Story of Her Life

Hello all! (Or perhaps just Mr. Darby)! This is my playlist for Lady Macbeth. Also, I accidentally did eleven songs, but I put the work in to find it, so I'll just post all of them. Enjoy!

http://open.spotify.com/user/1219133177/playlist/7cUU0xRo6IVGQTRswHOpsM

“I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” Disney’s Mulan

-         In the play, Lady Macbeth pleads that spirits “unsex [her] here” so that she has the strength to commit Duncan’s murder. During this song in Mulan, Shang, leader of the Chinese army, is training new recruits to be tough enough (like a man) to fight in a war and to be able to kill.

“The Ballad of Mona Lisa,” Panic at the Disco

-          This song is about a woman who is descending into a life of evil. She does not care at all about the consequences of her lifestyle and is “guaranteed to run [the] town.” In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth has begun to do bad things; she is in total control, and has sway over even her husband. The line “there’s nothing wrong with just a taste of what you paid for” could also be interpreted as Lady Macbeth’s argument to her husband that he deserves to be king.

 “I Will Prevail,” Wonderland

-          This song is from the musical Wonderland, a reimagining of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In the musical, the Mad Hatter is reworked as a dangerous female lead who is determined to take over Wonderland. To do this, she must make sure that Alice is “erased,” and says so in this song. "I Will Prevail" applies very nicely to Lady Macbeth, who is determined to get her husband on the throne no matter what she must do.

“A New Argentina,” Evita

-          The musical Evita is about Eva Peron, wife of the president of Argentina. In this song, she is convincing him that he ought to pursue the presidency as he is best suited for it. This song easily represents Lady Macbeth’s convincing her husband that it is the right thing for him to pursue the kingship and that everyone’s already got “the knives…out” anyway. Peron is reluctant, just as Macbeth is to commit the murders, but Eva and Lady Macbeth both have their eyes on the prize.

“Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Kiss of the Spider Woman

-          Kiss of the Spider Woman is a musical centered around the Latin American inmate Luis Molina. Molina has been in jail for several years, and he has learned to cope through fantasies about movies. One leading lady in particular, Aurora, captures his imagination. He loves all of her roles, but that of the Spider Woman. This song is sung during one of his fantasy sequences and is about how the Spider Woman kills with a kiss. Lady Macbeth, like the Spider Woman, has set a trap for her prey. She welcomes Duncan into her home at Inverness, but secretly plans his death.

“Good ‘n’ Evil,” Jekyll and Hyde

-          In this song from the musical Jekyll and Hyde, Lucy considers what good and evil are. She decides that they both have their merits, but she knows that to get what she wants, she must turn to evil. Good will not win her what she wants. Likewise, Lady Macbeth knows that Macbeth will not win the kingship without doing a little evil. After all, “good may be thankable, [but] evil is bankable.”

“Dog Eats Dog,” Les Misérables

-          In the musical based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel, Thénardier, the primary villain, searches the bodies of the fallen revolutionaries for money. It seems that Lady Macbeth and Monsieur Thénardier subscribe to the same ideology: “It’s a world where the dog eats the dog.” Lady Macbeth, like Thénardier, has no qualms about the deaths so long as she gets what she wants.

“Master of the House,” Les Misérables

-          This is another example from Les Mis, though from earlier in the musical. Monsieur Thénardier is content to be the eponymous master of the house, just like Macbeth is happy he is king. However, neither of these men exactly knows how to behave himself in public. By the end of this song, Madame Thénardier becomes extremely derisive and scornful of her husband. Lady Macbeth, too, shares a derision of her husband; she believes that he is “too full of the milk of human kindness” and that he is unable to be a very good leader. The tone that Madame Thénardier takes with her husband is exactly the same as the tone Lady Macbeth might take with hers.

“Fences,” Paramore

-          This song is about being watched constantly and how to put up a front to convince those watching that you are totally in control. It is like Lady Macbeth’s lecture to Macbeth about his behavior at the banquet. When he totally loses control, she is aghast; she’d certainly want him to be able to separate his internal guilt from his external and public appearance.

“You Don’t Know,” Next to Normal

-          (Are you surprised it’s another musical?) In Next to Normal, Diana Goodman must deal with her depression after the death of her son. She is taking many medications but is still having trouble dealing with life in any way. By Act IV in Macbeth, Lady Macbeth starts to feel scared and guilty about the murders she has enabled. This song is about going slowly crazy and being unable to stop that descent into madness.

 “New Divide,” Linkin Park

-          By the end of the play, it is implied that Lady Macbeth has killed herself because of the guilt she feels. This song’s lyrics may be interpreted as how she might have felt during that time. The lyric “fate had finally found me” could represent that she felt her crimes had caught up with her. The lyrics “give me reason […] to wash this memory clean” are reminiscent of her command to wash her hands of Duncan’s blood. She might have looked for some way to escape what she did up until the time when she ultimately ended her life.

And there you have it! Sorry again for all the musical numbers; I'm a bit of a theatre geek. I thought I'd end up with a playlist full of heavy metal, but it's crazy the places my mind decides to go instead. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it.