The Post Quiz: Know Your Scottish Tragedy - Answers

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You're going to be really glad you know all this when your friend starts quoting those Friday the 13th movies. You'll be ready.

Know Your Scottish Tragedy: Answers

Yes, this play is weird. And hard to understand, because it's not in textspeak. You want homework help with that? We recommend the 'No Fear Shakespeare' version. Its paraphrases are highly entertaining.

Here are the answers, with edifying commentary of our own.

  1. The Thane's wife says, 'But screw your courage to the sticking place,
    And we'll not fail.' Where is 'the sticking place?'
    Wash your mind out. It's the mark on a crossbow.
  2. 'Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill/Shall come against him.' What combat technique enables this prophecy to come true?
    Camouflage.
  3. '…none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.' So how come MacDuff kills him?
    [SPOILER ALERT] MacDuff was born by C-section, which wasn't that common back then. This is sort of the 'lucky I'm not from Nottingham' loophole.
  4. 'Out, damned spot!' Is the Lady trying to get rid of a stain on the carpet, her pesky dog, or what?
    Or what. It's an imaginary bloodstain on her lily white hands, and she's sleepwalking. The Bard invented a lot of memes in this play.
  5. Long quote here:

    'A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,

    And munched, and munched, and munched. "Give me,"

         quoth I.

    "Aroint thee, witch!" the rump-fed runnion cries.

    Her husband’s to [an Undisclosed Location] gone, master o' th' Tiger;

    But in a sieve I'll thither sail,

    And like a rat without a tail,

    I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.'

    Where's the shapeshifting witch headed? [Hint: US Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson flubbed this answer.]
    Aleppo. We now call this kind of campaign ignorance 'an Aleppo moment'.
  6. The antihero of this play says, '. . .I am in blood

    Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,

    Returning were as tedious as go o’er.' What do we call this point today?
    The point of no return. This also reminds us of Pete Seeger.
  7. The Porter says, '. . .it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. . .' What the heck is he babbling about?
    Drink and 'lechery'. This quiz is turning out more like a US presidential debate by the minute.
  8. First Murderer: 'What, you egg?' Who is being thus addressed?
    The son of MacDuff. Warning to child actors: the Editor actually knew a young thespian who was so obnoxious at rehearsals that his fellow actors begged the First Murderer to kill him for real. Murph didn't: he was too busy trying to remember his lines, of which he had three. This was one of them.
  9. Second Witch: 'By the pricking of my thumbs,/Something wicked this way comes.' Who shows up next?
    Macbeth, natch. Oh, no, I said his name. . .where are the cedar chips? Exit, cursing. . .
  10. Somebody says, 'Alas, poor country, almost afraid to know itself! It cannot be called our mother, but our grave.' Who is he, and is he running for office?
    Ross, and no. But he's really skeptical about the guys who are.

In the end, the play came off well. Well, mostly. There was the problem that every time MacDuff came back onstage with the traitor's head, dripping blood, somebody in the audience giggled. This went on night after night, in spite of the lead actor/prop designer's attempt to make the head (a facsimile of his own head, mind you) look gorier and more frightening. Frankly, with that moustache, he resembled Vlad Tepes. The cast sent out spies (disguised as innocent college students) and found out why. In a recent previous incarnation, our Scottish Lord was a high school drama teacher. His students were in the audience. And every night, one would whisper in awe, 'That looks just like Mr McGregor!' And the giggling would start.

The moral of this quiz is: brush up your Shakespeare. And be prepared for teenagers in the cheap seats.

Nicol Williamson murdering Macbeth.
Post Quiz and Oddities Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

31.10.16 Front Page

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