Every year as the clock approaches the strike that sounds 01:00 tonight in Australia (17:00 hours EU time) I tend to remember the good old Shakespeares MacBeth.
MacBeth
Thou losest labor.
As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
I bear a charmèd life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.
MacDuff
Despair thy charm,
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripped.
Here is the translation for all those who don’t understand English:
MacBeth
You’re wasting your time trying to wound me. You might as well try to stab the air with your sword. Go fight someone who can be harmed. I lead a charmed life, which can’t be ended by anyone born from a woman.
MacDuff
You can forget about your charm. The evil spirit you serve can tell you that I was not born. They cut me out of my mother’s womb before she could bear me naturally.
Here are some excellent movie shots, first the newer versions:
& for all my family of yesteryear, mein volk und familien in Deutschland (the old country as many a person would „say“).
Here ist the scene that I so dearly remember from a much older movie which was directed by Roman Polanski. It was (if memory serves me right) the first movie that he directed after losing his family to a savage mass murderer and the scenes are befitting.
PS. I love it when he reaches for his head as it falls off, just one of those little things in the movie that made me laugh!
For I was a cesarean child (untimely ripped) too and the nurse wrote in the time of this dastardly deed as being exactly 01:00 hours (Australian time)
I don’t normally celebrate this deed that was done almost half a century ago, but in some way watching Macbeth has become a tradition for me, if not on the screen then in my thoughts and visualizing (remembering) the old Polanski version and the plays up on the stages that I went to see. I can’t recite them all, but I do remember all the acts and scenes as they were so grandly played by the (stage) actors.
Never did like those stockings/pantyhose/pantyhousen that the actors wore on the stage, that is why I guess I prefer the movie versions!
So today I am all into this movie, watching it even though it isn't on my TV screen, and tonight as I lay my head down to sleep so far away from home, I shall be watching MacBeth, a wonderful tale of times long past, when chivalry, honour and loyalty were things that were considered to be virtues.
Ohhhh, how I remember the stories that my dad used to tell me about his days, as he was born in 1930 and he grew up in a world in which all things changed, yet it was his generation that set the foundations to Australia becoming the best country and nation on this earth.
God Bless Australia and all the people who gave of themselves to make it our home that we so much love and respect.