‘This little hand’: Gesturing Lady Macbeth.Catriona Bolt is one of this year’s students studying the

‘This little hand’: Gesturing Lady Macbeth.Catriona Bolt is one of this year’s students studying the Shakespeare Studies MA that we run jointly with King’s College London. In this blog, inspired by her MA research, she reflects on the use of gesture in performances of Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare’scompany of actors – including the man himself – understood acting through aclassical prism. The three tenets of the Roman lawyer Cicero’s handbook fororators were docere, delectare, movere: to teach, to delight, and to persuade. Even if you don’tknow any Latin, you might be able to guess another meaning for movere: move. You can yourself movephysically, or you can move someone else emotionally, which is closer to whatCicero meant. Early modern actors moved their audiences through accent and action, again key reference points for Roman orators. Accentdescribed speaking the verse, while action meant the accompanying gestures.While we’ve developed many more techniques and theories about acting since theGlobe was shut down in 1642, students at drama school today still have movementand voice classes daily, and most productions at the new Globe will have aMovement Director and a Vocal Coach in their company.Gesture is aspecific part of movement that normally uses the hands and arms. Our hands areone of our primary communication tools – for those who use sign language theyare sometimes the primarycommunicator. In Titus Andronicus,Lavinia is doubly robbed of the means to communicate her brutal assault as bothher tongue and her hands are removed. Good actors will use their handsexpressively to convey how their character is feeling, sometimes using gestureto speak what is unspoken in the text. Perhaps the most famous example of thisin Shakespeare comes towards the end of Macbeth,when Lady Macbeth signifies her breakdown by repeatedly rubbing and wringing –‘washing’ – her hands, which have come to symbolise her guilty conscience. Ininterpreting Lady Macbeth at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (2018), Michelle Terryemployed brilliant gestural work to build a character with the terrifying,ultimately self-destructive ability to disconnect from her own actions. As we first saw her, Terry’s LadyMacbeth was hunched upstage, alone, over a letter from her husband (I.v).However, as she reached the “unsex me here” soliloquy, Terry moved forward tocommand the space, holding a taper to light her face. This speech is more usually accompanied by expansive gesturethat reflects its physical content. For example, Judy Dench’s celebratedinterpretation for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1979 saw her act outa fearful physical sequence in evoking ‘you spirits that tend on mortalthoughts.’ Terryhardly moved except to address the upper galleries, bringing a chillingdetermination to her performance. In gesturing little, a large part of hercommunicative power went untapped during this opening scene – in fact thisbecame Lady Macbeth’s most potent weapon, because it meant she could usegesture to deceive other characters in the play-world; even when alone, hergestures were unnatural, divorced from her feelings and intentions. For us asaudience members, it established a convention. While Lady Macbeth was alone,she gestured and moved little. But in the following scene, Macbeth (played byPaul Ready) arrived and Terry played much more physically, hence moreexpressively; when Joseph Marcell’s Duncan arrived, her gestures were stylisedand courtly. So we saw that her original restraint was a deliberate choice, andthat Lady Macbeth was a frighteningly good actor, even for her husband.This patterncontinued throughout the play, until a climactic scene between her and Macbethafter the banquet (III.iv). Terry’s gestures towards Ready throughout wereresponsive, not assertive, as her character manipulated his. But as Macbethbecame more unhinged, Lady Macbeth became less able to control him. During thebanquet she restrained him, holding her arms out to get rid of the rest of thecourt; by the end of this scene, he was throwing her around the stage, masteringher physically as he was unable to rhetorically. Terry closed the act alonewith a scream.Lady Macbethappears only once more, in the sleepwalking scene (V.i), and as she does we aregiven a detailed description of her gestures that, particularly in thisparticular production, signposts her loss of control. These gestures arefocused on her hands, which she rubs repeatedly to wash away the blood she seesthere; her final gesture is to reach for her husband’s hand: “Come, come, come,come, give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone.” Terry, hunched and tinyin an oversized nightgown, sobbed piteously as she seemed to physically wrestlewith herself. Sleepwalking, her gestures had finally caught up with herconscience. Her hands were in tune with her thoughts, and she could no longerdistance herself from her actions.Macbeth production photography by Johan Persson  -- source link
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