Macbeth and the Three Witches

In Give Me The Daggers, my latest mystery/detective novel based partly on Shakespeare's play Macbeth, the three weird sisters play an integral part in the story. 

The following is an excerpt from The Drama, Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization by Alan Bates published in 1906.

These repulsive hags, from which the imagination shrinks, are here emblems of the hostile powers which operate in nature; and the repugnance of our senses is outweighed by the mental horror. With one another they discourse like women of the very lowest class; for this was the class to which they were ordinarily supposed to belong; when, however, they address Macbeth, they assume a loftier tone; their predictions, which they either themselves pronounce or allow their apparitions to deliver, have all the obscure brevity, the majestic solemnity of oracles. They are governed by an invisible spirit, or the operation of such great and dreadful events would be above their sphere. With what intent did Shakespeare assign the same place to them in his play which they occupy in the history of Macbeth as related in the old chronicles? 

A monstrous crime is committed; Duncan, a venerable old man, and the best of kings, is, in defenseless sleep, under the hospital's roof, murdered by his subject, whom he has loaded with honors and rewards. Natural motives alone seem inadequate, or the perpetrator must have been portrayed as a hardened villain. Shakespeare wished to exhibit a more sublime picture--an ambitious but noble hero, yielding to a deep-laid hellish temptation, and in whom all the crimes to which, in order to secure the fruits of his first crime, he is impelled by necessity, cannot altogether eradicate the stamp of native heroism. 

He has, therefore, given a threefold division to the guilt of that crime. The first idea comes from beings whose whole activity is guided by the lust of wickedness. The weird sisters surprise Macbeth in the moment of intoxication of victory, when his love of glory has been gratified; they cheat his eyes by exhibiting to him as the work of fate what in reality can only be accomplished by his own deed, and gain credence for all their words by the immediate fulfillment of the first prediction.

Give Me The Daggers and all of Stephen Gaspar's books can be found on Amazon!

Give Me The Daggers Foreword

My latest historical mystery/detective book has just been released. Here is the foreword to Give Me the Daggers.

   My love affair with Shakespeare began late in life. As a struggling writer I wanted to know why he was considered the greatest writer of the English language, and so I began my study. Soon I found myself gobbling up his plays like Falstaff feasting on capons and sack. I suppose I wanted to make up for all those years that I could have been reading Shakespeare, so casting off my misspent youth like young Prince Hal I delved seriously into the Bard of Avon. I quickly realized that all the praise and accolades laid at Bard’s door were well-earned. Since then I now have several of Shakespeare’s collected works as well as individual plays filling my bookshelves. My wife Susan and I drive up to Stratford, Ontario every summer to visit family and take in a couple of productions at the Shakespeare Festival.

  After reading Macbeth (three or four times) I came to realize, as did many others, that the play has the making of a murder mystery. In Shakespeare’s play we know the killers, but no one acts as a detective to investigate the killings. So I set out to write Give Me the Daggers as a Macbeth murder mystery. I chose the Thane of Lennox as the detective who seeks to learn the truth. All the familiar characters are there as well; Macbeth, Macduff, Banquo, Ross, and Lady Macbeth, along with some new characters. Fans of Macbeth will undoubtedly recognize many of the original lines that made the play so popular over the centuries, though sometimes the lines are out of order and some lines are spoken by other characters. Not all the famous lines and soliloquies are here, though. Due to the nature of the traditional detective fiction style, where the protagonist, Lennox, is in every scene, not every line in the play was used.

    William Shakespeare was commonly known to play fast and loose with history and he never let the truth get in the way of a good story (see my Afterward). He may also have had access to inaccurate history sources, for it is known that certain details in Macbeth are erroneous. Though I have used Shakespeare’s play as my source, I have also endeavoured to inject some true history in the story.

    The reader will, I trust, view Give Me the Daggers as more than a simple retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but as a detective story. I hope this will satisfy both Macbeth fans and those who have never read or seen the play (I am sure there are some out there). Perhaps this story will introduce some to Shakespeare, but let the reader beware; once you delve into the Bard, there is no turning back.

For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground

and tell sad stories of the death of kings;

How some have been deposed; some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghost they have deposed;

Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;

All murder’d ...

                                    Richard II, Act III, Scene II 

Give Me The Daggers can be found on Amazon!

The Tragedy of Macbeth

G. K. Chesterton, the writer of the Father Brown stories (and many others), claimed that Macbeth is Shakespeare's greatest drama. Chesterton goes on to say:

"For the play is so very great that it covers much more than it appears to cover; it will certainly survive our age as it has survived its own;"

 "And it is the whole point about Macbeth that he does know what he is doing. It is not a tragedy of Fate but a tragedy of Freewill.”

Nowhere else in all his wonderful works did Shakespeare describe the real character of the relations of the sexes so sanely, or so satisfactorily as he describes it here.  The man and the woman are never more normal than they are in this abnormal and horrible story. 

A. C. Bradley wrote, "...we feel suspense, horror, awe; in which are latent, also, admiration and sympathy."

"The writing almost throughout leaves an impression of intense, almost feverish, activity."

"But it is an engrossing spectacle, and psychologically it is perhaps the most remarkable exhibition of the development of a character to be found in Shakespeare's tragedies."


In William Peter Bladdy's Exorcist III, Lieutenant Kinderman says, "Do you know what Macbeth is about? I'll tell you. It's a play about the numbing of the moral sense."

Shakespeare's Macbeth is indeed all these things. Me, I thought it would make a great detective story.


GIVE ME THE DAGGERS by Stephen Gaspar is available on Amazon!

Macbeth Murder Mystery

Just Released!

Give Me The Daggers

by

Stephen Gaspar

Available on Amazon!

In the year 1040 AD the Scottish king, Duncan is found brutally murdered in his bed. Certain evidence points to the king's own servants. Gowan Drummond, Thane of Lennox does not believe Duncan's  servants killed him. Drummond’s suspicions turn to Macbeth who quickly ascends the throne. His suspicions become certainty when Banquo is found murdered. In his quest for the truth, the Thane of Lennox must be cautious in his investigations, for cruel are the times, and a dangerous evil is loose in the land. Give Me The Daggers is based partly on history but mainly on William Shakespeare’s great tragedy Macbeth, but told as a detective story with some supernatural elements. Many of the familiar characters from the play are present as well as some new ones. Readers will recognize the iconic phrases that has made the play an unparalleled classic.

Macbeth - A Detective Story

William Shakespeare's Macbeth may be the Bard's greatest play. It has it all; unbridled ambition, suspicion, fear, love and a few dead bodies. 

It was this last one that inspired me to write Give Me The Daggers, the Macbeth play told as a detective story. 

Give Me The Daggers is now available on Amazon!