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Op-Ed

MacBeth: A new interpretation

June 24, 2022

The Make Shakespeare Great Again caucus has come up with some startling new interpretations of the Bard’s plays. The MSG Again caucus gave Courthouse News a peek at its rendering of “MacBeth.”

Robert Kahn

By Robert Kahn

Deputy editor emeritus, Courthouse News

Fair is foul, and foul is fair;
Hover through the fog and filthy air. [Exeunt witches.]
— Act I, sc. 1, Macbeth
(Heard about it?)

There, in 14 words, in the opening scene of one of Shakey’s most boffo ‘stravaganzas, da Greatest Playwrought in da History of da Woild laid out his Sermon Against Homosexual Softball Leagues, Yo! (SAHSLY!© All rights reserved in perpetuity throughout the universe.) 

I ain’t lyin’. I been studyin’ this stuff. On the intranet. Let us then stride forward boldly, as Americans be havin’ a right to do, we think, though that ain’t really thinking.

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                                MacBeth — A Moral Horror Tale of Mystery and Murder 
By Bill Shaksper and Bob Kahn

Act 1, sc. ii — A Camp near Forres

Scarecrow: What about a brontosaurus?

Lion: I’ll show him who’s king a’ da Forres!

[Oops! Those lines are from another play — another good one.]

However, in MacBeth:

Act 1, sc. ii — A Camp near Forres

Duncan: What bloody man is that?

Here, Shakespeare demonstrates his prescience of the horrors of modern abortion, in that he understands, through his character, King Duncan, that men cannot menstruate. And those who do, might not be, ahem, real men.

Act I, sc. ii — lines 7-24 [edited by the Scarecrow]:

Soldier: Doubtful it stood, till brave Macbeth, disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel, which smok’d with bloody execution, like valour’s minion carved out his passage ‘til he faced the slave; which ne’er shook hands nor bade farewell to him, ‘til he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps, and fixed his head upon our battlements.

Duncan: O valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman!

Here, Shakespeare presciently prelimns the treason of the anti-sword caucus: the cowardly Democrats and their communist supporters, tryna make laws in these United States, which my great-grandaddies fought agin’, or for, depending on where you was at the time. But these Communists, I say, led by the Notorious Presumably George Soros-supported so-called Mothers Against Guns Again NPGSSSCMAGANA (NipgisskmaGANa) (Lawsuits filed in four federal courts; appeals pending in both Dakotas), are tryna dispute and quash and rip from our mothers’ wombs, or yours, our God-given rights to use swords. Also, the harquebus. And catapults and trebuchets. For self-defense. 

Before we pass on, or out, let us, as the professors say, “unpack” the phrase: “‘til he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps, and fixed his head upon our battlements.”

Here, again, as in so many of Shakespeare’s so-called “Sonnets,” (actually written by someone else) the number 14 plays a crucial role in our attempt to determine, in modern lingo, what Shakespeare was “getting at.” 

Let facts be submitted to a candid world:

‘til he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps, and fixed his head upon our battlements contains 14 words; OK, 17, if you want to get technical about it. Yet transliterated into Klingon, and back to English, leaves us with only 14 words in this phrase, or clause, or whatever it is (experts are divided on this).

This, what we may, with your indulgence, be permitted to call Shakespeare’s prejudice against the navy and boats is easily demonstrated by subtracting, or eliding, or — in our modern lingo — “canceling” the disputed words “to the chaps.”

We consign “to the chaps” to the linguistic graveyard because cowboys had not been invented in 1606, when someone else wrote the play that has been attributed to Shakespeare; and though (we omit, or “cancel,” the “al”) the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary allows 43 definitions of the word “chap” (Vol. I, 1971, p. 379), only one of them makes any sense in this context: “the lower jaw.”

So what? You may say, as well you should. Because couldn’t Edward de Vere have wrote it, written it, though he had been dead for two years? And in those two years (1604-1606) couldn’t a cowboy have slipped in and wrote it, written it?

Oh, and about “nave” and “Navy,” could it be any clearer?

We report, you decide.

___
(Courthouse News columnist Robert Kahn is a graduate of the Grapevine (Texas) School of Horseshoeing, where he did graduate work under the late Tex Fritters, in Tex’s ground- and head-breaking class, “Posses, Then and Now,” (online only, registration closed.))

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