Unsex Me Here: Lady Macbeth's Sexuality On Screen

NINA BECKER JOBIM*

            Almost four hundred years after his death, why do we still love Shakespeare? Why is he still performed all over the world in so many languages, adapted to so many time periods, and relived through so many different mediums? The answer is deceptively simple: Shakespeare is universal. His lack of written stage direction makes his plays easy to re-interpret and adapt in each performance, while his themes and characters remain applicable across time. The external changes, while the internal does not; this keeps Shakespeare fresh and yet relatable. Macbeth, as one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, has undergone all kinds of adaptations and re-interpretations. Only through performance can a play be truly understood; reading it only shows a few dimensions of its story. Every performance of Macbeth, as with any other play, is different, uniquely exploring the play and shedding new light on the same text. As the female lead, Lady Macbeth undergoes major changes with each re-imagining, though her essence, as with that of all elements of Shakespeare, does not change. In Roman Polanski's 1971 film Macbeth, the 1979 TV film A Performance of Macbeth and Macbeth of the PBS “Great Performances” series, while each Lady Macbeth is distinct, every actress retains a perverted sexuality vital to her character. It is this simultaneous mutability and stability that makes her so frighteningly enticing and Macbeth an eternal favorite.

            Obviously Lady Macbeth's first appearance in the play is a vital moment of every production. In Polanski's Macbeth, perhaps the most famous screen adaptation; Francesca Annis makes her first appearance in strong contrast to the movie up until that point. Polanski's Macbeth is set in the cold rains and mists of medieval Scotland, and yet in Act I, Scene V, when Lady Macbeth first appears, the sun is shining and the sky is clear. Annis's hair is dyed blonde, a color typically associated with fairy tale princesses and angels, and she wears blue, not only a very expensive color but also one associated with the Virgin Mary, the epitome of purity. Annis's youth and beauty complete the picture of innocence. However, this outward appearance serves to make her words and intentions all the more powerful, her ruthless nature and peaceful-seeming exterior stark contrasts. While appearing thus, Annis delivers the famous line: “He thee hither/ That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,” (1.5.21-2), with the intention of persuading her husband to commit murder and treason. Lady Macbeth's cruelty and ambition are made all the more harsh in Polanski's Macbeth because it is unexpected, a contradiction of her innocent facade. Annis's young sexuality becomes perverted by the character she plays here.

            When Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are reunited, they are very physical, Jon Finch – Macbeth – carrying Annis to their bed upon arrival. As they discuss Duncan's murder, they lie in bed kissing each other, Lady Macbeth laughing and smiling at her husband in a twisted version of light conversation. She even giggles girlishly, in an almost childish way, when saying, “O, never/ Shall sun that morrow see!” (1.5.56-7) in reference to their plan to kill Duncan the very night that he arrives. She seems to have a child-like excitement for the horrors in store. Polanski and Annis use the uncanniness of a beautiful young woman plotting such evil deeds to their full advantage, making their Lady Macbeth all the more frightening.

            Philip Casson's A Performance of Macbeth presents a strikingly different Lady Macbeth. Judi Dench appears in Act I, Scene V dressed entirely in black, simple, Puritan-style clothing with her hair completely covered. Her clothing is not cut to make her seem more feminine or attractive, and indeed makes her look rather manly. It perverts her sexuality, connecting to her desire expressed later in the scene for evil spirits to “unsex” (1.5.37) her. Dench's clothing harks to the Puritan society's tendency to repress all sexuality, making it shameful and inspiring guilt in those who actually desire it, distorting her Lady Macbeth's sexuality in yet another way.

            Macbeth's letter worries Dench, and she moves rather nervously when at all, keeping still for most of her soliloquy, as though stillness will keep her safe. She initially has far less ease with the news she receives than Annis, but the tension in her delivery slowly transforms into a sort of anticipatory ecstasy, highlighting the contrast of Lady Macbeth's words with Dench's appearance. From there, her reunion with Macbeth, played by Ian McKellen, is even more sexual. The two kiss passionately, and while Dench speaks to him of his letter, McKellen kisses her neck and they hold each other tightly, shivering and panting as if having sex. As Dench continues to talk of Duncan's murder, she becomes more excited, their conversation seeming more like sex than talking with every line, until she peaks at “Which shall to all our nights and days to come/ Give solely scholarly sway and masterdom” (1.5.70-1), whereupon they kiss once more, then separate. The union of implied sex and the violence of the impending murder creates a sinister tension that underlies all of Performance and is the spirit in which the entire adaptation is performed.

            We first see Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth in the 2010 Macbeth of the PBS “Great Performances” series through the grille of an elevator. Set in an unspecified but Stalinist setting in the 1940s, Macbeth's castle at Inverness in “Great Performances” is dark and angular, full of echoes and shadows. Until she delivers the line “And shalt be/ What thou art promised” (1.5.11-2), we cannot see Fleetwood's face properly, although it is clear from first appearance that she is pale, wears white and has black hair. Before delivering the line which shows her fully for the first time, she dramatically pushes back the elevator grille, which crashes into place with a strong echo, the only sound made while she pauses before her line. A review in The New Yorker described Fleetwood as being “all bony shoulders and barbarity” (Lair), and indeed, apart from being strikingly thin, also possesses a strongly angular bone structure that gives an impression of tightness. This is certainly reflected in her acting, which is strongly tense and constantly sexual, both in her delivery and physical movement. Her face is often not shown while speaking, the camera focusing on her chest instead, highlighting a feeling of lust, not only of the audience for her, but also of Lady Macbeth for the deeds she anticipates. With her pale skin, black hair and red lipstick, she is like Snow White gone terribly wrong, the whiteness of her dress reminiscent of purity, but her every word, movement and intonation tensed with violence. Fleetwood's Lady Macbeth has a simultaneous contempt and lust for the planned murder and Macbeth himself, every line delivered with a tensed malice.

            Where Dench and McKellen's reunion implies sex, Fleetwood and her Macbeth, Patrick Stewart, practically have actual sex on a counter in the kitchen where Lady Macbeth is cleaning a wall. One of the first things apparent in their interactions is the difference in age between the two of them, making her seem rather a trophy wife to the older, war-hardened Macbeth. Once again clad in white, she turns around slowly at the sound of Macbeth's entrance, her thin dressing gown open just enough to show she is wearing no shirt, but without exposing her breasts. Again, there is an emphasis on her chest and sexual appeal, Stewart picking her up and placing her, legs apart, on a kitchen counter. The two kiss while they speak, just as the two other couples do, but Stewart goes so far as to remove his belt. Like Dench, Fleetwood's Lady Macbeth seems to be sexually aroused by the anticipation of violence, while Annis flirts with it in the girlishness of her youth.

            As many a powerful woman does, Lady Macbeth seeks to always be in control, no moment demonstrating this better than her famous “unsex me” speech. Polanski rather uniquely places this scene after Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's reunion, with Annis watching from the battlements of their castle as Duncan arrives for the night. The original text has her making the speech between reading Macbeth's letter and their reunion. The entire speech is done as a voice over, making it Annis's thoughts rather than a soliloquy, while her blonde hair blows angelically around her face. The choice of a voice over is interesting because the speech is essentially the vocalization of all of Lady Macbeth's true desires, and so to make it part of her thoughts rather than her speech makes the character more of an actress, more careful than either Dench or Fleetwood with the revelation of her intentions. Of the three portrayals, Annis’s is definitely the sanest seeming, and the hardest to imagine losing her mind, even though we know she will. Her voice and delivery are soft and pretty, like her appearance, always calm as she calls “spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts” to “unsex” (1.5.36-7) her and make her strong as she thinks a man should be. This is the fundamental element of Lady Macbeth's perversion of her own sexuality: she wishes to actually lose her sexuality. She yearns for “direst cruelty” (1.5.39) and for the “murdering ministers” (1.5.44), the evil spirits she calls upon, to “take [her] milk for gall” (1.5.44). Thus she would lose her sensitivity, associated with femininity, and the milk in her breasts, which makes her a mother, a good and righteous thing a woman can, and, by the standards of Shakespeare's time, should be. Making her milk into gall is especially violent, since gall is a poison, which, if fed to a baby through its mother's breasts rather than milk, would certainly kill it. Annis says all of this with a completely calm and clear face, again presenting the contrast between her appearance and intention.

            A Performance of Macbeth is filmed entirely on a black stage without a set, with little lighting, allowing the actors to move in and out of the shadows at their will. While Macbeth is figuratively a “dark” play, Performance is literally dark, bringing the metaphor into reality. Dench uses this to her advantage during the “unsex me” speech. After receiving news of Duncan's approach to her castle, she flicks her head almost uncannily to the camera to speak directly to the audience. The soliloquy becomes very personal, as though the audience is included in the planning of Duncan's murder, or else is taken right into Lady Macbeth's head for a few moments. After “under my battlements” (1.5.36), she moves to crouch on the floor, and reaches out for the “spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts” (1.5.36-7) as if to touch and be “unsexed” by them directly. Being filled “from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty” (1.5.38-9) scares Dench, however, causing her to give a little scream and disappear momentarily into the shadows behind her. She fears what lies ahead, tense and shaking, her Lady Macbeth wishing for the control which Annis so easily demonstrates. Returning to the light, she reaches forward once more, whispering now, her nervousness turned to terror, and asks the spirits to “make thick [her] blood” (1.5.39) so that she may be less of a frightened woman and more like the ruthless man she wishes her husband was. For although Macbeth is certainly a violent soldier, Lady Macbeth gives the impression that, were she a man, she would be even more cruel and violent than him.

            If the audience is unsure of Lady Macbeth's sanity before Fleetwood's rendition of the “unsex me” speech, it can have no doubt after it. Her delivery and body language make it clear that something about her is already unhinged. Some of the lines are yelled, and everything she says is given a stress that makes it almost painful to watch. The audience feels as if it is intruding on a private and terrible madness, even before her true madness occurs. When Fleetwood calls the spirits to take away her womanhood and mother's milk, it is as if she sees them before her, staring always past the camera, as though the spirits are just beyond the audience's shoulder. After the lines “unsex me here” (1.5.37) and “fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty” (1.5.38-9), she jerks and shudders, as if the spirits have entered her body and are changing her from the inside out just as she wants them to. It gives the impression of a séance, Fleetwood seeming simultaneously aroused and angered by what she asks for and anticipates. The hardness of her every word is complemented by her bony cheeks and pale skin, which form a strange kind of terrifying beauty which befits Lady Macbeth, a woman who both uses her femininity and sexuality to achieve her own ends, yet wishes it gone. She is all contradiction: that of interior and exterior, sexuality and lack thereof, and the way she treats other characters versus what she reveals to the audience. The most aggressively sexual of all three Lady Macbeths, Fleetwood ironically seems to have sex with every word she utters during the “unsex me” speech, though it is a violent sex that she does not seem to enjoy. At the end and climax, as it were, of the speech: “To cry 'Hold, hold!'” (1.5.50), she literally cries out each “hold,” one louder than the other, thrusting an arm forward to hold an imaginary dagger. A complete reversal of Annis's unexpected cruelty pitched against her sweet-seeming youth and with none of the fear of Dench's performance, Fleetwood’s performance is uniquely terrifying.

            Lady Macbeth's final scene, Act V, Scene I, is perhaps her most compelling. A woman constantly seeking power and control finally loses both completely, leaving her utterly vulnerable. In Polanski's Macbeth, this is made particularly clear by the costuming, or rather, lack thereof. Annis's Lady Macbeth, who always gives such attention to her clothing, appears completely naked in the darkness of her room, face pale and hair disheveled. She trembles and shakes constantly, fear physically wracking her body. She cries to herself as she quickly and frantically washes her hands, every movement agitated. The doctor who has been called by her gentlewoman waves a hand in front of her face before she speaks, and receives absolutely no reaction. Yet while she struggles within her own head, part of Lady Macbeth still tries to find control of the situation she imagines she is living. While reliving the night of Duncan's murder, Annis cries to herself like a confused and tired child on the lines “All the perfumes of/ Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O,o,o!” (5.1.40-1), while twitching as though possessed. By showing her naked, Polanski takes away her “armor,” as it were; the physical appearance she presents to the outside world is stripped away, leaving only her confused and terrified mind. Her hair and the camera angles never reveal anything explicit, but she is clearly at her most vulnerable and exposed, with no hope of protection. At the end of the scene, as she cries “Come, come, come, come” (5.1.53-4), she is bundled into her bed by her gentlewoman and the doctor, still whispering “To bed, to bed, to bed” (5.1.55) as she is laid down and tucked in. Completely gone is the childish confidence she displays earlier in the film. The Lady Macbeth we see in Act V, Scene I has been violated by her own actions and left, figuratively and literally, for dead.

            Dench's Lady Macbeth is consistently rather frantic throughout A Performance of Macbeth, but in Act V, Scene I, it is on a completely different level. She enters slowly, holding a candle, one hand up to her mouth, making scared little moaning noises, and sits at a table, where she begins to shakily rub her hands. Her little moans continue until she brings up her hands in front of her face, whereupon she speaks her first line “Yet here's a spot” (5.1.25) in a trembling whisper. Dench remains only on the verge of tears until the line “Hell is murky” (5.1.29), when she begins actually to cry, then stops to say “Fie, my lord, fie” (5.1.29), creating a feeling of transitioning back and forth between the moments she is reliving in her head. Because Dench's Lady Macbeth spends so much time shaking and whimpering, her moments of stillness are all the more impressive and eerie: when she stops to chastise Macbeth for being afraid, for example. How still and controlled she is in that moment makes her madness more evident. She breaks down on the line “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” (5.1.31-2), crying in earnest. She pushes herself to say the word blood, clearly terrified of it and her related memories. From there on, she grows louder and more hysterical with every sentence, crying and screaming until “O,o,o!” (5.1.41) becomes a long, torturous screech lasting an entire twenty-six seconds. On the line “There's knocking at the gate” (5.1.53), she once again makes direct eye contact with the camera so that the audience feels as though it is being spoken to, which is more terrifying than any long scream. We become drawn into her head for a few seconds, until she drifts away on “To bed, to bed, to bed” (5.1.55). Dench's occasional fear and almost constant nervousness from the beginning of A Performance of Macbeth has turned into a terror confused and tensed to breaking point. She appears neither feminine nor masculine, her sexuality completely overtaken by fear and the distortion of her mind. Lady Macbeth in fact loses her sexuality in this scene, though not at all in the way she wishes to earlier in the play.

            Fleetwood’s descent into madness is easy to anticipate, since she seems so unhinged and overdramatic already. However, in no way does this expectation detract from the impact her madness in Act V, Scene I has on the audience. She comes out of the elevator, just as she does in Act I, Scene V, again in white, though it is little more than a nightgown, without makeup and holding a large lantern. She tiptoes, stumbling slightly across the floor, then stops to rub her hands, though Fleetwood scratches more than rubs. In strong contrast to her previous delivery, the first line of the scene, “Yet here's a spot” (5.1.25) is almost inaudible and said with little inflection. Her next lines are increasingly panicky, until “One – two” (5.1.28), when she stops and looks up as if she has seen a ghost, which may, in fact, be the case. “Hell is murky” (5.1.29) has some of her original anger, and the tight angles of Fleetwood's face are once again tensed, but the violence in her voice is now the violence of fear. She turns with each following line, as though speaking to various people, tensed and sweating. Fleetwood uses some ticks in her performance that actors often use when playing the mentally unstable, such as an occasional twitch, twist of her mouth and lick of her lips. One of the most horrible moments of the “Great Performances” version of the scene is when Lady Macbeth, determined to clean the imagined blood, retrieves a bottle of what appears to be bleach from under a sink, and after struggling with it in a frenzy, pours it over her own hands, to the horror of the doctor and gentlewoman that attend her. Fleetwood's “O,o,o!” (5.1.41) is part of the violent spasms of her crying, the last one becoming a strangled scream of confusion, fear and pain. In a plea for companionship and comfort, she reaches out her hand to the doctor on “Give me your hand” (5.1.54), then draws it back suddenly, turning to the sink in front of her, and opens the tap only to cry out in horror when blood flows from it instead of water. This is the only moment in any of the three films that the audience sees Lady Macbeth's madness through her own eyes, and it is the most striking moment of the scene. Soon after this she totters away into the elevator, shivering and whispering repeatedly to herself: “To bed, to bed, to bed” (5.1.55). Lady Macbeth has lost the thread of her former self here, including her weaponized sexuality. Fleetwood's jagged edges have become blurred and distorted, just as her sexuality has lost its fervor. It becomes a malformed and twisted thing, just like the lines she delivers, and the state of her mind itself. She gives the impression of a victim of sexual violence whose life and mind are completely shattered as a result of what they have experienced, although in the case of Lady Macbeth, the fault for this violation is entirely her own.

            The tragedy of The Tragedy of Macbeth lies not only in the central plot, but within the countless other smaller tragedies that take place within it, Lady Macbeth's being no small part of those. The destruction of the mind and life of a person is a tragedy no matter the circumstances, though especially when a result of their own means. In every portrayal, the elements of that tragedy change, making Lady Macbeth beautiful, terrible, cruel and frightening in a different way. Her corrupted and convoluted sexuality, however, remain a vital part of every performance. Just as with the basic nature of every one of Shakespeare's characters, whether set in Medieval Scotland or Stalinist Russia, there is an element of changelessness to her, something that must be present in every performance of Macbeth to make Lady Macbeth the attractive and ruthless woman she is. Annis, Dench and Fleetwood all give exceptional and bone-chilling performances in very different ways, according to direction, filming, makeup, clothing and a host of other things, but what unites them all as Lady Macbeths is their dangerous and perverted sexuality. Without that, they would not be the great performances they are, and Macbeth would not translate and travel so well across so many time periods. At the core of all great adaptations of Shakespeare is, after all, a deep respect for the original text, without which there would not be any great adaptations.

WORKS CITED:
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GOOLD, Rupert, dir. Macbeth. Perf. Kate Fleetwood. Public Broadcasting Service, 2010. Film.
LAIR, John. "The Haunted: 'Macbeth.'" The New Yorker. New Yorker, 3 Mar. 2008. Web. 29 Apr. 2013.
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POLANSKI, Roman, dir. Macbeth. Perf. Francesca Annis. Caliban Films, 1971. Film.
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* (Minha filha, estudante de literatura na Boston University. Texto ganhador do Prêmio Alice M Brennan para ensaios acadêmicos)