Jeffrey Keeten's Reviews > Macbeth

”There is only so much a man can take before he gives in, before he breaks every tattooed oath and does everything---absolutely everything---he thought he would never do. For eternal loyalty is inhuman and betrayal is human.”


The Sam Worthington and Victoria Hill Scottish Gangster version of Macbeth (2006) is my favorite Macbeth and probably the closest cinematic version to this novel.

Inverness.

1970s.

Setting: Run down industrial town with toxic air and poisoned earth. Crime is high as more and more of the population becomes addicted to an illicit drug called Brew, made in a witch’s caldron. (I know, heavy, right?) Hecate is the drug lord who, behind the scenes, manipulates everything.

Duncan is the police commissioner.

All Hail Duncan.

He is honest, and if given a chance, he will lead Inverness back to a happy better life.

So it all begins with a promotion that is given to a man named Macbeth. He is the head of SWAT, but they want to move him up to head of Organized Crime. It is a job that (Mac)Duff, his longest friend, has coveted. The decision is based off the fact that everyone in positions of power have come from the well educated, upper classes. Macbeth comes from the lower classes and was once completely strung out on Brew. Hecate, always one to sense opportunity, dispatches the witch Strega to Macbeth to share a prophecy with him. Hecate knows that Macbeth is the very guy he has been looking for to derail Duncan. ”The only person more predictable than a junkie or a moralist is a love-smitten junkie and moralist.”

Macbeth is love-smitten, indeed, with the lovely woman who calls herself Lady Macbeth. She has fiery red hair, elegance, and flair that makes men go weak in the knees. She owns the casino in town, but her ambitions go way beyond controlling gambling. She thinks Macbeth should listen to the prophecy and become police commissioner, but why stop there? Why not mayor, as well?

All Hail Macbeth.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Macbeth must become someone else, someone he fought, conquered, and left bleeding in the gutter of his past. ”He had to become that other Macbeth, the one he had buried so deep, that crazy flesh-eating corpse he had sworn he would never be again.” To be that man, he needs brew. He needs brew, sliding like silver snakes through his bloodstream, to give him the courage/cowardice to kill Duncan. ”Is this a dagger which I see before me?”

Ambition achieved and yet unearned creates anxiety. Who can rest easy on the bones of their enemies when they weren’t truly their enemies, but good men more deserving? As Macbeth does more and more to friends who know too much and to those who simply stand in his way, ”Red feathers were stuck to the walls around them;” paranoia becomes his constant companion, and his weaknesses become more evidence .

He is on a collision course with Duff, who becomes the only man who has a chance to stop him.

All Hail Duff?

Out of all the plays that I’ve read by William Shakespeare, Macbeth is my favorite. I haven’t read them all so I do reserve the right to change my Shakespeare affiliation as I work my way through the Bard’s amazing contribution to English Literature. It turns out to be a terrible alliance, due to the fact that Lady and Macbeth spur each other’s ambitions which, once achieved, turn out to be hollow and too highly priced. The greed for power is strong, and like a drug, people can start to want more, always chasing the feeling of that high when they first triumphed.

Inexplicably, I’ve always liked Macbeth. I find myself, whether it is a play, a movie, or this novel, rooting for him even though he isn’t really that likeable. I see the promise in him that is overcome by the evil in him. I’m always hopeful that some writer or movie producer will pull him back from the brink and set him down on a path to be the man I know he could be. Of course, redemption is not the theme of the play, nor of any movie or book starring Macbeth. He must be consumed by his own guilt and insecurities. He must ultimately be destroyed by the weight of his misdeeds.

There are ghosts, witches, and playful uses of characters. Seyton is transformed into some creature beyond the pale of human understanding. Everything I’ve read says that Shakespeare never intended the name Seyton to infer that he was Satan, but where the Bard may have let the opportunity flitter away in rewrites, Jo Nesbo did not. Nesbo certainly has fun with the characters. Caithness, a Scottish nobleman in the play, is cast as a woman in this novel, the lover of Duff. Hecate is a witch in the play, but becomes a male drug lord in this novel. Nesbo stays reasonably close to the original plot.


I loved the 2015 version of Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender.

I’m really impressed with the first volume I’ve read in the Hogarth Shakespeare series. Hogarth was the original press owned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Next on my list will be Margaret Atwood’s retelling of The Tempest. The others in the series are Tracy Chevalier retelling Othello, Gillian FLynn retelling Hamlet, Howard Jacobson retelling The Merchant of Venice, Edward St. Aubyn retelling King Lear, Anne Tyler retelling The Taming of the Shrew, and Jeanette Winterson retelling The Winter’s Tale. If they have not commissioned your favorite play yet, stay tuned. This novel was a bloody blast. I set aside all other books to focus on reading it over the weekend and found it, frankly, invigorating. Shakespeare made into a page turner.

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