Five Words from Macbeth in an Episode of Deep Space Nine

“Sons of Mogh.” By Ronald D. Moore. Perf. Tony Todd and Michael Dorn. Dir. David Livingson. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Season 4, episode 14. Syndicated television. 12 February 1996. DVD. Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment, 2021.

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[Note: The five words in the image here aren't the five I'm talking about. Let's just keep the suspense for a little while.]

With the Shakespeare Radar™ turned on, I've been re-watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

But I freely admit that it may be too sensitive. Are these five words, unquestionably found in Macbeth in this exact sequence, deliberately and purposefully quoted? Or is it mere coincidence? [Note: All right. I admit it. In the play, two of the words are contracted, so it's technically four words in the play and a five-word misquotation in the episode.]

Perhaps you will agree to be the judge:

In Act III, Lady Macbeth says, "Things without all remedy / Should be without regard: What's done, is done" (III.ii.11–12). Here, Worf gives us a very close paraphrase. 

Unfortunately, I can't find any genuine connection between the plot of the episode and the plot of Shakespeare's play.  We don't even get the variant "What's done cannot be undone" (V.I.68) that Lady Macbeth utters when she's sleepwalking.

But I'll keep watching, hoping to find any further (and deeper) connections between Shakespeare and Star Trek.

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

For more connections between Star Trek and Shakespeare, head to Shakespeare and Star Trek Complete.

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The 2025 Macbeth at the Guthrie Theatre

Macbeth. Dir. Joe Dowling. Perf. John Catron, Regina Marie Williams, Sun Mee Chomet, Bill McCallum, Daniel Petzold, Pierce Brown, James A. Williams, Michelle O'Neill, Daniel José Molina, Meghan Kriedler, Peter Christian Hansen, Charles Foster, Kaden Hesser, and David Michaeli. Guthrie Theatre Company. Minneapolis. 31 January—22 March 2026.

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This is far more on the side of "Just Go See It" than "Here's my Review."

The essence is that Joe Dowling is once again directing a production of Macbeth at the Guthrie Theatre—and it shouldn't be missed.

Dowling last directed Macbeth at the Guthrie in 2010 (for which, q.v.). The 2026 production is much more sparse—but simple doesn't mean simplistic. This production is complex and deeply moving.

Part of that is the production's thoughtful use of the stage.

The Guthrie's stage is very deep, but that deep expanse is not often used. A couple of production stills will illustrate that best.

In this image, we see a narrow band of light between two walls:

But those walls can move to open up the vast expanse of the stage:

The show itself has a lot of humor and a lot of humanity. When Macbeth can laugh at himself, it's hard not to have at least some sympathy for him—even though he's making a ton of mistakes.

One place where that happens is at the end of the banquet scene. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both acknowledge that the party could have gone better. Lady Macbeth seems to internalize that disaster while Macbeth tries his best to shrug it off at look forward. This image captures that:

There's lots more to say, but I really just want to get this out there so everyone knows about the production and can get tickets before it closes on March 22.

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Links: Tickets for the show.

A Midsummer Night's Dream at University of Northwestern—St. Paul

A Midsummer Night's Dream. Dir. Jennifer Hunter. Perf. Roman Bock, Khya Boldt, Solveig Booth, Noah Carlson, Kylie Clark, Jane Dalida, Sophia Danielson, Rebekah Dobbs, Sydney Foss, Kaila Fremling, Serenna Hartsock, Amber Hayton, Caleb Hight, Ava Hunter, Krister Kahl, Trinia Kroll, Janae Krueger, Carter Lambert, Katherine Lawrence, Olivia Lundberg, Eva Manrodt, Abigail Marshall, Juan Mendoza, Eli Murphy, Derek Penner, Alaina Posavad, Cassidy Ritzema, Danny Showalter, Katie Simon, Serenity Smith, and Marie Urquia. University of Northwestern Theatre. St. Paul. 20 to 28 February 2026.

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It's been over ten years since University of Northwestern put on that production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with the terrific Philostrate (for which, q.v.). 

But a new production will open in two weeks! The promotional material welcomes us to "to a steampunk-inspired dreamworld, where steam power meets fairy power, and nothing is as it seems."

I'm excited to see precisely what that means, but I have great faith in the director (and adaptor), Professor Jennifer Hunter, and in all the fine actors and students involved.

For now, here's a brief behind-the-scenes video the production has released:

All that remains is for you to join the audience. I'll see you there!

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Links: Ticket Sales.

Note: Should the embedded video above go sour, here's a blog-native version:

 

Book Note: Guilty by Definition

Dent, Susie. Guilty by Definition. Sourcebooks Landmark, 2025.

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Guilty by Definition was published too recently to be considered as part of my Mystery and Detective Fiction course, but it would probably have made it in as a student selective rather than a required text. In creating a world with imagined Shakespeare-related artifacts, it would serve as a fair companion to Ngaio Marsh's Death at the Dolphin (for which, q.v.). But it isn't quite as tightly plotted or filled with carefully-delineated characters.

Since this book is so recent, I'll be even more careful to avoid spoilers. But if you get ten pages in, you'll find out that anonymous letters with quotes from Shakespeare have started arriving at the offices of a major historical dictionary, perplexing and challenging the employees. Here's the first such letter and a bit of the reaction to it: 

This establishes the pattern: A cryptic message arrives, the office starts to take it apart, some time passes (to give readers a chance to solve it, too), and then the solution is given. One of the flaws of the novel is that the pattern soon becomes formulaic. 

Nonetheless, word enthusiasts, Shakespeare aficionados, and mystery lovers can enjoy this novel—even if there's little or no overlap in the Venn Diagram of those audiences. And there's a Shakespeare-related item that figures largely—but I'll leave it to you to read the book and find out that part.

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Book Note: A Taste for Death by P. D. James and its Puzzling Use of "Shakespeare"

James, P. D. A Taste for Death. Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

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As P. D. James novels go, this isn't in my top ten. The mystery is pretty good, but it becomes a not-altogether-successful mashup of the detective genre and the suspense / thriller. It could be reduced by a third and be all the more compelling for it. It's her tenth novel, and it may be that her editors were reluctant to stand up to such an established novelist.

The editors may also have missed something—though that's not certain. And that brings us to the Shakespeare puzzle at the heart of the novel.

A Taste for Death introduces the character of Inspector Kate Miskin, a promising detective intent on rising through the ranks. She was raised by her grandmother after her mother died. Late in the novel [spoiler alert], we learn that her absent father was a policeman who had a wife and two kids (and who was killed in a car accident in the line of duty some time earlier).

As we learn about Inspector Miskin's determination to succeed, we are presented with a Shakespeare quote as something of an origin story (p. 151):

The problem is that Shakespeare didn't write that.

For ease of reference, here's the text of the "Shakespeare" quote:

What matters it what went before or after,

Now with myself I will begin and end. 

When they don't assert that it's a Shakespeare quote, sources on the internet will definitively state that it comes from John Webster's The White Devil, and if they mean that it's a paraphrase of a few lines in that play, they're right. My edition—edited by John Russel Brown, The Revels Plays (Methuen, 1960), gives us this exchange between Vittoria and Flamieno, both fatally wounded by an avenger:

Vittoria
My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,
Is driven I know not whither. 

Flamineo
                            Then cast anchor.
Prosperity doth bewitch men seeming clear,
But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near.
We cease to grieve, cease to be Fortune’s slaves,
Nay cease to die by dying. Art thou gone?
And thou so near the bottom?—false report
Which says that women vie with the nine Muses 
For nine tough durable lives: I do not look
Who went before, nor who shall follow me;
No, at myself I will begin and end:
While we look up to heaven, we confound
Knowledge with knowledge. O I am in a mist!

Vittoria
Oh, happy they that never saw the court,
Nor ever knew great men but by report! [Vittoria dies.] (V.vi.248–62)

Flamieno makes a final speech and then dies as well.

That solves the puzzle of the quotation's (really, the paraphrase's) origin. But the puzzle of its misattribution to Shakespeare remains.

P. D. James knew her Shakespeare and her Webster quite well. We just saw her careful use of quotations by both authors in her Skull Beneath the Skin (for which, q.v.). Is this a case of Homer nodding (in which case, Homer's editor also nodded)? Or did James misattribute the quote (and also paraphrase it instead of quoting it directly) on purpose? In that case, the ideal editor would have drawn her attention to it and confirmed that the "mistake" is no mistake at all but a purposeful, intentional slip.

The novel introduces the lines as "Two half-remembered lines of Shakespeare" from Inspector Miskin's perspective. That may point toward the intentionality behind the misattribution. They're half-remembered (i.e., paraphrased), and their author is also misremembered.

I'm at a bit of a loss to understand the reason(s) for doing so, though I am much more inclined to give credit to James for knowing her Shakespeare and Webster (and extending that credit to her editor) than to say that she erred.

Perhaps it's a subtle way of undermining the character of Inspector Miskin. If her life philosophy is based on a misattributed misquotation, perhaps that brings her pursuit of her vocation into question as well.

I haven't found any published scholarship on the issue. In Susan Baker's "Comic Material: 'Shakespeare' in the Classic Detective Story" (in Acting Funny: Comic Theory and Practice in Shakespeare's Plays, ed. Francis Teague (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994), 164–179), the passage is treated as if it were Shakespeare—the question of its actual origin doesn't arise. We're just told that "Shakespeare is crucial to Kate's upward mobility" (168). 

Let's go back to the other Shakespearean elements in the novel.

One of the murder victims is named Paul Berowne, and the name's connection of Love's Labour's Lost is made clear in the course of the novel itself. Miskin's boyfriend is the one to call our collective attention to it (p. 155):

[Note: Major Spoilers Follow]

Miskin uses this newly-gained information to send a message of distress when she and her grandmother are being held at gunpoint by the murderer. She calls her boyfriend—ostensibly to cancel a dinner engagement for that evening (p. 437):

The murderer does become suspicious, but I'm not sure he has much greater familiarity with Shakespeare than Inspector Miskin (p. 445):

Looking at my bookshelves, it's hard to get in the mindset of "You already have one complete Shakespeare; why would you need an edition of just one of the plays?"

All in all, it's not a terrific novel. Though this final use of Shakespeare is nicely done, I remain confused about the non-Shakespeare non-quote early on.

I'm currently reading (and, in some cases, re-reading) the P. D. James novels, and I may get a better sense of this novel's use of Shakespeare with Kate Miskin's characters as I read on. Stay tuned.

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Bonus Images: The Relevant Speeches (and some additional context) from The White Devil:

Bonus Bonus Image: Footnote to "lions i' th' Tower" from the New Mermaids edition

(slightly more relevant if I'd posted this yesterday . . . Groundhog day):

Book Note: The Skull Beneath the Skin by P. D. James

James, P. D. The Skull Beneath the Skin. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982.

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Since I started teaching my Mystery and Detective Fiction course, I've been slowly making my way through the corpus (ha!) of P. D. James. I had read a few intermittently through the year with varying degrees of enjoyment.

Teaching An Unsuitable Job for a Women, the novel that introduces the Private Investigator Cordelia Gray, in the course gave me a renewed interest in James' novel (though I'm still finding that the quality varies considerably.

All that brings us to the second (and only other) Cordelia Gray novel.

And it's showing up here because of all the Shakespeare.

Like Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, James frequently invokes Shakespeare and other authors of the English Renaissance. In The Skull Beneath the Skin, she does so more frequently and to greater effect than elsewhere.

The novel starts with T. S. Eliot's famous line about the playwright John Webster (c. 1578 to c. 1632):

And then the novel takes us straight in to its use of Webster, Shakespeare, and others. On pages 11 to 13, we learn that a well-known actress has been receiving threatening message and that the messages all come from plays in which the actress has played a role:

The quotations are respectively from Measure for Measure, The Tempest, Othello, Hamlet, and Webster's The Devil's Law Case.

The context for that last one may not be known to everyone, but it's interesting, particularly in light of the opening quote from Measure for Measure. In Shakespeare's play, Claudio, condemned to die, is comforted by a Friar (really the Duke of Vienna in disguise), and he seems to take it to heart—and then delivers the speech quoted above to his sister. In The Devil's Law Case, a monk comes to Romelio, who may die in a forthcoming duel, and he offers those lines before presenting a masque with two coffins:

John Webster, The Devil's Law Case, ed. Elizabeth M. Brennan (Ernest Benn, 1975), V.iv.102–08.

But, instead of being moved to consider his own mortality more seriously, he locks the monk in an inner room to stop the monk pestering him.

Moving ahead in James' novel (though still without major spoilers), we find another set of threatening quotations on pages 52 and 53:

That adds one White Devil (and, according to the New Mermaids edition I have, Cordelia is right about the comma), two Doctors Faustus, an Antony and Cleopatra and a 3 Henry VI.

And there are many more throughout the novel—in addition to the rehearsals for a performance of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.

Those elements are the fun part of the novel. As to the rest, it's fairly disappointing. The novel could easily be reduced by a third and made all the better and all the more effective for it.

Still, you can safely put this on your gift list for the Early Modern Scholars in your life (or your own list if you happen to be one yourself).

Note: This Book Note will help form the framework for a later post on a Shakespearean puzzle in a different P. D. James novel. Stay tuned!

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Book Note: Tales from Shakespeare by Marcia Williams

Williams, Marcia. Tales from Shakespeare: Seven Plays Presented and Illustrated by Marcia Williams. Candlewick Press, 1998.

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———. More Tales from Shakespeare: Seven Plays Presented and Illustrated by Marcia Williams. Candlewick Press, 2000.

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I'm occasionally surprised to find that a resource I've used for years has never made its way onto Bardfilm.

Marcia Williams' great takes on Shakespeare are one such example. In my Modern Shakespearean Fiction class, for example, I can't expect (or require—there just isn't enough time) students to have read Hamlet recently, yet they need to know at least the broad strokes of the plot to appreciate the Hamlet-based works we encounter.

I also recommend Tales from Shakespeare, and More Tales from Shakespeare to our English Education majors as an entrée for teaching Shakespeare. It provides the plot and some key lines from the play, but it also can be a starting point for deeper discussion.

Each illustrated play has four parts. First, there's the illustration, which is clever and whimsical and detailed. Next, the setup provides actors putting on the play and audience members reacting to it. Finally, we have narration that fills in the gaps. That gives us the basic plot, some of the key lines from the play, and some possible areas to explore.

Following Bardfilm's Fair Use Policy, I'm not providing any play in full, but I will give you a few sample pages to encourage you to seek out the books themselves. To start, here's the opening of A Midsummer Night's Dream:

And here's a bit of Hamlet. It's a bit light on Ophelia, but strong on ghosts and the play-within-the-play.

More Tales from Shakespeare is more of the same, but it also provides this interesting playbill to show what's on offer and to explain a bit of the methodology:

You've already gotten the hang of all that, but here's the opening of Richard III as a sample:

Marcia William's Tales are terrific for kids, college students, and professors alike. Do everyone a favor a track down a copy!

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Book Note: The Devil and his Boy

Horowitz, Anthony. The Devil and his Boy. Philomel Books, 1998.

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We're just finishing up Studies in the Novel: Mystery and Detective Fiction, and one of the last books we read for the course was Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. In preparing to talk about that magnificent metaliterary mystery, I came to realize just how prolific an author Horowitz is, with dozens of Young Adult (and younger) books to his credit before the three novels in the series that starts with Magpie Murders.

I decided to try a few—starting with The Falcon's Malteaser, a YA novel that plays with the conventions of the hard-boiled detective novel (as in Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcom).

Other books being a bit harder to track down, I headed to The Devil and His Boy, not knowing anything about it.

Imagine my delight when I found it was set in Elizabethan England with a boy protagonist who sees a play and determines (or circumstances determine for him) that he wants to become an actor.

The plot is pleasantly absurd, but the historical detail is accurate.

"But," I hear you eagerly ask, "is there any Shakespeare in it?"

As a matter of fact, there is. But it's more as a cameo than an integral part of the plot—which is fine. We get plenty of Shakespeare in Susan Cooper's King of Shadows (for which, q.v.).

Here's the relevant section where our hero goes to audition for a part in what turns out to be Shakespeare's company:

The novel, which could fit fairly easily in my YA Literature class, my Modern Shakespearean Fiction class, or even in my Mystery and Detective Fiction class, is well worth reading. Give it a try!

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Book Note: ShakesFear and How to Cure It

Cohen, Ralph Alan. ShakesFear and How to Cure It: The Complete Handbook for Teaching Shakespeare. The Arden Shakespeare, 2016.

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I chanced upon this book and started to dismiss it as another "You can't read Shakespeare unless it's been modernized and simplified and enervated" volume.

But a brief glance was all it took to let me know how wrong I was.

ShakesFear and How to Cure It is a thoughtful guide for teachers of all grades to what to do when the Shakespeare unit comes up in the curriculum. 

Not infrequently, students will tell me that they didn't realize how wonderful Shakespeare was until they took my class. Although I'd like to take that as a compliment on my teaching methods, it's actually that they've had a bad experience with Shakespeare somewhere in the past. Sometimes, that experience had to do with the was Shakespeare was taught.

The title of the book is directed that the fear some students feel at the thought of reading Shakespeare; however, the book itself is enormously useful in alleviating the fear that teachers have at the thought of teaching Shakespeare. This is the book for those teachers out there who are flummoxed with where to begin or how to teach or what to do with Shakespeare in the classroom.

I'm tempted to provide huge extracts from the book because it's such a good resource—even though I disagree with a lot of the recommendations. But that would be neither fair use nor fair play.

But I will provide the list of "Seven Deadly Preconceptions of Teaching Shakespeare" and the way Ralph Alan Cohen addresses the first two:

I'll also provide a list of Cohen's eight things not to do as a teacher of Shakespeare (thank heavens he says that we can do most of them sometimes) and what he makes of the first of them.

By way of contrast, I'm also providing the list of nine things you should do with Shakespeare:

Most teachers will find most of this advice sound and helpful; most students will learn more and have a better time doing so. I highly recommend reading through the whole book—and then determining what will work for you and your classroom.

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