Generating Shakespeare

On Tuesday evening I watched an episode of Generations, our local sopie at SABC 1 and felt revolted. There’s this rich chick there called Karabo acted by Connie Ferguson. Apparently she had been charting on-line with a web friend. In one episode she had a public, unconvincing, altercation with a journalist character, Paul about journalistic ethics. It later turns out her web friend and day-light enemy are one and the same. Ring a bell? Sleepless In Seattle! That is why I felt revolted.

There’s nothing wrong with copying a storyline—JM Coetzee does it all the time with most of his novel. The crux of the matter is that you have to refresh the storyline and make it relevant to your audience and times—again something JM does so brilliantly. But the dystrophic copy and paste sort of thing happening in our sopies is nauseating to say the least.

Talking about re-inventing the storyline; I also watched, on the same evening, Shakespeare eMzansi in SABC 1. What a brilliant concept. I’m told it is going to be 26 episodes of 5 series. The one currently on play now, Entabeni—and no it has nothing to do with me—is certainly up to standard. It is based on Shakespear’s play Macbeth. The acting could be more professional, but the writers have brilliantly re-invented Shakespeare storyline, made it relevant for the time without loosing much of Shakespeare’s plot. They’ve also made it relevant to our situation and times.

I have heard it said that the idea was to make people revisit the dramas of Shakespeare. Well, I suspect it is working; in my home my siblings have been asking more questions about Macbeth, lately. I’ve not yet seen them read the plays, but at this rate it is only a matter of time. The other day I had my four year old nephew intimating on his bath the act we played together; Foul is fair, and fair is foul! Perhaps not an ideal first line to learn from Shakespeare, but we’ve to start somewhere, innit?

The lesson Shakespeare wanted to teach in the play Macbeth is the inexorable and inescapable vindictive power of the moral universe. That whatever means you take to achieve your ends will come back to haunt or vindicate you in the end. Our present president might be a stark reminder of that.

Lady Macbeth, while still convincing her husband to murder the irreprehensible King Duncan, accuses him of wanting to win without dirtying his hands. She says he’s not without ambition, but lacks the “illness should attend it ... that he would not play false, and yet would wrongly win.” Macbeth’s conscience is still healthy then as he replies in a monologue:
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other. . .

Let’s look at this in the light of our country and times, especially since ruling’s party’s last conference? The greenflies have it that a certain gentleman, who is now the vice president of the ANC has been responsible for the bad karma between their out going president and the present. It is also rumoured that at the first meeting of the ruling party’s newly elected NEC the blood was so heated their president had to be assuaged for more than twenty minutes after walking out of the meeting accusing the delegates of planning to get rid of him through his coming trial.

It turns out also that there are people in the higher echelons of the ruling party who want to win without playing false in the public eye. It’s been rumoured that Lady Macbeth occupies the parliamentary Speaker seat, and that she eggs and fire the passion of the present deputy president to overcome his repugnance for the end to justify the means:
Thou'dst have, great Glamis, / That which cries "Thus thou must do if thou have it; / And that which rather thou dost fear to do / Than wishest should be undone." Hie thee hither, / That I may pour my spirits in thine ear / And chastise with the valor of my tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round / Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem / To have thee crowned withal.

Lady Macbeth is here saying Macbeth fears to do what must be done, even though he would not wish it undone, if it were done. I hope our Macbeth has enough sense to quote and stick to the words of sober Macbeth: "If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir."

Another question is, when the did is done, will we, as the general public, be better of it. As the Greek proverb goes, ‘Rule shows the man.’ No one ever knows with certainty how virtuous—or vicious—a man might be until he holds office and has power.

I cannot wait to see how the team of Shakespeare eMzansi treats, probably the most beautiful, if dry words, ever came out of any writer of all time. That passage is towards the end of the play Macbeth, and worth quoting in full:
Seyton: The Queen, my lord, is dead.
Macbeth: She should have died hereafter,
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Do you still think Shakespeare is passé and irrelevant? Think again. And that, I believe, is the idea behind Shakespeare eMzansi. Now; “Weary with toil I haste me to my bed...” (Sonnet 27)