth’s guilt. In Shakespeare’s play, there is a definite focus on the  Macbeths’ mental and psychological experience. Lady Macbeth often tries, in fact, to convince Macbeth not to fear his mind’s inventions, saying that they are mere representations or paintings (which I now realize is a whole other essay one could write: “Art and visual representation and Reality in Macbeth” but I digress): ”The sleeping and the dead/ Are but as pictures; ‘tis the eye of childhood/ That fears a painted devil” (II.ii.54-6) or “Oh proper stuff./ This is the very painting of your fear:/ This is the air-drawn dagger which you said/ Led you to Duncan” (III.iv.57-60). Their bloody hands – whether real or imagined – and other manifestations of the couple’s guilt – like Banquo’s ghost – offer evidence of their mental suffering in the wake of their crimes. Felipe aggravates their lack of certainty regarding what’s real and what’s imagined. For example, after his first meeting with the witches, Macbeth says to Banquo:

Pensad en
lo ocurrido y más tarde, ya con el espíritu sereno,/ después de haber
reflexionado sobre este misterioso encuentro,/ y luego que hayamos decidido… si es realidad o sueño,/
largamente hay que hablar.

[Think on
what’s occurred and later, when our spirits are calm,/ after having reflected
on this mysterious encounter,/ and after having decided… if this is
reality or a dream,/ we should speak at length.][14]

This choice between reality or dream does not correspond to Macbeth’s source line in Shakespeare, but does find echoes in Banquo’s  question: “Were such thing here as we do speak about?/ Or have we eaten on the insane root/ That takes the reason prisoner?” (I.iii.84-6). Felipe in turn renders Banquo’s line even more explicit by calling the insane root, “raíz de la mandrágula”[15] or mandrake (made mostly famous by she who will not be named, but also a little famous by Guillermo del Toro’s El laberinto del fauno or Pan’s Labyrinth). Mandrake is a member of the nightshade family with hallucinogenic properties and has been linked to superstition and the occult; one of its reported  medicinal purposes is to aid restorative sleep (like in Pan’s Labyrinth).[16] Sleep itself is closely linked with the Macbeths’ mental states, and this manifests in the language as well. Like mañana, sueño has two primary meanings, either sleep or dream. Asesino del sueño then means murderer of sleep and/or murderer of dreams. The inability to distinguish night from day and sleep/dreams from reality contributes to the sense of an inverted world order. It is not a stretch to attribute much of Macbeth’s paranoia and mental anguish to insomnia, as predicted by the voice that cries “Macbeth shall sleep no more” (II.ii.44) and Macbeth also offers a slightly unhinged list of all the benefits of sleep that will now be denied to him. Indeed, after his outburst at the banquet when confronted with Banquo’s ghost, Lady Macbeth tells him, “You lack the season of all natures, sleep” (III.iv.139). Conversely, Lady Macbeth is primarily tormented during sleep and in her dreams, which we see and hear about through her habitual somnambulism and nightmares in V.i. The couple’s anguish – manifesting respectively as inability to sleep and the dreams that come when they do – demonstrates that, regardless of whether it is the product of reality or a dream, there is no escaping the torment they have brought upon themselves.

So there you have it. The elements that caught my eye as aggravations (Genette’s term) when viewing Felipe’s Macbeth as an adaptation and therefore filtering my analysis through palimpsestic doubleness. BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! I am absolutely not done talking about this play, but next up is a bunch of my slightly wild, but beloved theories about adaptations and dramatic irony. The devil’s in the details, and so I will seek him out, just like those damned “fateful sisters.” Read it now!