ARGUMENTS
MUCH ADO
MacBirrP
is mildly amusing in a collegiate way, uninventive,
prosy, without much dramatic or literary interest. The only reason I can
see for pushing this opus is a political one: for this rewriting of
Macbeth
implies-unmistakably, I think- that the Johnsons were in–
volved in the murder of Kennedy, an event from which Mr. Johnson
indubitably profited. The whole point and purpose of
M acBird
is to
recast Shakespeare's tragedy, and if there is any fun at all in the work,
it is probably in its casting: Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird are the
murderers, John F. Kennedy is a not nice Duncan, Robert Kennedy an
unlikable Macduff; and of the Three Witches one is an old, one a new
and one a Muhammed Speaks leftist. Does this add up to anything
more than college foolery? Certainly not to a warning against the
American way of life, as Eric Bentley suggests.
MacBird
is not about the
American way of life, and it is only about the American way of politics
if one thinks Mr. Johnson had his predecessor assassinated. Did he?
One cannot, I think, dodge this question in reading and judging
MacBird,
as I imagine most of those who have supported the play want
the question dodged.
Certainly Dwight Macdonald wants to dodge it. In his piece on
MacBird
in the
N ew York Review of Books
(Dec. 1) , he writes: "The
most disturbing and 'controversial' aspect of
M acBird
is that the epony–
mous villain murders John Ken O'Dunc. . . .
If
this is taken to be the
author's serious-or even satirical-implication, then her play sinks to
l.
MAcBIRD. By Barbara Garson. Grassy Knoll Press. $.95.
