Macbeth: Doing and Undoing

The wonderful Scotland-based writer Zinnie Harris has been quietly undoing the western theatrical canon for 20 years. She’s rewritten numerous classics from a feminist perspective from Aeschylus’s The Oresteia to Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. And the latest one is Macbeth (an undoing) which she has rewritten very strongly, bringing Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff far more into the centre of the action and engaging with the critical history of the play as well. It’s a sensationally smart piece of work.

So I was very flattered when she asked if I’d like to write an essay to go in the published text. I became very interested in the instability and openness of Shakespeare’s original text and the way it invites this kind of response. I note in the article how it invites us too fill in the gaps and - by focusing particularly on the complexity of the word ‘done’ which the play examines with singular intensity (it appears more often in this play than any other), it seems to be about the incompletability of all actions - including, perhaps, writing a play. I touch on gendered responses to the play and the play(s)’s handling of gender, the troubled place of children in the text, and Macbeth’s essential openness.

Rebellato, Dan. ‘What’s Done Is Done.’ In Macbeth (an Undoing) by Zinnie Harris. London: Faber & Faber, 2023. pp. 157-64.