Chasing the Magic of Macbeth
Yesterday, during a casual chat with some of my students, I found myself drifting into a memory that has stayed vivid for more than two decades. I was telling them about my very first encounter with Shakespeare, not as a teacher, but as a nervous, slightly overconfident student.
It was 2003. I remember walking into the living room, armed with what I thought was a clever plan. I told my mother I needed some money to buy a copy of Macbeth. The idea was to increase the amount and use the rest for a movie and a good meal. I imagined she would hand it over without question. What I did not know was that my mother had been there before me, twenty years earlier, in 1983, when she studied Macbeth as part of her BA in English Language and Literature. Without a word, she disappeared into a cupboard, and out came an old, slightly yellowed paperback. The cover was faded, the pages a little brittle at the edges, the kind of book that feels like it carries the weight of its own history. That was to be my Macbeth.
From the first class, I was spellbound. I had walked into the world of Shakespeare with no real idea of what to expect and walked out each day with my head buzzing. The experience was transformative. In fact, it may have been the moment I began to seriously consider teaching as a life’s work. If writing had been a more financially secure profession, I might have gone that way instead. But teaching (especially teaching literature) felt like a way to live inside stories while still sharing them with others.
And the biggest reason for that? Professor C. C. Thomas.
Professor Thomas was not just a teacher; he was an event. Every class was a performance in itself. He took Macbeth apart like a master craftsman dismantling a clock, laying out each gear, spring, and cog in perfect order, showing us how the whole intricate thing came alive. The plot, the politics, the language: all laid bare with such clarity that we could almost hear the gears turning.
I never missed a single lecture. Sitting there in the lecture hall felt like watching an artist paint live on stage. His knowledge was encyclopedic, but it never felt heavy or distant. He could tell you about the exact streets of London where Shakespeare might have walked, the atmosphere of the theatres, the plays that competed for audiences, even the pies and ales that spectators enjoyed during performances. He seemed to know every word Shakespeare ever wrote, and more impressively, he carried most of it in his memory.
He rarely glanced at the book. Instead, he would close it, lean forward slightly, and recite entire speeches, weaving them into stories, pulling apart phrases, tracing meanings across centuries. From a plain Macmillan edition of Macbeth, he conjured a world: one moment history, another moment gossip from the 1600s, another moment a sharp linguistic observation. It felt like magic, and we, the students, were happy to sit wide-eyed as he reached into his hat and pulled out endless rabbits of meaning.
Years later, when I became Head of Faculty for English, I did not hesitate when it came time to choose a play to teach. I picked Macbeth immediately, knowing that in some corner of my mind, I was chasing the memory of those classes. I wanted to see if I could recreate even a shadow of that wonder for my own students.
When we began, I could see the apprehension in their faces. Shakespeare can be intimidating; the language, the setting, the rhythm of it all. But as we made our way through the first act, the fear began to fade. I shared the etymology of key words, explained how the play connected to real historical events, described how it would have been staged in Shakespeare’s time. By the second week, they were leaning forward, asking questions, eager for the next scene. In truth, I probably reached only ten percent of what Professor Thomas once did. But even that was enough to awaken curiosity, to show them that Shakespeare is not a stone monument, but a living, breathing voice from another time.
I taught Macbeth a few times after that. Then I gave it a rest and turned to 'Antony and Cleopatra'. Now, I am returning to The Tragedy of Macbeth, after two years!
The books arrived yesterday, fresh from the press, with that new-paper scent. I stood there watching my students write their names in the front pages, neat or messy depending on the hand, then carefully place them on the shelves. It felt almost ceremonial, as though each book was being claimed, but also entrusted.
We are still in the middle of our Bob Dylan unit, but I can already feel the shift coming. Soon we will step out of the smoky cafés of 1960s America and into the dark, windswept landscapes of Scotland, where ambition, fate, and murder dance together in the shadows.
And I, for one, cannot wait to watch that magic unfold again.
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