Dusty Death

I present my reader with a seemingly absurd school assignment which turned out to be quite a joy: choose a Shakespeare play, and change the setting. . .

Dusty Death

Despite the story of Macbeth being written in England, set in Scotland, and performed during the renaissance, the play transfers easily and beautifully into the American Wild West. Kings, thanes, nobles and citizens become mayors, sheriffs, bankers and servants, thus preserving the Elizabethan hierarchy. Most importantly, the Macbeths' desensitized culture was one that glorified violence and ambition (Woodbridge 224), much like the small towns we see in cowboy films, with duels in the street and proximity to death as just another aspect of daily living. Take away the Thane of Cawdor's use of iambic pentameter, remove the castles and the rapiers, and you can almost see a tumbleweed blowing through the gritty old town of Dunsinane, USA.

As with almost any reproduction of a Shakespeare play, this imagined tale of a western Macbeth must retain the essential elements of the original, while leaving behind some of the lesser points. We must first, then, determine which of Shakespeare's plot points are the most important '" the ones that we feel "make" the play. Certainly there must be some manner of catalyst, whether the defeating of rebels or a meeting with the three witches or both. Our hero must also commit murder upon his rightful lord, rising then to step into the gap he has created. No telling would be complete without the character of Lady Macbeth, whose influence over her husband cannot be ignored, and whose madness leads her eventually to a chilling suicide. And finally, of course, Macbeth must be overthrown, to fulfill a mysterious prophecy. Keep hold of these things, and whatever else we may change, Shakespeare's work will shine through.

As aforementioned, however, there also must be changes made to the play if our western setting is to be taken seriously. Shakespearean language, for one, is definitely out. To follow that, let us also shake off the outdated and un-American names that the Bard has given his characters: our supposed actors should heave a great sigh of relief upon learning they need not mention the cursed name of Macbeth, and can call him by the similar but much more familiar name "Murphy," which better fits our western theme. Finally, let us shrink the affairs of Scotland that they may fit into our little cowboy community, and that we may not have a full-blown siege on a castle in the last act, but a western styled shootout in the streets. In using such simple devices as these, and in making so few easy changes, the nation-wide, dramatized events of Macbeth may be performed in an understandable, believable setting that is easily recognized by modern audiences.

Dusty Death shall begin at the same point as Macbeth, that is, with the putting down of rebellion. It is through courage in battle that Macbeth wins such a high status. In our gunfighter town, the sheriff's deputy Murphy shall receive intelligence that a notorious bandit, being held for execution, will make his escape tonight. Rushing to the jail Murphy will encounter the banker, (Banquo,) who, because of his profession, always carries a weapon. Murphy enlists the banker's help and arrives at the prison just as outlaws are springing the condemned man. A bloodbath ensues, and all the villains are slaughtered in their escape. Act I scene ii of the Bard's play relates the tale of how Macbeth,

Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel,

Which smoked with bloody execution,

Like Valor's minion carved out his passage

Till he faced the [rebel] slave;

Which nev'r shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,

Till he unseamed him from the nave to th' chops,

And fixed his head upon our battlements (17-23).

These cruel, courageous feats are what buy Macbeth his respected status. If he is, as Linda Woodbridge implies, endowed with any "feminine pity," it is certain that he has suppressed it (226). Likewise, Murphy is a hardened gunfighter, quick on the draw and, at least for now, unafraid of Fortune. Our introduction to Macbeth '" and now to Murphy '" is steeped in blood, and that fact should not be overlooked. Make no mistake: this is a man of violence.

While the scene described above is certainly enough to set the play in motion, Shakespeare offers us something more: the three witches. To eliminate them entirely would be to erase from the story one of its most memorable aspects, remove one of Macbeth's key driving forces, and kill the supernatural subtleties that are prominent throughout the original work. Let us then be allowed a slight modification on these weird sisters, and roll them into the single personage of a gypsy fortune-teller and palm-reader, one Madame Hex. While she and her crystal ball may slide easily into the western genera, she represents Shakespeare's own witches, and emulates them exactly, planting dangerous seeds in the already-dark mind of our hero. By reading Macbeth, we already know what will happen when these seeds come to fruition. Murphy's violent nature will take on the guise of ambition, and drive him to murder.

That brings us to the true center of the play: Duncan's assassination. It is sometimes seen in cowboy films that in such a small town with no mayor, the sheriff is the ultimate authority, enforcing laws as he sees fit, and putting on the mantle of complete fascism. While Macbeth's leap from thane to king seems something greater than that of deputy to sheriff, let us not discount Murphy's desire for promotion, as the badge was a modern equivalent to the crown. Murphy then, being something of a celebrity after his exploits at the jail, will be paid a visit by his superior: a superior, we recall, whose position has been promised to Murphy. Sheriff Duncan has brought along his servant, a quiet African-American, and after Duncan has congratulated Murphy, drinking his health, he and his servant are shown to a chamber where they can sleep off the ale. In the middle of the night, however, Murphy, egged on by his wife, enters the room, stabs Duncan to death, and shoots the servant in the head. "I have done the deed," Macbeth tells his wife in II.ii.14. The next day, of course, everyone will believe his claim that the servant was responsible. In both versions we see a blind trust given to those of higher social standing, and a suspicion assigned to those despised underlings of the hierarchy. The fact that Murphy's tale is accepted is not to be viewed only as racism against the black manservant, but a critique on prejudice as a whole: the assumption that one man is honest simply because he can slaughter villains, and the assumption that another is dishonest, merely because he is "below" the rest of us.

In the wake of Duncan's death, Lady Macbeth warns her husband against giving too free a range to his fear and guilt. "These deeds must not be thought / After these ways; so, it will make us mad" (II.ii.32-33). Her prediction is only too true, as she will lose her mind and kill herself before the play is finished; and yet it was she who drove him to murder in the first place. Murphy's wife, Abigail, is the strong and determined woman typical of the western genera. Upon hearing of her husband's encounter with Madame Hex, Abigail urges Murphy to kill the unsuspecting sheriff, knowing that Murphy, now a local hero, will be free of suspicion. At last he submits to her will, making himself the highest authority in town, and his wife a rich, respected lady.

As Murphy becomes more and more comfortable with his new position, though, Abigail begins to have nightmares. She wakes up one night clawing at her skin, scratching herself raw just as her Elizabethan counterpart could not scrub clean her hands. The next night she rises in a panic and stumbles to the bath, obsessively scrubbing her body. In act V scene i of Macbeth, we see Lady Macbeth walking through the night, desperately trying to wash imagined blood from her hands: "Out, damned spot! Out, I say! -- What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" (38-46). Murphy's wife, unlike the Thane of Cawdor's, never touched Duncan's blood; yet she is still haunted by the deed she drove her husband to commit, as if the innocent blood were on her own face and hands rather than her husband's. Abigail also contrasts Shakespeare's heroine in that she is not content to clean only her hands, but her entire body. Certainly Macbeth's queen did well for someone with no pumps, no running water; but Abigail lives in the 19^th century, and is the most powerful woman for miles around. She immerses herself in the water and scrubs until her own blood runs down her arms and legs. These events repeat themselves until one night she approaches the bathtub calmly, undresses, slips into the water, and cuts her wrists with a razor. Her husband, distracted with his own affairs, has been no comfort to her. Her guilt, though pushed back from her conscious mind, has haunted her night after night until she put an end to it, still longing for the cleanliness that she associated with the water.

Finally, Murphy is left an angry widower in an old ghost town. His enemies are coming to do justice on him, and his only hope is in the words of Madame Hex: "No man born of woman shall ever do you harm." When Murphy's enemies ride into town, led by one Maxwell Fife, the friendless sheriff meets them with a scattergun and shoots two from off their horses. Dropping the scattergun he draws a revolver, and a brief shootout follows in which he is forced back into a saloon. They pursue him as he ducks out the back door, but their bullets never hit the mark; they cannot beat this man: he leads "a charmed life" (V.viii.12). Throughout the gunfight, Murphy continues to triumph over his enemies until only Fife is left. There's a hush as the two men face each other in the street, dust swirling about their legs. Murphy tells the prophecy to Fife, who spits and then answers: "I ain't no man born o' woman -- They cut me out when my mama died." Instantly Murphy draws his gun, but Fife shoots first, and Murphy is dead before he hits the ground. In the original play, Macbeth was given no dramatic last words, and his head was removed offstage. Our Sheriff Murphy will be given no more honor than he has shown his own victims. He is just another fallen gunfighter of the Old West.

Through the character of Macbeth, Shakespeare suggests that life is nothing more than "a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing" (V.v.26-28). We have seen Murphy kill outlaws as they escaped prison, we have seen him hailed as a hero and promoted to sheriff, he has committed murder and he has lost his wife, but in the end, none of it matters. In the end, he comes to the same fate as Abigail, the same fate as Duncan. In the end, he is led down the same path as the others: "the way to dusty death" (V.v.23).

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth in William Shakespeare, Four Great Tragedies: newly revised

edition . New York: Penguin Group '" New American Library, 1998.

Woodbridge, Linda. "Reading: Macbeth" in Stanley Wells, Lena Cowen Orlin. Shakespeare: an

Oxford guide . New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.