The Authenticity of Hecate in Macbeth Essay -- Macbeth essays

The Authenticity of Hecate in Macbeth The authenticity issue of Macbeths Hecate endures. Recent critics still argue slightly whether the scenes are Shakespearean, why they are or are not, and what the implications are one way or the other. Some critics cling to the authenticity of the Folio while others quiver their copies of Middletons The Witch in protest. The modern director and depicter then will find no clear direction to read or not to read from textual scholarship. Instead, would-be travellers to the world of Macbeth had better consider their options and ask specifically what does Hecate add with her appearance and how do these additions impact the play? Some critics have do the mistake of trying to dismiss Hecate as a fetching song-and-dance girl. In his Introduction to Macbeth, editor Kenneth Muir remarks The Hecate passages were clearly invented to introduce the songs and Middleton is usually blamed for these insertions (xxxiii). But more than recent critics like Henri Suhamy take umbrage with both the form and the substance of this argument. Suhamy notes the direction printed in italics in the Folio, after line 33 (III,v)--Musicke, and a verse--does not mention any identifiable song, contrary to what is indicated by most editors (274). Stallybrass seems also to believe that Hecate is there to dance, but at least he assign her with a particularly important number the dance of Hecate and the six Witches gives a concrete dramatization of the deed without a name (IV.i.49) which reverses the whole tramp of Nature (200). What Hecates interpolation really supplies, however, is order and much more balance, authority, direction, and reason are all part of the substance she provides. ... ...ologie. In Minor Prose Works. Ed. James Craigie. Edinburgh Scottish Text Society, 1982. Muir, Kenneth. Introduction. In Macbeth. Ed. Kenneth Muir. New York Routledge, 1992. Palmer, D.J. A impudently Gorgon visual effects in Macbeth. In Focus on Macbeth. E d. arse Russell Brown. Boston Routledge, 1982. Perkins, William. The Damned Art of Witchcraft. (xeroxed copy) Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Ed. Kenneth Muir. New York Routledge, 1992. Stallybrass, Peter. Macbeth and Witchcraft. In Focus on Macbeth. Ed. John Russell Brown. Boston Routledge, 1982. Suhamy, Henry. The Authenticity of the Hecate Scenes in Macbeth Arguments and Counter-Arguments. In French Essays on Shakespeare and His Contemporaries What Would France With Us? Ed. Jean Marie Maguin and Michele Willems. Newark University of Delaware Press, 1995.