for Shakespeare For Future English Teachers class, 2022
Great Fangorn Forest to High Isengard Shall Come (And Then, For Good Measure, to Helm’s Deep Shall Come)
In The Two Towers, the second book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the eponymous towers[1] meets its end in a most Macbeth-inspired way. No prophecy is involved in the Tolkien here, but a clear line can be traced from one of the witches’ masters’ prophecies in Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the fate of the tower of Orthanc and the fortress of Isengard.[2]
The third apparition conjured by the witches – the Child crowned, with a tree in his hand – informs Macbeth that he “shall never vanquish’d be until/Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill/Shall come against him.”[3] In the end, the prophecy of Macbeth’s doom is fulfilled when the armies of Macbeth’s enemies take branches and boughs from Birnam Wood and march holding them, to disguise their number as they approach Macbeth’s stronghold at Dunsinane.[4] This was, in Tolkien’s opinion (at least when he was a boy), an utter cop-out; absolutely dodgy, wimpy writing.
Tolkien therefore devised a race of tree-people who dwell in Fangorn forest in Middle-Earth called Ents, who, after holding an Entmoot to discuss the matter at length, elect to march on Isengard, where the antagonist Saruman dwells and builds his forces. And so it is that the forest of Fangorn literally comes to Isengard and destroys it.[5] The parallel is not a coincidence.
(Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2002)
Tolkien wrote to his friend W.H. Auden that the Ents’ “part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schoolboy days with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill’: I long[ed] to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war.”[6]
The Ents then send the Huorns of Fangorn forest – slower-moving and less sapient tree-people shepherded by the Ents[7] – to assist the protagonists at the Battle of Helm’s Deep[8], so Tolkien wrote himself a nice little twofer of biting his thumb at Shakespeare.
The Hand of No Man Shall Harm the Witch-King of Angmar
There is at least one other clear and obvious Macbeth parallel in Tolkien’s Legendarium. This one does involve a prophecy, but we do not have the same clear word from Tolkien’s own hand that he was inspired by one-upping Shakespeare.
In The Silmarillion, a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, the elf Glorfindel issues a prophecy about the Witch-King of Angmar, chief of Sauron’s Nazgûl, that "not by the hand of man shall he fall."[9] Compare this to the prophecy given to Macbeth by the bloody Child apparition, “laugh to scorn/The power of man, for none of woman born/Shall harm Macbeth.”[10] Both Macbeth and the Witch-King of Angmar interpret their respective prophecies as foretelling total invulnerability and invincibility, and both of their interpretations are proven incorrect by an unforeseen twist that fulfills the prophecy yet allows for their dooms.
Macbeth ends up executed by Macduff, a man who is not technically of woman born, but instead from woman “untimely ripp’d” – transitioned from fetus to baby via a C-section.[11]
Similarly, the Witch-King of Angmar is killed at the Battel of Pelennor Fields, not by a man, but by the tag-team of the Hobbit Meriadoch Brandybuck (using an ancient magical blade given to him by Tom Bombadil, which undid some of the magic protecting the Witch-King) and the woman Éowyn (who lands the killing blow using a mundane sword, presumably procured the old-fashioned way from the armory of the soldiers of Rohan). Tolkien, being a professional academic linguist, was very deliberately clever about his use of the word “man” here – Merry is a man by gender, but is not of the race of Man; while Éowyn is of the race of Man, but is not a man by gender; apparently two man-in-one-sense-but-not-in-the-other adds up to close enough to zero men to successfully fulfill Glorfindel’s prophecy. The Witch-King of Angmar, not being a linguist, was taken by surprise by this turn of events.[12]
(Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003)
In Pedagogy
A substantial discussion could be driven by prophecy in fiction, starting with the five prophecies in Macbeth (by my count[13]); continuing on with the parallel of one of them with Glorfindel’s prophecy about the Witch-King of Angmar; open an exploration of ancient Greek stories where struggling against fate was common (considering all the stories featuring the Oracle at Delphi, with a bonus sprinkle of the story of Cassandra for taste), and stories from other mythologies featuring prophecy; delve into how prophecy/fate can interact with free will[14]; there’s a whole slew of discussions and lessons one can engage in about prophecy.
While Tolkien is perhaps not as relevant to the youth of today as he was when he was first published, or when Peter Jackson’s film adaptations came out in the early ‘00s, there should certainly still be some students familiar with these works. Painting pictures from Tolkien could help get some students more invested in the Shakespeare. Certainly, using scenes or stills from Peter Jackson’s movies could help to illustrate the parallel concepts from Macbeth (perhaps one might make a video of clips of the Ent attack on Isengard and the Huorn intervention at Helm’s Deep and putting it on repeat before the beginning of the class period that we’re to discuss Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane, and leaving it playing as students trickle in).
On the other hand, letting it be known that one parallel event in Tolkien derived from Tolkien’s scorn for how Shakespeare wrote it (even if that scorn originated when Tolkien was a youth, it was still expressed when he was an adult) could be counterproductive, so this merits some thought and care.
Certainly, painting a picture of the long tapestry of human literature (in the very broadest sense here – plays, epics, poetry, novels, television, movies, everything) as an unending chain of creators, inspired by one another and answering one another, could serve pedagogy, especially if I make note to explicitly include my students in the chain. In short, if riffing on Shakespeare was good enough for Tolkien to be literature (and riffing on actual history, as he did in very many of his plays, was good enough for Shakespeare to be literature), riffing on either of them is certainly good enough for my students to be literature.
Reflection
A big – perhaps the biggest so far – revelation in the teaching of Shakespeare came early on, in discussion of cutting. The point that Shakespeare is not sacred – that trimming him for pedagogical purposes is not mangling – is useful on its own and reflects a deeper point about Shakespeare pedagogy. To wit: we are not teaching Shakespeare because Shakespeare is himself in any way sacred – Shakespeare is ultimately not a lesson, but a teacher; we are teaching Shakespeare and his works because we can learn lessons from him and them.[15] Which, in turn, is a valuable thing to keep in mind when teaching any text.
Getting up and moving around the space is mildly awkward, and I can imagine high school students finding it very awkward and being resistant. Still, it’s possible to persuade high school students to leave their desks – I just the other week observed a high school class at Lafayette where part of the class was a daily “Circle” exercise where students stand in a circle at the perimeter of the room and express themselves through movement. I’m coming to realize that this less a hint about teaching Shakespeare specifically and more a hint about pedagogy in general. I’m less sold on the notion that getting up and moving is good for the body and the brain, but almost sold on the notion that getting up and moving at the very least might break up the monotony of high school a little bit.
I think one thing I want to do, and one thing I wished to have done in high school, is examine one (or more) of Shakespeare’s comedies. The tragedies always get the top billing, to the point that most students in this class had never studied any of his comedies at all; I don’t even know how different they are from the tragedies. I did express in high school that I at least liked Hamlet because everybody dies – which is admittedly true of most or all of the tragedies – and I have expressed on a few occasions this semester that it turns out I like Macbeth even better than Hamlet because two of the people who die in Macbeth at least really deserve it, but I’m very intrigued by the possibility of reading a Shakespeare play where perhaps nobody dies. I am therefore looking forward to Much Ado About Nothing, and to probably doing my final project on A Midsummer Night’s Dream (just as you suggested in an early week when I expressed interest in that play on the discussion board).
Works Cited
Banks, F. (2013). Creative Shakespeare: The Globe Education Guide to Practical Shakespeare. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Jackson, P. (Director). (2002). The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers [Motion Picture].
Jackson, P. (Director). (2003). The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [Motion Picture].
Pullman, P. (1995-2000). His Dark Materials. Northern Lights/The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass. United Kingdom: Scholastic Print.
Shakespeare, W. (1606). The Tragedy of Macbeth. London.
Tolkien, J. (1954). The Fellowship of the Ring. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Tolkien, J. (1954). The Two Towers. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Tolkien, J. (1955, June 7). Letter 163. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. (C. Tolkien, & H. Carpenter, Eds.)
Tolkien, J. (1955). The Return of the King. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Tolkien, J. (1977). The Silmarillion. (C. Tolkien, & G. G. Kay, Eds.) London: George Allen & Unwin.
[1] There is some debate about which, exactly, are the two towers, as somewhat more than two appear in the book (possibilities include Sauron’s Barad Dûr in Mordor; Saruman’s Orthanc in Isengard; and Minas Tirith, capital of Gondor; Minas Morgul, the home of Sauron’s minions the Nazgûl; the Hornburg, fortress of Rohan at Helm’s Deep; and the orcish stronghold Cirith Ungol in Mordor). Tolkien himself initially waffled on which two towers he meant, but in the end included a note at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring that the towers in question are Minas Morgul and Orthanc (Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954). The 2002 movie adaptation implies that the two towers are instead Orthanc and Barad Dûr, the seats of power of the series’ two main villains (Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2002). If you go with either of those interpretations, Orthanc is a commonality; otherwise, Orthanc still remains a decent possibility.
[2] (Tolkien, The Two Towers, 1954)
[3] (Shakespeare, 1606) Act 4, Scene 1
[4] (Shakespeare, 1606) Act 5, Scenes 4-5
[5] (Tolkien, The Two Towers, 1954)
[6] (Tolkien, Letter 163, 1955)
[7] It’s not entirely clear to me the narrative purpose of distinguishing the Ents and the Huorns and having one battle waged by the Ents and the other by the Huorns, but that is how it goes in the story.
[8] (Tolkien, The Two Towers, 1954)
[9] (Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 1977)
[10] (Shakespeare, 1606) Act 4, Scene 1
[11] (Shakespeare, 1606) Act 5, Scene 7
[12] (Tolkien, The Return of the King, 1955)
[13] 1: Macbeth shall be thane of Cawdor and king of Scotland; 2: Banquo shall father a line of kings (reiterated by the apparition of kings when Macbeth goes back to the witches in Act 4 Scene 1); 3: Macbeth should beware Macduff; 4: Macbeth cannot be killed by any man of woman born; 5: Macbeth will lose when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Of these, four come true in the play, and one was true in the reality of history, as Shakespeare’s audience would have been assumed to be aware.
[14] I did a multimodal project for Young Adult Fiction class last semester where I explored this very question, inspired by the witches’ prophecy in His Dark Materials that, roughly, Lyra would bring an end to destiny and make free will a thing again, provided she was not told that this was her destiny and she therefore uses her free will about it. (Pullman, 1995-2000)
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