The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1089.  Wednesday, 29 October 1997.

[1]     From:   W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 28 Oct 1997 13:02:29 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 8.1087  Macbeth Whodunit?

[2]     From:   James Marino <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 28 Oct 1997 14:16:29 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 8.1087  Macbeth Whodunit?

[3]     From:   Michael Mullin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 29 Oct 1997 02:56:09 +1100
        Subj:   Macbeth Whodunit?


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 28 Oct 1997 13:02:29 -0500
Subject: 8.1087  Macbeth Whodunit?
Comment:        Re: SHK 8.1087  Macbeth Whodunit?

Who killed Duncan? I know who did.  Lady Macbeth's father. Remember she
thinks that Duncan looks like her father as he (i.e., apparently Duncan)
is sleeping.  Well, it really is her father.  He's already done in
Duncan, hears Lady coming, hides Duncan under the bed, and jumps into
the bed himself. Probably Ross(e) has a part in the plot too, of course.
Almost everyone else in the play is a dupe.

Yours, Bill Godshalk

[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           James Marino <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 28 Oct 1997 14:16:29 -0700
Subject: 8.1087  Macbeth Whodunit?
Comment:        Re: SHK 8.1087  Macbeth Whodunit?

Thurber is wily, having, amongst other sly accomplishments, written a
book about himself disguised as a memoir of Harold Ross. Richard Tobias
in *The Art of James Thurber* writes:

"The sketches in *My World and Welcome To It* frequently use for their
arbitrary law fools who push the freedom of an easy permissive society
to an absurd conclusion. An American lady in "The Macbeth Murder
Mystery" reads *Macbeth* against all fact, as if it were a murder
story." Tobias comments on parallels in the other stories in the
collection and concludes "The freedom to think and act in error leads
these characters astray until the noble folly of the comic hero in each
story asserts itself in comic victory."

(By the way, Tobias's phrase about fools pushing their freedom to error
has a special echo that resounds in academic halls today.)

Regards
James

[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Michael Mullin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 29 Oct 1997 02:56:09 +1100
Subject:        Macbeth Whodunit?

Of course it was Lady Macbeth's father, she even says so, having spotted
him in Duncan's bed.  He killed Duncan, jumped into the bed when he
heard her come in, and then spooked Macbeth with that eerie stuff about
murdering sleep, then hung around as an "Old Man" to case the reaction.
before heading back to England to pull his quackery with the King's Evil
mumbo jumbo.  Never willing to leave well enough along, he sent Lady M's
nasty English stepsisters to dope up Macbeth at the banquet _ all
because she'd been a teen-age mother who'd embarrassed the family by
attempting infanticide (the baby lived and was named Edmund, but that's
another play).

MM

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