Macbeth (illustrated by Gareth Hinds)

Even though Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays (I think only The Comedy of Errors has fewer lines), most productions still make a fair number of cuts, and we shouldn’t be surprised that a graphic novel adaptation, coming in at 134 pages, would be any different. Gareth Hinds doesn’t go wrong in getting rid of Hecate’s appearance before the witches in Act III Scene v (which Shakespeare might not have written), as well as the long and (in my opinion, tedious) exchange between Malcolm and Macduff in Act IV Scene iii. This isn’t a full-text Macbeth, nor should it be.

Purists may take fairer exception to places where the language has been simplified or expurgated. Among the foul ingredients going into the witches’ cauldron, for example, there’s a “Finger of birth-strangled babe / Ditch-delivered by a drab.” That second line, identifying the strangled babe as having been birthed by a prostitute in a ditch, is omitted by Hinds. And at another point a notorious crux is done away with in Macbeth’s concern over washing the blood from his hands:

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

Should that final line read “Making the green one, red”? As in making the green ocean red? Or should it be read as saying “Making the green, one red”? Meaning making the entire ocean turn red? Hinds avoids the problem by changing the line to “No, this my hand will rather stain the great seas crimson.” Which is at least clearer, if you’re no fan of ambiguity.

As far as Hinds’s visual representation of the play goes, I think there’s good and bad. The good takes the form of a lot of interesting concepts like the witches first appearing as birds perched in a tree, Macbeth’s elongated shadow taking the form of a dagger as he sets off to kill Duncan, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth literally wading in blood after the scene with Banquo’s ghost (where Banquo’s ghost takes several different, monstrous forms), and Lady Macbeth’s obsessive hand-washing represented by multiplying sets of scrubbing hands. The not-so-good is mainly down to Hinds’s figures, which all look stiff and artificial to me. Adding to this effect is the lettering, which is just a regular font that doesn’t go well with the action and adds a layer to the generic feel. I wonder if comic lettering is a dying art now though. Too bad if it is. It’s something we often overlook, but it can make a difference.

Graphicalex