ABSTRACT
In Macbeth that effect is figured first as an attack on the state and then as perpetrated by it. The play’s political ambiguity is partly attributable to its double immersion in the acts of terrorist and actions of state terror. Of course, its theatrical landscape makes the Gunpowder Plot itself seem rather routine. Shakespeare serves up not merely secret letters, safe houses, murderous scheming, and sudden interventions of justice but also vanishing witches, floating daggers, disappearing ghosts, visions appearing out of cauldrons, human organs falling into them, and even walking trees, as though John Le Carré had been made over by J. K. Rowling. James Shapiro describes Macbeth’s complex language as symptom of Shakespeare’s progressive withdrawal from acting, victory of private thinking over public speaking. If true, that career choice coincided with a story in which the difficulty of speaking is not only a topic but also a principle of communication, not least when the illusion of sincerity is greatest.
