Hurly Burly
“Hurly Burly” is a spooky morality tale set in the New Zealand gold rush and based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. John Macbeth is returning to camp when he sees three wild and withered creatures stirring a foul stew and incanting “double, double, toil, and trouble”.
About this resource
Series: School Journal Level 4 November 2019
Reading year level: 8
Category: Fiction
Topics: adaptation, ambition, claim, courage, downfall, drama, family, gold, greatness, greed, history, jealousy, Macbeth, power, prophecy, reason, riches, Shakespeare, tragedy, trust, truth, witches
Hurly Burly
Words by Paul Mason
Illustrated by Rosie Colligan
The unearthly creatures prophesise his future riches. When John returns to the camp, his brother Duncan announces that he has struck gold and asks John to head into town to register his claim. The story takes a dark turn when John’s wife Sarah encourages him to murder his brother and take the claim as his own.
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More from this series
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School Journal Level 4 November 2019
Inside this School Journal are three stories (Boot Camp; Hurly Burly; and Across the Sea), one screenplay (The Game), one memoir (An East German Childhood), and two articles (Puaki and Chinese New Zealanders).
1 of 7Boot Camp
Liyah has never seen Uncle Joey this happy.
2 of 7The Game Screenplay
An argument about which TV show to watch quickly turns into something else.
3 of 7Puaki
Tā moko is the art and practice of traditional Māori tattoo, a taonga that almost disappeared as a result of colonisation. Puaki means “to come forth, to reveal, to give testimony”. Photographer Michael Bradley used this concept as the basis of a project exploring ways that tā moko has been both vis...
4 of 7Chinese New Zealanders
"Chinese New Zealanders" provides an overview of migration to Aotearoa New Zealand from the 1860s until the present day.
5 of 7Across the Sea
Ihaka’s first journey across the sea.
6 of 7An East German Childhood
Uli Hartung was seventeen years old and living in East Germany when the Berlin Wall came down.
7 of 7
