Lady Macbeth Breaks the Mould: Reconstruction of the Female Identity in Zinnie Harris’s Macbeth (an undoing)

Öz

Zinnie Harris (1972 -) is a prominent contemporary British playwright known for her original plays and rewritings of renowned Western male playwrights’ works. In her rewritings, Harris gives new stories to the popular female figures of Western drama to challenge the dominant strand of criticism about the original plays, especially regarding the common reviews of these female characters often produced by male critics with gendered biases. Although her recent play, Macbeth (an undoing) (2023), is explicitly based on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it apparently differs from it since Harris portrays Lady Macbeth as a self-conscious character aware of her fictionality who aims to offer her version of the plot generated by Shakespeare and indicate several gaps in it. In Harris’s version, Lady Macbeth emerges as a strong-willed woman with no intention to kill herself while Macbeth appears as the one with mental disorder. Besides giving more voice to Lady Macduff, who appears in only one scene (4.2) where she and her son are killed in Macbeth, Harris’s Lady Macbeth aims to acquit the women labelled as witches in Shakespeare’s period. Within this context, this article argues that Harris’s play is a medium through which she aims to reconstruct the female identity embodied by Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff and the witches in Macbeth and its later criticism by sexist voices. The purpose of the study is to focus on the individual stories of these female characters in Harris’s rewriting to question their conventional criticisms from a contemporary perspective offered by the playwright.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Zinnie Harris
• Macbeth (an undoing)
• William Shakespeare
• Macbeth
• female identity

Lady Macbeth Ezber Bozuyor: Zinnie Harris’in Macbeth (bir yıkım) Oyununda Kadın Kimliğinin Yeniden İnşası

Öz

Zinnie Harris (1972 -), özgün oyunlarının yanı sıra tanınmış Batılı erkek oyun yazarlarının eserlerinden adapte ettiği oyunlarıyla bilinen, çağdaş bir Britanyalı oyun yazarıdır. Harris, yeniden yazımlarında Batı tiyatrosunun bilinen kadın karakterleri hakkında genellikle erkek eleştirmenlerce yapılmış, taraflı yorumları sorgulamak amacıyla bu karakterlere yeni hikâyeler yazar. Yazarın Macbeth (bir yıkım) (2023) adlı oyunu açık bir şekilde William Shakespeare’in Macbeth (1606) oyununa dayansa da, Harris’in Lady Macbeth’i kendi kurgusallığının farkında olan ve Shakespeare’in anlatısındaki bazı boşlukları tamamlamak için bu anlatıya alternatif, yeni bir hikâye sunan bir karakter olarak tasvir etmiş olmasından ötürü oyun Macbeth’ten net bir şekilde ayrılır. Lady Macbeth kendi anlatısında hayatına son vermek gibi bir düşüncesi olmayan, irade sahibi bir kadın olarak çizilirken, akli dengesizlikleri olan Macbeth’tir. Lady Macbeth, Macbeth’te sadece tek bir sahnede (4.2) gördüğümüz ve bu sahnede oğluyla birlikte öldürülen Lady Macduff’a daha fazla konuşma ve kendini ifade etme fırsatı sunmasının yanı sıra, Shakespeare’in yaşadığı dönemde cadı olarak yaftalanan kadınların gerçekte suçsuz olduklarını ortaya koymaya çalışır. Bu bağlamda, bu makale Harris’in son oyunu aracılığıyla Macbeth ve onun geleneksel eleştirilerinde Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff ve cadıların temsil ettiği kadın kimliğini yeniden inşa etmeye çalıştığı fikrini ele alır. Harris’in yeniden yazımında bu kadın karakterlerin kişisel hikâyelerine odaklanan bu çalışmanın amacı, bu kalıplaşmış eleştirilerin geçerliliğini sorgulamaktır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Zinnie Harris
• Macbeth (an undoing)
• William Shakespeare
• Macbeth
• kadın kimliği

Kaynakça

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