For that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

The real estate market is so crazy in New York City that I could actually imagine some real estate agent renting out a gallows to someone to live in.

“These are handcrafted hardwood floors and you’ll notice here at the center, a convenient trap door. This comes in very handy for garbage scraps or pesky visitors. This tall frame here provides a strong architectural element that will be eye-catching to any visitors you may have. An artisanal wooden staircase leads you into the space and out, if you prefer not to use the trap.”

The gallows-maker;

The thing is – isn’t a gallows maker really a carpenter? I mean – most gallows are constructed from wood. And I have to hope that there wasn’t so much call for gallows that there weren’t gallows specialists – ones who ONLY built gallows. You’d have to be a traveling gallows maker if you wanted to make a living like that.

I mean – it would be wild if that was why hanging people became a trend. Some gallows maker comes to town and is such a good salesman that the town decides they need to hire him to build a gallows and once they have a gallows they have to USE it, they can’t have given all that money to the gallows-maker and not USE what he made for them. And so groups of people became murderers, just because one charming sociopath sold them a gallows.

Go to.

Despite my facility and long term familiarity with Shakespeare’s language, I almost never drop it into my daily speech. I know people who do but it’s, for me, almost like a faucet and when it’s off, it’s off and when it’s on, it’s on.
Go to is one of those phrases that I’d enjoy having access to in my daily use. I never think of it – because the faucet is off – but whenever I’ve had occasion to say it in scenes, I have enjoyed it and its effect immensely, especially in repetition. As in, “Go to. Go to.”
It is somehow so much better than “Go on.” It has a flavor of “Get out of here.”

If thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself –

The notes on Genius suggest that this “confess thyself” is about admitting fault of some kind on the point of inquiry. Sure, fair play.
But – I cannot help but wonder about confession in the religious sense in a passage that is ABOUT the bible. There’s a lot of interesting exploration to be found in looking at the historical context of the Protestant/Catholic issues of the time.
It was illegal to be Catholic at this time but that doesn’t mean no one was Catholic nor that artifacts of Catholicism weren’t all over the Renaissance in England. This might be a really potent moment to look at through that lens.

I’ll put another question to thee.

At my reading, I made little categories for people to write down their responses. They were: Something I Liked, This Made Me Think About -, Thoughts About the Title and Questions.

I only got two pieces of feedback that weren’t useful and/or frustrating and they were both criticisms framed as questions. That is, they weren’t so much actual questions as a Jeopardy style re-phrasing – as in it’s actually an answer, not a genuine question. As in: “Why is this such a shitty question?”

So…next time – I’m leaving questions off my list. Or – I’ll keep it and then just immediately throw the responses in the garbage.

The Scripture says “Adam digged:”

I would love to see a translation of the Bible that had this quality of language. Like – sort of salt of the earth irreverent voices instead of the authoritative distancing quality it usually has.

I mean – I do not know my scripture but I was 100% sure that it did not say “Adam digged.” Turns out it’s usually translated as “till the earth” and nothing about that style of language makes me want to read it.

But a Gravedigger’s Bible?
I’d read that in a heartbeat.

How dost thou understand the Scripture?

Honestly, I really don’t.
Not well at all.
It doesn’t make much sense to me
And when I encounter it, it seems
Shocking that people have built their lives around such a weird book.
I mean – Bleak House, I’d understand.
I could treat Dickens as my scripture.
I could suggest that we all strive to be more like Esther Sommmerset or Mr. Jarndyce.
But the Scripture, scripture?
I don’t get it at all.

What, art a heathen?

Lightbulb! A heathen has its roots in the idea of one from the heath and one from the heath is godless (strictly speaking.) So when the witches plan to meet Macbeth on the HEATH – they are meeting him in a specifically godless place.
This makes me want to try my production of Macbeth again. The one we did when I was in grad school had a handful of the things I wanted but was not the show I was dreaming of. If I ever got it in my head to try again – this sense of the heath might play an interesting part. I think I’d find a way to show the Macbeths at a church of nature before surrendering to the darker forces of greed and the destruction of nature. My set designer made these stools for the banquet scene and they were the perfect metaphor for the lens on the play. They were a series of branches contained by an open wooden block. Free wood contained by domesticated wood. I wish we’d gotten better photos of that furniture. Or that I’d managed to grab one of the stools before they were returned to scrap.
They would be my starting point with a new version.