dear macbeth...

The title of my Humanities course this term is called “Drama,” where we have been discussing the role of queens and gender roles in theater. The theme of the first unit involved recognizing the defining qualities of “queens.” My classmates and I debated differences between historical and modern queens in order to later analyze Lady Macbeth’s role as a queen. I really enjoyed these debates because I changed my perception of the stereotypical queen to a more inclusive and positive interpretation. For the first unit of Drama, we read “Macbeth” aloud in class. Gender roles in Macbeth contradict the societal expectations of when it was written. Traditionally, men were seen as strong and powerful, while women were supposed to stay at home and care for children. However, the character Lady Macbeth, for example, displays a very dominant role in her relationship with Macbeth, who was very indecisive and unsure of himself at first. Based on the portrayal of gender norms in Macbeth, my classmates and I have written sonnets about gender roles directed to a specific character. Consisting of fourteen verses, sonnets include three quatrains, one couplet, and a volta (plot twist in line 9 or 13). See if you can identify the volta in my sonnet! Speaking of which, my sonnet is directed towards Macbeth, the main character. I would tell Macbeth that being a man doesn’t make you strong and powerful, but having confidence in your skills can make you more of a “man.” Not necessarily a man in terms of gender, but in the sense of being an authentic version of yourself. To be a man in the time of Macbeth, it was not unpopular to have a sense of entitlement (knowingly or not). Likewise, Macbeth doesn’t explicitly address gender roles because he has power by default, as a man. It’s possible that his wife discusses this matter more because she knows what it’s like to be a woman at this time. She makes comments like in Act 1, Scene 5, “... unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to toe top-full of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse…”. However, both characters fail to realize that strength has nothing to do with gender. 

Sonnet: 

Witches have prophesied masterdom, a crown upon thy head,

And if it’s a man you want to be

The outcome you will dread

Through the lens of a woman thou shall see.

Dear Macbeth,

Conjure enow strength from within,

Or they will smell greed on thy breath,

As loyalty to your true self runs thin.

Thou can deflect the temptation of a shiny crown,

And blood on thy hands,

Or do your concerns lay under Lady Macbeth’s frown,

Who is always with a plan?

If “ Present fears are less than horrible imaginings,”

Killing will only lead to your maddening.

I enjoyed reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth out loud with my classmates and having debates about greed and ambition amongst characters. I have read some Shakespeare before, but I never enjoyed it on my own. I am very grateful for my classmates who took on the roles and presented with such enthusiasm! As for this project, I enjoyed revising my sonnet by having my peers look at it. I think this helped make my message to Macbeth more clear, but still keeping a Shakespearean theme. I think the difficult part of this AP was making sure that my sonnet stuck to the rhyme scheme and required number of lines. Fourteen lines ended up being much less than I thought, so I really had to condense what I wanted to say. Overall, I am glad I got to try a new form of writing and relate it to a contemporary issue that affects all of us.