Bloody, Bold and Resolute: How the Construction of Men in 21st Century Theatre Productions of Macbeth Reflects Contemporary Conceptions of Masculinity

(1)

Bloody, Bold and Resolute: How the Construction of Men in 21

st

Century Theatre Productions of Macbeth Reflects Contemporary

(2)

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

It’s a Man’s World

‘I dare do all that may become a man; / Who dares do more is none.’

-Macbeth 1.7.46-47

‘What is a man?’

-Hamlet 4.1.32

Masculinity has frequently been described as in a state of crisis, both in critical discourse and widely in the media (Horrocks 1994; Robinson 2000; Beynon 2002; Kimmel 2005; Taylor 2006; Reeser 2010; Walsh 2010; Sussman 2012). Social shifts that destabilise the thinly veiled traditions of patriarchal order have repeatedly drawn focus to the nature of masculinity and how it functions as a performance of a certain identity, along with its undeniable link to power. Even the inclusion of discussions over what constitutes men and manhood in the plays of William Shakespeare reflects how these questions of crisis have long been a part of culture and thought, suggesting that while contemporary discourse frequently refers to the critical state of modern masculinity as if this represents an unprecedented event, the consequences of

(4)

struggling with masculine gender ideals have in fact had a noticeable impact for hundreds of years (Gardner 1967; Wells 2000; Smith 2000; Feather 2015). Huge and well-publicised cultural moments such as the #MeToo movement brought to light how prevalent the impact of masculinity is in society, along with demonstrating exactly how power structures are still very much organised in favour of men.

Still, the matter prevails that the current society we live in is patriarchal, ordered in such a fashion that power can be considered to have always resided, for the most part, in the hands of men. bell hooks defines patriarchy as:

a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence. (2005: 18)

Yet patriarchy should be regarded as a system that does not inherently benefit every male living within it – on the contrary, the effort of sustaining a patriarchal masculine identity after the widely accepted claim made during modernity that all humans are fundamentally equal has been identified as exactly the sort of reason why masculinity is considered to be in crisis. John Clare comments that ‘patriarchy has not been overthrown, but its justification is in disarray’ (2000: 4). The irony of trying to reconcile these two facets of life seems obvious when laid out as such, yet the struggle many go through to do so causes supreme tension, resulting in psychological turmoil that is reflected in the troubling statistics that accompany various contemporary studies of male mental health (Berke et al. 2016; Reidy et al. 2014, 2016, 2018; Yang et al. 2018). Truly, even if the problems with masculinity are long-standing and deeply entrenched, they are no less worthy of being addressed than any other crisis of the modern age. At a dangerous time when political reliance upon age-old notions of patriarchal masculinity has created a breeding ground for a burgeoning rise of fascism and extremist

(5)

right-wing ideologies, drawing power from harkening back to good old days of nostalgic stability, digging into the topic of contemporary masculinity and unpacking its complexities is a pressing and worthwhile endeavour.

In this thesis, I hope to explore how contemporary theories and notions about masculinity in a state of crisis are reflected upon the theatrical stage via analysing multiple recent theatre productions of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. I believe that the urgency of the topic is widely reflected by the representations of masculinities in theatre, revealing both the current concerns and debates about manhood alongside depictions of the damage that so-called toxic masculinity can cause. Macbeth is a piece with a rich depth of complexity when it comes to navigating masculinity and how it in turn reverberates throughout the world of the play. Within the text, the ambiguities of manhood and masculine identity are brought to light and problematised, connecting to politics, power and psychological wellbeing. Its relevance to the contemporary social landscape with its themes of power, politics and troubled gender is remarkable, as is reflected by the number of productions of the play in the past year, with 19 productions and adaptations ranging from small to major West End theatres and theatres companies in the U.K. alone (Rears 2018: n.p.).. At a time when the debates surrounding masculinity are widespread and complex, turning to consider how the topic is dealt with in these kinds of theatre productions may provide insight into how the arguments play out in the public sphere, as well as allowing for less harmful masculinities to be espoused and recognised.

In this opening chapter, I will introduce my topic and object of inquiry. This will include my personal motivation for addressing this issue, a ground-laying of the theoretical territory upon which I shall build my argument and contextual information concerning the topic of masculinity and its relation to power, along with a breakdown of the structure of the following chapters. It will also contain an overview of the performances that I have seen

(6)

personally and will be using as primary source material for my analyses, providing a general context and a sense of how each production was staged. These productions will be the main sources from which I draw references as they help to exemplify the attitudes and debates surrounding masculinity through their reflections of masculinity in a contemporary context. I shall also refer directly to the written play text throughout in order to anchor moments from the different theatre productions in theatrical context, but also occasionally to analyse textual instances when masculinity becomes a focus upon the page itself, as the play is spoken of as exhibiting ‘a fascinating debate […] as to the nature of true manhood’ (Horrocks 1994: 8). By including analysis of the text alongside the theatrical and performative choices made in the theatre productions that I have viewed, I intend to deepen the understanding of how diverse masculinity can be in different portrayals, along with the equally diverse number of assumptions that are made about masculinity and gender reflected in the text and performances. In conjunction, I hope this will enrich my analysis of the state of contemporary masculinity.

1.1. A Bad Time to Be a Man?

I come to the topic of masculinity having grown increasingly aware of its influence on not only the world at large but also upon myself as a male in patriarchal society. I have spent far longer reading about and engaging with discourses on gender via feminism and the rights of women than I have considering my own gender and its bizarre power over me. As I discuss later, masculinity has a habit of going unnoticed unless some moment brings it sharply into focus – a weeping man may make masculinity obvious by transgressing a social boundary and displaying stereotypically un-masculine behaviour, while on the other end of the spectrum a tall, well-built man at the gym may draw attention to masculinity by displaying a

(7)

sheer excess of stereotypical masculine qualities. For me personally, masculinity never appeared to be problematic when I thought about myself; only when I considered the negative impact masculinity may have upon other people of various genders and backgrounds. It has only been through actively trying to unearth the buried aspects of masculinity that I have been able to begin considering its real impact.

Statistics about male mental health and wellbeing shocked me into paying more attention to the issue. Three-quarters of suicides in the UK in 2017 were committed by men, which has been the same case since the mid-1990s (OFNS 2018: 2). Revelations such as this challenged my worldview of self-sufficient, dependable men while reminding me of my experiences dealing with the supposedly masculine act of bottling up emotions, rather than discussing them openly, over the struggles faced while dealing with trauma, depression and mental illnesses. When a close friend of mine attempted suicide and took a month to talk about it at all with me, I could no longer ignore that there was some trouble with men that I had never noticed before. The pattern had been made clear and it was masculinity that was the invisible force seeming to lie at the heart of the matter. It was clear that there was an imbalance in the ways I thought gender constructed and controlled the world, and a dangerous degree of secret toxicity that goes along with masculinity.

In delving into the cultural and sociological theory surrounding masculinity, I encountered great difficulty in coming to a well-formed understanding of how masculinity can be clearly defined. Plenty of other scholars in the field acknowledge this difficulty, none so curtly as Kenneth Clatterbaugh who wrote that ‘it may well be the best kept secret of the literature on masculinities that we have an extremely ill-defined idea of what we are talking about’ (1998: 27). I also found many who reflected on the oft-mentioned crisis of masculinity and what it means to constantly fall back on such a phrase. Perhaps the most cutting comment upon the matter came from Grayson Perry, who remarked that:

(8)

It is a newsroom cliché that masculinity is always somehow “in crisis”, under threat from pollutants such as shifting gender roles, but to me many aspects of masculinity seem such a blight on society that to say it is “in crisis” is like saying racism was “in crisis” in civil-rights-era America. Masculinity needs to change. (Perry 2016: 2) His lucid acknowledgement of the problem is not without the hope that masculinity can be changed, an important reminder that it is historically and contextually constructed, allowing for a flexibility of definition which is exactly the source of so many of the references to crisis. It seems more that the speed at which masculinity is changing in the contemporary context is making it a difficult time to be a man. The worries of emasculation run rife amongst many men, the fear of which leads them to defensively turn back to notions of masculinity with the illusion of consistent permanency about them. For a large proportion of men, especially those from predominately white, western countries, the current way of life is nothing like that which their fathers or grandfathers experienced, and we should recognise that men can feel that ‘the transformation has been dazzlingly fast, utterly bewildering, and it scares the crap out of them’ (Kimmel & Wade 2018: 246). Reverting to age-old masculine stereotypes can be seen as a safety mechanism, a retreat into a familiar comfort zone in which masculinity is believed to exist as a single, stable notion from which a solid and reliable gender identity can be built by a subject. These stereotypes purport that ‘to be a man is to be in charge. To be gentle is to be a wimp, a weak excuse for a man, an object of derision, and ridicule’ (Toomey 1992: 44). The traditional masculine behaviours commonly related to this outlook are ‘a lack of emotional expressiveness, denial of vulnerability, aggression, risk taking, nonrelational sexuality, sexism, and homophobia’ (Silverstein 2016: 145). Fixating on these assumptions permits one to remain an illusion of comfortable control within patriarchal society, free to let gender run passively by without much introspection or criticism. However, as John MacInnes mused in a book sardonically titled The End of Masculinity, ‘if it is a bad time to be a man, it is still, in almost every area of life, a worse time to be a woman’

(9)

(1998:48). My interest in the topic therefore extends beyond solely addressing the problems of men, as the impact of masculinity reaches much further – the link between masculinity and power in a society so patriarchally structured means everyone within that society is affected by masculinity.

1.2. The Masculine Mystique

Within the realm of gender studies, following on from the urgent development of feminism and the women’s liberation movement in academic and public spheres in the latter half of the twentieth century, the rise of theory covering men and masculinities since the 1980s has been comparably rapid, reflecting how the anxieties about the underlying effects of patriarchal masculinity on society at large are felt to be very much in need of discussion. This perhaps reveals why the notion of a crisis is so fraught within the field of masculinities and men’s studies, particularly after the 1990s, despite clarifications from various scholars that this critical state is better thought of as an ongoing issue that is approached and dealt with by new generations as time progresses. Indeed, Michael Mangan goes so far as to assert that ‘crisis is […] a condition of masculinity itself. Masculine gender identity is never stable; its terms are continually being redefined and negotiated, the gender performance continually being re-staged. Certain themes and tropes inevitably reappear with regularity, but each era experiences itself in different ways’ (quoted in Beynon 2002: 40). What remains pertinent is the current reactions to the masculine dilemma, as they resonate and intersect through other sections of culture and society.

(10)

Providing a definition of masculinity is a difficult challenge, given the multitude of categories that led to the very use of the plural word masculinities in critical discourse. Indeed, as with many cultural concepts, ‘the meaning of the sign “masculinity” cannot ultimately be pinned down in any simple way since it is always in flux’ (Reeser 2010: 38). This is not to fall into the trap of claiming it is impossible to recognise manifestations of masculinity in the world, but only that masculinity can be better thought of as constructed from various masculinities, often contradictory and unstable in their own natures. Masculinity itself, as slippery a term as it is, denotes qualities of manhood and behaviours that are not wholly negative or harmful. Patriarchal masculinity is a term bell hooks uses in a very specific manner to gesture towards the type of masculinity that is the most damaging, explaining that it identifies a masculine attitude of superiority and domination over any subjects deemed weaker than themselves, be that women, other men, or any other group (2005: 114). This type of masculinity bolsters patriarchal order and values strength alongside a willingness to commit violent acts as essential qualities of leadership in all walks of life. It is perhaps the same masculinity that is referred to by the term toxic masculinity, a popular term that is more frequently seen in the media than academic texts, which is opposed against an idealist healthy masculinity (Kimmel & Wade 2018: 237). The point that hooks usefully leads to in differentiating between these categories of masculinities, with an eye to working towards a better future, is that:

male being, maleness, masculinity must stand for the essential core goodness of the self, of the human body that has a penis. Many of the critics who have written about masculinity suggest that we need to do away with the term, that we need “an end to manhood.” Yet such a stance furthers the notion that there is something inherently evil, bad, or unworthy about maleness. (2005: 114)

Care should be taken not to demonise all aspects of masculinity during discussions over the shortcomings and troubles of manhood and masculine behaviour – as previously mentioned,

(11)

by reflecting upon masculinity in critical discourse and on the stage, a more productive understanding may come about that will permit it to change for the better.

What has been brought to attention by the rise of debate on women’s rights is that they have been defined against a patriarchal system that favours men – in such a system, if men are found to be suffering, then it makes sense to assume that women probably have it worse. Bringing this imbalance of power into focus not only lifted feminism up into urgent cultural discourse but also revealed masculinity as a similarly constructed social phenomenon by nature of its widely assumed binary opposition to femininity. Norms that before had passed for the natural order, supposedly invisible forces that governed the power balance between the sexes, were suddenly put under a new critical spotlight where all assumptions needed to be addressed. This shift has been noted by scholars writing on the topics of feminism and masculinity, with some commenting upon how masculinity has managed to avoid direct attention for quite some time, as ‘to men at least, gender often remains invisible. Strange as it may sound, men are the “invisible” gender. Ubiquitous in positions of power everywhere, men are invisible to themselves’ (Kimmel 2005: 5). Men in this view have the luxury of operating as the neutral gender, the gender by which femininity was defined and figured. The result was that for a while in the gender studies debate, up until the liberationist movements of the 1960s, many predominately white, straight men were able to go on living as neutral bodies, set apart from the world of identity politics – or, as Peggy Phelan usefully refers to them, ‘visibility politics’ (1993: 2). Even this absence was inconspicuous at first as men were – and I would argue, still very much are – incredibly prevalent atop most power structures, making them considerably visible in the public and political spheres. This social visibility initially excused them from the discourse of identity politics that focused on the erasure of one’s right to appear as the main challenge for underrepresented groups (Robinson 2000: 2).

(12)

To continue talking about such things as gender and masculinity, it is imperative to address some matter of the approach and theoretical underpinnings that will serve to be useful as I look to the way masculinity is portrayed and problematised in productions of Macbeth. While for many the phenomenological experience of masculinity, and gender in general, may go unnoticed in day-to-day life, it can be brought to the forefront of attention in line with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. This viewpoint goes against the naturalist and essentialist propositions that sex is a stable, natural characteristic that is more permanent and fixed than gender, which is arguably more fluid. Considering sex as natural implies that masculinity is born from the male body – for example, aggressive behaviour comes from men’s need to fight, which is fuelled through their tendency to be stronger and more muscular than women, who are therefore less violent, and so on. Butler challenged the biologically deterministic model in her book Bodies that Matter (1993), where she broke down the creation of sex at the moment of birth ‘as retroactively installed at a prelinguistic site to which there is no direct access’ (5). The naming of a child as a boy or girl by a doctor during the first moments of their lives serves to invoke their sex for them, labelling them in such a way that their sex is assumed to have existed as an inherent characteristic prior to the statement being made. However, this assumption is flawed as the linguistic act of sexing in fact enacts the creation of sex itself at this moment.

The relation of sex to gender is then difficult to recognise as a direct correlation; the categories of sex are not as natural as they may seem, so if gender is seen as linked to sex in some way, it seems unlikely that gender would ever be thought of as an inherent characteristic of a subject. At this point, it would seem there is no essential core to gender whatsoever. Butler’s well-known text on the topic of gender, Gender Trouble (1990), points out an alternative approach to gender that helps to smooth out this problem, one that encompasses a theory of performative acts of gender that, repeated over time, construct and

(13)

reinforce the experience of being a male or female in society. For Butler, gender is performed by people in relation to their cultural and sociological understanding of how gender functions via their history of observing and understanding other people’s performances of gender. She writes that ‘gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself’ (Butler 1991: 21). The act of imitation carries echoes of cultural norms that commonly circulate the topic of gender, including stereotypes such as men being more naturally aggressive and women being better suited to nurturing roles. Butler goes further to state that ‘there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results’ (1990: 33). Gender is then figured to be an act or performance, rather than a state of being – one is not their gender, but does it, so to speak. The queering of gender norms in transgressive art forms like drag performance is a clear example that reveals how gender, along with sex, functions as performance. To think of gender this way allows us to break down behaviours and actions to consider how they constitute, or sometimes trouble, gender.

A further essential tool for this undertaking is to consider how this relation of gender to performance is experienced by those engaged in or viewing the act itself. Butler writes that ‘performing one's gender wrong initiates a set of punishments both obvious and indirect, and performing it well provides the reassurance that there is an essentialism of gender identity after all’ (1988: 528). A person may feel intense embarrassment upon failing to live up to their own preconceptions of how they should behave as a certain gender, or an observer may baulk at the way someone transgresses the gender boundaries that are, at least in their own mind, rigidly set in culture. Both cases involve a conscious experiential reaction in the corporeal body of a subject, the philosophical realm of which is phenomenology, which can be found usefully applied to feminist discourse by the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Judith

(14)

Butler, among others. Phenomenology combines a study of the lived body and the experienced world in order to investigate how we engage with our own existence, making meaning from our surroundings and ourselves. This particular corporeal reading of phenomenology hails from the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which provides the means of focusing upon the lived body, rather than an investigation into a transcendental consciousness where the pure experience of a person can be found.

However, as we have already discerned, the body cannot be considered the origin of the experience of sex and gender. If we are to believe that gender is a socially constituted, historically contextual phenomenon that is learned and repetitively performed, then these lived experiences of the body must also be viewed in relation to the systems by which those experiences gain value and meaning. As a socialised member of a culture, I understand enough of how maleness and femaleness are perceived to exist within that culture to react to when they break down in my personal experience or observation of others. Phenomenology is an apt approach for an investigation of masculinity as ‘it is the interminable effort to break our familiar acceptance of the world and to see as strange and paradoxical what we normally take for granted’ (Oksala 2006: 239). These moments explain encounters with masculinity when it appears unexpectedly, jumping to the front of attention. It will therefore be necessary to include mentions of my own phenomenological experiences of viewing Macbeth in order to discuss not only the ways masculinity appears when presented on stage, but also how my own reactions point to limitations within those performances.

This is the view that helps pick apart some of the complexity of the term masculinity – if it is approached as a constructed and malleable gender, built out of performative acts that are repeated imitations learned over time within a specific cultural context, then by considering how masculinity is represented or portrayed by subjects we can try to reflect upon what that means in the wider world. In order to have any discussion of masculinity, it

(15)

must first be brought out from its hiding place to be considered directly. Those moments in which masculinity suddenly appears as visible are therefore invaluable in addressing how performances of masculine gender identities are constructed, and, by extension, how they could be altered to accommodate for the changing cultural values of contemporary society. The link between masculinity and power is one such element that, once brought to the forefront of attention, reveals certain oddities about masculine behaviour that can help to understand the anxieties producing the notion of masculinity in crisis. Power is here figured in the form of dominance and control, with the patriarchal dictation of gender roles serving to bolster the current social and economic order via hegemonic processes (Levant & Richmond 2016: 23). By approaching and comparing different images of masculinity portrayed in different contemporary productions of Macbeth, it should become more and more clear how the constitution of a masculine gender identity comes about in our contemporary society through acts of repeated performance and social reinforcement.

1.3. A Drum, a Drum! Macbeth Doth Come!

What, then, of Macbeth? What does an early 17th_{-century play have to do with contemporary}

issues with masculinity? It may well seem obvious, but it is an instinctive step to take to go from a performative theory of gender to a medium based upon performance, making the theatre a rich place to find different performances of gender identities, ones that can explicitly be taken as performance to begin with, but also that have the safeguard of expected fiction that allows great freedom in exploring how gender can be masqueraded and troubled.

Macbeth itself is a play that brings themes of gender to the forefront of attention through its

exploration of power, violence and supernatural fate, a tragic story featuring a hero turned villain who shows anything but the qualities suggested by such a title. It has been described

(16)

as ‘a site of cultural production in which notions of manhood are not only articulated and addressed, but also contested and challenged’ (Howell 2008: 2). This usefully provides material to not only reflect upon depictions of contemporary masculinity but also analyse how it is being problematised upon the stage. It should also be mentioned that the problem of gender can be thought of as already ingrained within the text itself from a historical perspective through the Elizabethan tradition of male actors playing female characters. In effect, this cross-dressing and performance of multiple genders gestures towards the constructed nature of gender, making the act of a young boy playing a woman draw attention to gender performance through a direct comparison of method to the way the other actors -and, by extension, any person - perform masculinity.

I spend my first chapter discussing how Macbeth’s insecurities about his masculinity are pulled upon by his wife as a method of control to propel him to seize power, and his decisive performance of ruthless, tyrannical masculinity becomes the driving force of the play. It becomes a question of how much humanity Macbeth is willing to sacrifice in order to achieve the position as ruler via taking on the character of what he and his wife perceive to be a successful man: brutally aggressive, quick to act in silencing his enemies and ambitious beyond the restraints of moral judgement. The main effect that these actions have in relation to contemporary masculinity is that they result in full attention being drawn to Macbeth’s performance of masculinity. Macbeth makes a desperate effort to appear more masculine by committing to violence as a hallmark of manhood. In attempting - and sometimes failing - to do so, he prises away the naturalised dominant pairing of maleness and masculinity. Furthermore, I discuss how the other men featuring in the play provide counterpoints to this one version of masculinity that Macbeth endorses, encouraging the conception of multiple masculinities that each come with their own methods of construction and performance, allowing for characters such as Macduff to be used as a counterpoint to Macbeth.

(17)

Lady Macbeth herself constitutes an equally fascinating character with regards to masculinity. As previously established, masculinity is not an inherent characteristic of the male body but a performed gender identity, meaning it can just as easily be portrayed by a non-male. Lady Macbeth explicitly calls out rejection of her sex in the understanding that her place as a woman limits her horizons, swapping kindness for cruelty in the misguided assumption that by emulating the masculine tyranny that she urges her husband to enact she will guarantee the power and success her husband has been promised. Scholars have noted how her ‘wilful decision to deny her essential nature as a woman, to impose her own view of masculinity by exaggerating her husband's ambition, is instrumental in the destruction of order which the play presents’ (Richmond 1973: 24). Female masculinity is particularly useful to delve into as it permits a clearer idea of how masculinity is constructed, due to circumventing some of the naturalising and erasing characteristics of masculinity when it is solely performed by males. My second chapter deals mainly with the figure of Lady Macbeth and her interplay between the feminine and masculine worlds, at times arguably portraying a far more stereotypically masculine outlook than her husband can muster in the face of bloody, unscrupulous deeds. This perspective also provides the chance to reflect on how the concept of masculinity is formed by society as a whole, not simply by the men who are expected to exhibit it. The witches, or weird sisters as they are also referred to, deepen the understanding of how gender at large can be thought of with less rigid boundaries as we may first assume, as they appear described as difficult to describe in traditional binary terms. By considering how this complication of simplistic assumptions about gender performance questions how we perceive gender in general, I hope to illuminate masculinity’s resistance to accepting alternative masculinities that are not produced by the physical body.

In my final chapter, I turn to the consequences that can occur from the incredible amount of stress and strain involved in navigating the trepidatious territory of performing

(18)

masculinity and the detrimental effect it can have on mental health. The theme of mental health is one that is currently receiving much attention in media and academic literature, especially the links between gender role discrepancy stress and mental health problems that could be contributing to the troubling statistics surrounding young male suicide rates (Berke et al. 2016; Reidy et al. 2014, 2016, 2018; Yang et al. 2018), which I explore in relation to Macbeth in scenes when his mental state is shown to be in disarray as a result of his troubled masculinity. For Macbeth himself, the stubborn refusal to seek help reflects much of the troubling way in which men are perceived to bottle up their emotions with detrimental results. The gulf between how he comes to believe he should behave and his insecure perception of his failure in that matter leads to a decline in his grasp on reality, prompting him to resort back to reflexive aggression and violence in order to prop up his fragile sense of masculinity.

The specific theatre productions I shall refer to in my exploration of Macbeth with regards to masculinity were all performed within the past seven years in the U.K. Two I have accessed as live recorded versions of performances given in theatres, and two I have personally attended in the last year as research for this thesis. I will here give a short account of each production and comment upon style, notable adaptations made and any remarkable information that may be needed to help flesh out how these performances appeared when I begin using them as the sounding points for my arguments concerning portrayals of masculinity. These performances will form the primary basis of my performance references throughout this thesis, though I shall also refer to a printed version of the text itself for specific lines and information. The decision to only draw from productions that were performed in the past decade reflects the desire to reveal contemporary attitudes to masculinity as portrayed on the stage, allowing the arguments to be both relevant and contextualised within the current discourse surrounding masculinity.

(19)

Of the two productions I attended in person, both were performed by theatre companies that specialise in performing Shakespearean plays: The Royal Shakespeare Company and the company of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. The approach taken towards the play, however, was markedly less similar than the companies that produced them. The Globe performance took place next door to the historic rebuilt theatre on the South Bank of the River Thames, inside the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, a reconstructed theatre built alongside the Globe that is modelled after 17th_{Century theatre plans. The most striking aspect}

that the theatre itself brings to performances is the option of relying solely upon candlelight as stage lighting during performances. Robert Hastie’s version of Macbeth (2018b) took such an approach, featuring six candelabras that could be hoisted aloft with rope, sconces located on the pillars of the vastly wooden interior of the theatre, and trios of candles inside handheld guarded torches used by actors to illuminate their own faces in greater detail. The effect enhanced the ghostly and supernatural moments of the play in the intimate candlelit setting, drawing the audience in to listen to the bare voices of the actors. The production itself followed the style of the mise-en-scène, opting for costumes reminiscent of the period in dark colours and no elements to particularly suggest the piece was set in the modern day. This version also featured women playing male parts, which provided useful interplay with my theme of performed masculinity. The Globe stood in stark contrast stylistically with the RSC’s production helmed by Polly Findlay (2018a), which took on a decidedly contemporary setting featuring modern costumes, including business suits and ties for high-ranking characters and spec-ops style body armour or camouflage fatigues for soldiers, a hoovering caretaker version of the porter who lingers in the background eavesdropping upon scenes and the ever-present digital clock ticking down to the finale at the back of the stage. Much more technology was involved upon the gaping maw of the Barbican’s stage, which dwarfed the one at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse by a large margin, making use of an extensive lighting

(20)

rig, microphones amplifying the actors’ voices and a host of accompanying digital audio effects throughout.

Of the two productions I accessed as recorded live performances, Gemma Bodinetz’s production at the Liverpool Everyman (2011) was the most traditional in scope. The emphasis of the scenography was on the brutal ugliness of the deeds in the play, combining harsh, piercing lighting with a bleak, imposing and concrete-like stage design, giving a grey, chilling atmosphere to the play. The costumes also reinforced the militaristic aspects of the play, with almost every character appearing in dull, plain colours of grey and camouflage green, making the cast appear caught up in a life of modern warfare, even despite the lack of firearms and other more advanced weaponry. The lack of warmth is made palpable via this combination, driving home how humanity becomes almost impossible to find in the course of events in the play. Of the performances, this production also brought the psychological turmoil experienced by some characters to the fore, presenting a Macbeth that truly appeared to be on the edge of a mental breakdown when battling his conscience for the dire deeds he had committed. Lastly was Jatinder Verma’s adaptation (2015) which brought an alternative cultural setting to the Scottish play, opting for a British-Asian influence instead which involved presenting an Indian family drama version of the play, rather than a grander political story of nation and monarchy. This production involved a fascinating engagement with gender via the presentation of the three witches as hijras, similar in appearance to drag queens, but in fact a wholly distinct cultural group that Verma himself explained to be:

a Third Gender - legally recognised only in India & Germany at present. Thousands of years old, this provocative community of transsexuals, transgenders & castrati, is ubiquitous in India, Pakistan & Bangladesh - blessing ceremonies of birth and marriage, threatening dire outcomes if their wishes are not met, mischievously prophesying fame & fortune. […] Being outside the norms of gender, hijras see

(21)

themselves as part of a spirit world that traces back to the half-man half-woman god, Ardh-Narishwar. (Verma 2015: n.p.)

This introduces a rich conversation that moves beyond the masculine-feminine dichotomy, which, coupled with the focused use of the patriarchal family as governing power in the play, provides ample ground for facilitating debate over contemporary masculinity through

Macbeth.

CHAPTER 2

Something Wicked This Way Comes

As the protagonist of the play, Macbeth becomes something of the measure by which the other masculinities that can be found are judged. His performance of masculine gender identity can make other characters appear more or less masculine, or make the audience confront their own preconceptions about masculinity by demonstrating the differences that can exist between portrayals of manliness. In this way, the character of Macbeth is intrinsically useful for highlighting masculinity in a way that makes it visible, marking it so that it becomes prevented from slipping out of view. The issue of the body’s relation to

(22)

masculinity through fertility also arises when regarding Macbeth, as his obsession with gaining and maintaining a hold on power is deeply rooted in a desire for progeny, with repeated references to his anxieties about the inability to produce children with his wife while Banquo is promised a strong and regal family tree. Macbeth’s understanding of masculine power and domination stem from not just the ability to seize authority, but to reproduce in order to prolong his status. The other male characters in the play provide counterpoints for Macbeth’s particular performance of masculinity, allowing for contrasts that remind us of the multitude of masculinities that can exist, each without necessarily devaluing another. By considering the male characters together, much can be discussed about the state of contemporary masculinity and the drawbacks to approaching it rigidly.

2.1. Macbeth’s Struggle for Masculinity

Throughout the play Macbeth, there are a multitude of references to the state of being a man -not so much in the sense of the physical male body, but in the cultural sense of behaving in a masculine manner that is predicated upon how it is expected to appear, or as D. W. Harding writes, ‘manliness as lived by the man and manliness seen in the distorting fantasy of the woman’ (1969: 243). In these moments, characters are directly judged by their masculinity, using their acts and words to weigh their performance of manly attributes to ascertain their status and power. These notions vary wildly depending on the person espousing them – for instance, Lady Macbeth clearly views masculinity as deeply linked to the ambition to seize power by any means, whereas Lady Macduff criticises her husband’s lack of masculine qualities when he acts contrary to the duty of the patriarch to protect his wife and children that she considers to be a hallmark of honourable masculine behaviour. The contradictions

(23)

and equivalencies of the differing assumptions made about masculinity provide snapshots from which contemporary masculinity can be glimpsed during the play, bringing out the qualities that so often pass by imperceptibly due to the ubiquitous manifestation of masculinity in society.

Macbeth spends much time in the play striving to perform masculinity to the best of his ability, and in doing so draws attention to the concerted effort required to maintain such a performance. His fretting over the state of his masculinity brings it to the surface and renders it visible to the audience, preventing it from slipping into the background where masculinity becomes ‘conflated with normativity’ (Robinson 2000: 2). This guise of masculinity as a neutral, normative category by which other genders are differentiated is what lends it the ability to go unnoticed, the reason that Michael Kimmel introduces a collection of essays on the history of British and American masculinities by writing explicitly about ‘invisible masculinity’ (2005: 3). He remarks that ‘men have come to think of themselves as genderless, in part because they can afford the luxury of ignoring the centrality of gender’ (Ibid., 6). It comes as no surprise that Simone de Beauvoir brought some of this issue to light herself while writing on the position of women as subordinate to men while writing on the position of women, remarking that ‘a man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man’ (1953: 15). Assuming that all aspects of masculinity simply go without saying is one of the ways in which the dominant patriarchal order remains in place, as these writers explore. To continue to ignore masculinity and permit it to go unchallenged and unaddressed allows for the problems that men face to fester, prolonging the issues caused by toxic masculinity. The ways that the character of Macbeth has been performed in recent productions serves to draw attention to the performance of masculinity specifically, sometimes through hyperbolic exaggerations of macho behaviour as in the production by the RSC (2018a) and other times through a subversion of audience

(24)

expectations about how men appear and behave, exemplified by the Globe’s production where the portrayal of Macbeth was described by a critic as distinctly ‘metrosexual’ (Halliburton 2018: n.p.). This proves to be useful in that alternative masculinities are explored and displayed, none of which can confidently be judged to be authentic or intrinsic, which troubles the assumptions of normative masculinity that contribute to its invisibility. Macbeth then becomes something of a lens through which contemporary discussions about masculinity can be viewed, allowing for it to be seen more clearly and then dismantled and rebuilt in hope of equality in a better future.

The version of masculine identity that Macbeth eventually settles upon in order to support his claim to manhood is unsettling in its propensity for sheer violence, stirring an uncomfortable reaction to the tyrannical way that Macbeth charges into action to convince himself of his own authentic masculinity. This resonates with the acknowledged notion that ‘physical aggression is a gendered behavior embedded in the social meanings of masculinities across many cultures’ (Kilmartin & McDermott 2016: 615). The first introduction to the character of Macbeth that the audience gets is a description given by an injured officer to Duncan and his sons, a stirring speech in which Macbeth and Banquo are painted as heroic warriors of great strength and prowess in battle. The accolades are impressive, yet the description ventures into the barbaric at an alarming speed, with the captain describing how Macbeth ends the life of the traitor Macdonald when he ‘unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops’ (1.2.22). The image from the Liverpool Everyman production (2011) of the officer with a bloodied, missing eye and various other horrific wounds crying out in joy at the thought of such injuries inflicted upon their enemies laid the ground for an uncomfortable confrontation with Macbeth’s use of violence to further his lunge for power later in the play, and also served as a disturbing challenge to the thought that violence is a naturalised part of masculinity. The excessive role that the violence played in constructing Macbeth’s reputation

(25)

as a ‘worthy gentleman’ (1.2.24) forced consideration of why indeed physical aggression is thought of as proof of one’s masculinity. Furthermore, this moment tellingly revealed this behaviour is both encouraged and admired by his counterparts. Their reactions echoed Butler’s assertion that gender is a series of repeated imitations, a ‘stylized repetition of acts’ (1988: 519), as it was possible to see how positive reinforcement informs the image of masculinity that all of them are striving to reproduce in their own individual performances of gender, resulting in a normalisation of violence and aggression as masculine traits.

The act of resorting to violence as a prop for one’s faltering performance of masculinity became a palpable motif in the Barbican’s production (2018a). Here, Macbeth was imagined as an elite modern-day soldier, appearing in body armour, a beret and armed with a machete. He first appeared on the stage with a blood-splattered face, matching the violent description given by the captain moments before. The actor had a large and imposing physical presence, emphasising the aspects of Macbeth’s hyper-masculine performance of self-assured prowess and strength, accompanied by a swagger and bravado that established the sense that he was, as a critic put it, ‘every inch the rugged soldier’ (Billington 2018: n.p.). When Macbeth shook hands with Duncan, who appeared as a frail old man in a wheelchair, he left a smear of blood on the king’s hand, a marker to remind those present that Macbeth’s talent is to spill blood and foreshadowing his murder of the king, but also showing that he fails to understand the limits of violent masculinity’s acceptance in the social sphere. It was a telling moment that helped construct ‘Macbeth’s outrageous kind of manliness’ (Ramsey 1973: 286), a masculinity that makes itself visible by appearing excessive. This sheer surplus of hyperbolic machismo was striking in the performance, especially when coupled with the way the other soldier characters responded in kind upon greeting Macbeth and Banquo. None blanched at the sight of Macbeth’s blood-covered features, even while their own were clean. He wore it proudly as the mark of an efficient killer and was rewarded with respect by his

(26)

fellows, cementing the notion that Macbeth’s figuration of masculinity bears an unhealthy relation to violence that stems from the positive reinforcement of his peers. This also usefully highlights an example of how violence is socially linked to masculinity, a demonstration of the ‘psychological initiation that requires boys to accept that their willingness to do violent acts makes them patriarchal men’ (hooks 2005: 59).

For all his size and strength, this portrayal of Macbeth served to turn the performance of an indomitable masculine figure on its head to show how hollow the performance in fact was. Terrence Reeser writes that ‘masculinity requires constant work to be maintained and because it can never fully remain at rest, it cannot be maintained in the way that men may want it to appear’ (Reeser 2010: 3). Normally, this constant effort is not made explicit to an observer, or even to the person striving to perform masculinity, emblematic of the way men are often considered genderless, their masculinity functioning imperceptibly in the background (Reeser 2010: 9). However, in the case of the actor playing Macbeth at the Barbican, the secret psychological strain of constantly having to live up to his desired masculine ideals was tellingly revealed shortly after his coronation. Left alone on the stage in full regalia, he took his crown in his hands and sank to the floor, curling up into a ball and hiding his face, his body racked with sobs. It was at this moment that the stereotypical, if exaggerated, masculine aspects of the character, in particular the actor’s deployment of his stature to intimidate and impress the other characters, were questioned by demonstrating that they provided little in support of his actual sense of manhood and success. Where before this version of the character seemed to be flawed in relying on violence and his physical body to reaffirm his manliness, what became apparent was the strain of maintaining this performance of masculinity. Pierre Bourdieu writes about how men can find themselves ‘dominated by their domination’ (2001: 69), and in this particular scene when Macbeth wore the crown he committed himself to seizing by murderous means, the audience were shown an example of a

(27)

man quite undone by his own perverted sense of masculinity. In the contemporary western society where the pressures of body image and success for both men and women are highly prevalent, the image of this strong, warrior version of Macbeth clutching his crown and weeping demonstrated how underneath the veneer of vaunted manhood, great damage can still be found. Far from going unnoticed, his struggle for masculinity made the behaviours he relied on to convey his authentic claim to manhood become palpably visible.

Yet the marking of masculinity as a visible gender performance by means of hyper-macho stereotypes is not the only way that the character of Macbeth has been used recently to reflect upon contemporary issues with masculinity. The portrayal of the character from the Globe Theatre’s production at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (2018b) took a different approach, but yielded a similar result wherein the performance of masculinity itself became the focus. Here, Macbeth was performed as a man full of insecurities concerning his masculinity, playing off the repeated assertions given by Lady Macbeth that he does not live up to her expectations of what a man should be. Her opinion of him is reflected in her remark that ‘I do fear thy nature; / It is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness’ (1.5.14-15). The comments from Macbeth’s wife about his lack of masculine qualities reflect a large section of the concerns of masculinity being in crisis, where it has been noted that ‘recent calls to remasculinize men, for example, are partly in response to perceptions of excessive effeminacy or queerness that have supposedly destroyed masculinity and sexual distinction’ (Reeser 2010: 219). In this production, focus was drawn to the fact that despite being colourfully described as capable of boundless violence on the battlefield, Macbeth was not thought of as stereotypically masculine. The actor playing Macbeth accentuated his divergence from the image of stereotypical masculinity strikingly through the use of a stuttering, faltering style of speech that suggested uncertainty and nervousness when faced with pressure. In a theatre lit solely by candlelight, the intrusion of darkness was a constant

(28)

threat, and the actor seemed to jump and cower away from any unlit parts of the stage, explicitly showing his fear in a manner far from what is traditionally considered to be manly. This proved effective in the development of the play as Macbeth’s constant reminders that he must ‘screw your courage to the sticking-place’ (1.7.60) drive him to act out with wild violence so that none may accuse him of effeminacy.

There is a similarity from both performances concerning Macbeth’s turn to violence as a prop for his masculinity, but the approaches to this are markedly different. It is interesting to note that the Macbeth played at the Barbican seemed to reflect a man already formed by the pressures of living up to traditional masculine gender ideals, slowly coming to the realisation that what was believed to be an essential part of his identity is in fact intransient and impossible to pin down, while the Globe presented the forming of such a man via the gradual increase of pressure from exterior sources, or the experience of encountering and being restrained by what some scholars have sardonically called the ‘act-like-a-man box’ (Kivel 2010: 83). In this respect, it could be read that the Barbican’s perspective highlighted the difficulties men face in deconstructing their own masculinities as full-grown adults, whereas the Globe took pains to demonstrate how men are led and convinced to affirm themselves through stereotypical and often harmful behaviours to achieve the traditional manly persona they associate with successful, happy, powerful people. By the end of the play, the actor playing Macbeth at the Saw Wanamaker Playhouse had abandoned his earlier insecure body language of strutting and fretting about the stage, instead moving with the self-same aggressive bravado exhibited by the actor at the Barbican whenever he wished to flex his masculinity to intimidate others. The damaged masculine performances these men eventually resort to are not essential facets of their being, but learnt behaviours that are therefore avoidable and able to be addressed.

(29)

Macbeth’s struggle to perform a stable and convincing masculine gender identity in these two examples from different productions both share a similar result upon the audience: we see the effort required to sustain such a performance and, in doing so, see the act for what it is – a performance. We are shown him the way he is described by one of the thanes who stands in opposition by the end of the play, as he ‘feels his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe / Upon a dwarfish thief’ (5.2.20-22), only in this case the title is not king, but man. Macbeth would have no reason to struggle if masculinity were a neutral category assigned to male subjects without question, which results in a questioning of the state of masculinity itself. Once this aspect of masculinity is brought to the forefront of our attention through Macbeth’s fragile sense of his own masculinity in one case and his hyper-masculine excess in another, we can see how masculinity is woven throughout the rest of the action of the play as a driving force for the tragedy. Neither provides a simple, grounded representation of what a man should be, leaving open the possibility to acknowledge how masculinity is better understood if thought of as a plurality of different masculinities. This in turn leads us to consider the other masculinities that surround Macbeth in the play and how they provide different aspects of masculine behaviour that enrich the discussion of contemporary masculinity.

2.2. The King’s Men

With all that Macbeth does in his attempt to convince himself and everyone around him that he is a “real” man, masculinity is made a focal point when it is embodied and performed by the other characters of the play, largely due to the disparity between the way Macbeth eventually performs masculinity and how the other men approach to their gender identities – though they are none less capable of waging war, as the bloody resolution of the play makes

(30)

clear. The other male characters each reveal more of how gender identities are constituted by developing and exhibiting alternative masculinities to the one Macbeth strives to perform, letting us acknowledge each attempt at performance and recognise how these conflicting approaches problematise the seemingly neutral status of manhood as a simple, uncomplicated state of being arising from sex and the male body. Measuring one person’s masculinity by another’s is a futile exercise in that, as is the case with any form of identity, there is no intrinsic core or truth to what constitutes real masculinity for us to judge someone’s performance against. However, what one person performs has the capability of estranging us from what another does, bringing facets of their performance to our attention that previously seemed invisible.

What becomes immediately apparent when presented with the other male characters is that they each perform masculinity in different ways, none of which can be claimed to be the single authentic version. Nevertheless, there is a certain hierarchy to masculine gender identities that renders some behaviours more socially favourable than others. The effect is that we begin to see how power plays into the development of a traditional masculine gender identity that is idealised by the characters, as with society. Masculinity then becomes linked with ideology, underlining the notion that through social pressure certain norms about gender are defined and enforced (Levant & Richmond 2016: 24). Masculinity ideologies contribute to the process of normalisation that renders much of masculinity invisible, that is ‘so natural within a given cultural and historical context that it is not questioned’ (Reeser 2010: 21). In the production by Tara Arts, the construction of masculine ideology was displayed briefly during Macbeth’s conversation with the two men he enlists to murder Banquo and Fleance. The two lay down flat on the floor before Macbeth with their hands outstretched to his feet as they asserted ‘we are men, my liege’ (3.1.92), depicting the difference in authority and using the line to establish the link between dominant masculine ideology and organising patriarchal

(31)

power. When Macbeth countered by saying ‘ay, in the catalogue ye go for men, / As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs / Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept / All by the name of dogs’ (3.1.92-95), Macbeth held out his hands to their faces as if holding out treats for dogs, demeaning their claim to masculinity further and goading them to accept that his conception of being prepared to commit violent acts was proof of authentic masculinity, a moment of incitement that echoed how Lady Macbeth manipulated Macbeth to murder Duncan by attacking his fragile masculine sensibilities.

The implicit threat in this depiction was that if they chose to live on as men that do not fit the singular definition of masculinity offered by Macbeth, then they would be regarded by society as lesser beings cast out from the dominant ideology. It prompts us to realise that as well as doing as Macbeth does and acknowledging a whole multitude of categories that exist within the broad term of masculinity, ‘we must also recognize the relations between the different kinds of masculinity: relations of alliance, dominance and subordination’ (Connell 2005: 37). By depicting how a high-ranking authority in a patriarchal order can dictate the progression of a dominant masculinity ideology, we are provoked to understand how power governs masculinity in a circular relation conferring validation back to those who perform that version of masculinity. The politics of gender performance were demonstrated here, showing how masculinity’s direct relation to power has the ability to maintain the hold of hegemonic, traditional masculine gender beliefs and behaviours so that they continue to propagate through a culture, making us aware of many masculine categories while also ordering them in a hierarchy. Indeed, in this particular production which chose to re-imagine the politics and relationships in the play into that of a family dynamic, Macbeth as king became Macbeth as father, moving from the head of a patriarchal societal order to the embodiment of the patriarch itself, head of the family, which leads to this scene reflecting how the influence of fathers is recognised as an important contributing factor in young boys’

(32)

masculine socialisation (Farkas & Leaper 2016: 366). The choice to frequently use simple, homely common furniture such as a vintage standing lamp and a matching wooden chair and coffee table helped establish the feeling that the play took place in a family’s living room, concentrating the effect of placing the characters in a familial hierarchy led by the patriarch. By enforcing his view of masculinity as validified through violence, Macbeth as a father figure sowed the seeds for the propagation of such stereotypical masculine values, demonstrating the systemic way that patriarchal masculinity maintains its position as a sought-after gender identity, especially when those values are dictated down from father to son.

One of the most significant alternative versions of masculinity is that of Macduff, who ultimately beheads Macbeth at the end of the play, proving himself stronger and more capable in battle than the Scottish king and surpassing him in the masculine qualities that Macbeth spent so long fretting over. Macduff serves as a contrast to Macbeth, providing the opportunity to view portrayals of the two characters side by side to reveal contesting approaches to the construction and performance of masculinity. In the production by the Globe Theatre company, Macduff was played by a female actor, tying in with the establishment’s commitment to championing a 50:50 gender split in their productions (Saville 2018: n.p.). The white, male actor playing Macbeth was therefore confronted by a black, female performer playing Macduff, creating a striking image when they eventually faced each other down at the end of the play. It is consequently of interest to directly consider what the cross-gendered, cross-dressed part contributed to the overall discussion surrounding masculinity presented in the production, as its function can be read as intentional and far from neutral, as opposed to the other appearances of female actors playing the young boy parts, which I shall return to later. Fundamentally, the use of cross-dressing as a device by which

(33)

gender can be analysed is both useful and productive, as Marjorie Garber notes in her study of the topic. She notes that:

one of the most important aspects of cross-dressing is the way in which it offers a challenge to easy notions of binarity, putting into question the categories of “female” and “male,” whether they are considered essential or constructed, biological or cultural. (Garber 1992: 10)

The function of this choice therefore challenges us to look beyond the supposedly natural categories such as the male/female and masculine/feminine dichotomies, broadening our understanding of what constitutes gender and the multitude of ways it can be performed that do not necessarily adhere to rigid definitions. To consider the masculine gender performance put forth by the female actor playing Macduff in comparison to that of the male actor playing Macbeth, one must already decentralise the notion of masculinity as produced by the male body. The performativity of gender itself was marked by the breaking down of the normative categories that are used to establish the same binaries that frame many of the assumptions about gender, and bringing to light the fact that, just as with all gender performance, ‘theatrical gender assignments are, in a way, ungrounded and contingent’ (Garber 1992: 39).

From this perspective, the choice to cross the categories of masculine and feminine gender performance link to the fact that Macduff is a character whose very being is marked as somehow apart from the rest of mankind, as he is the only one who sits outside of the witches’ cryptic proclamation that ‘none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth’ (4.1.79-80). Macduff was marked visually and aurally as an outsider to the world of people in the play with the crossed-casting, with a distinctive difference in vocal pitch and tone to the male actors that caused the ear to identify the actor playing Macduff as a woman, standing out as the sole character whose crossed-gender appearance functioned as a dramatic device highlighting themes of gender performativity in the piece. This reflects something of

(34)

Garber’s assertion that we should pay attention to ‘the extraordinary power of transvestism to disrupt, expose and challenge’ (1992: 16). By setting this portrayal of Macduff up in opposition to Macbeth, the nature of masculinity as performance was made paramount as Macbeth’s envy of Macduff’s masculinity, supported in the play through his children as proof of virility, was focused upon the cross-dressed actor. The audience were then left to measure Macbeth’s performance of masculinity by comparison to the performance from the female actor, exposing the contemporary anxieties expressed by those who identify the blurring of gender categories as the cause of a crisis in masculinity, leaving some men grasping out for authentic masculinity when it can no longer be cleanly defined by its opposition to femininity or homosexuality (Reeser 2010: 28). Macbeth’s insecurities concerning his manhood were exacerbated by being out-performed by Macduff in the form of a cross-dressed female actor, prompting him to lash out at this disruptive figure to prove his masculine superiority through murder.

The final encounter between the two characters at the close of the production brought all of these tensions together as they met to face each other down with vicious intent. The battle was laden with the political weight of ending Macbeth’s tyrannical rule and revenge for the murder of Macduff’s family, but in this instance, there was a distinct sense that what was also at stake was the validity of the combatants’ masculinity. For this Macbeth, the ultimate way to prove his masculinity to be in line with his and his wife’s traditional ideals would be to strike down Macduff, here representing the complicated grounds of gender performance that contest those aspects of masculinity Macbeth relies on to assure himself of his claim to authenticity and stable identity. The white, male body playing Macbeth fighting for traditional masculine gender ideals against the black, female body playing Macduff spoke of the changing attitudes towards the constitution of gender in society, creating an added layer of meaning surrounding the alleged crisis of masculinity, depicting the status quo of white

(35)

male power being confronted by a more progressive representation of gender politics and performance. The Globe’s publicised commitment to achieving gender equality in its productions was reflected by this conflict, echoing the battle that some bodies must go through to claim recognition for their masculinity outside of the traditional images and stereotypes. Perhaps it could also be seen that Macduff fought for the same claim to masculinity as Macbeth, using the killing as a way to prove that the outsider or other, here connoted through the cross-dressed female body, is able to perform the traits of any masculinity just as capably as any other, ingratiating Macduff into the company of men in the social order of the play who are so valued for their warlike qualities, as the opening description of Macbeth and Banquo signified. Seen this way, the pessimistic conclusion is that even those who may be considered outside the dominant patriarchal masculine order are still bound to its pervasive influence, and often resort to fulfilling its age-old stereotypes in order to find a place within that society.

2.3. Putting on Manly Readiness

The male characters in Macbeth have thus far shown to have been used to depict some of the contemporary discussions surrounding masculinity, doing much to bring the matter of masculinity directly to the forefront of attention when viewing a performance, yet whether this is intended to serve as a cautionary tale or merely to support the ongoing debates about how many people are embattled by a sense of their fragile masculine gender identities differs from case to case. The decline of Macbeth’s character into a cold, ruthless tyrant perhaps reflects the contemporary fears of the results of men feeling forced to live up to outdated and highly problematic masculine ideals, results that are still often brushed off as a part of the natural order of masculinity within the dominant masculinity ideologies of the day. The state

(36)

of utter disconnection that Macbeth exhibits by the end of the play is terrifying, not only for the way he is so casually capable of violence, but also for the way he seems to have lost all care for any of the things he held so dear. Upon hearing of his wife’s death in the RSC’s production, Macbeth was dressed in his combat gear holding a plank position at the front of the stage, a strength building exercise used to emphasise his reliance upon his physical might to dominate and rule, along with showing us that this Macbeth required total mastery over his body in order to claim the production of an authentic masculinity. His response to the news was a wry shrug and a flippant tone when he commented that ‘she should have died hereafter’ (5.5.17). In this extreme example of emotional distance, I was reminded of the comment made by Terrence Real about the state of contemporary masculinity when he asserted that ‘disconnection is not fallout from traditional masculinity. Disconnection is masculinity’ (2002: 78). I personally found Macbeth’s dismissal of his wife’s death to be a powerful way to show how the qualities of empathy are not immediately related to the stoic, mighty soldier that Macbeth in this production was striving so hard to be through his performance of imposing, violent masculinity.

However, characters such as Macbeth and Macduff are not the only ones that resonate strongly with the themes of masculinity found in theory and discourse. It would be facetious to assume that of those living within a patriarchal structure only men would be subjects for whom masculinity becomes problematic. Were that the case, it surely would not be so ingrained into the structures of power that make it so prevalent within society. It makes sense to also consider how masculinity is figured, embodied and complicated by non-male subjects, the most significant of which in the play is arguably Lady Macbeth.

Bloody, Bold and Resolute: How the Construction of Men in 21st Century Theatre Productions of Macbeth Reflects Contemporary Conceptions of Masculinity