Eye of newt and prison of princess

Wednesday, 20 May 2026

Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. He is a regular contributor.

OPINION: The website offered me a choice of stories: economic strife in New Zealand; the war in Ukraine; the stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz. And being a serious adult who likes to keep abreast of world affairs, I clicked on “Princess of Wales handles newt at Italian pre-school event”.

Before we ask why, let’s define terms: the Princess of Wales is the erstwhile Kate Middleton, commoner. A newt is a small European amphibian, inexplicably associated with drunkenness. And an Italian pre-school event is something that occurs so that Ms Middleton can be photographed attending it.

Of course Ms Middleton is no longer Ms Middleton. Some years ago, the handsome William Windsor, his veins pulsing with royal blood, plucked her from the ruck of commoners, placed a crown on her head and her feet on a pedestal, and turned her into the beautiful princess of the fairy tales. She became a myth incarnate. She became Cinderella.

But with a twist. Cinderella of the fairy story was forever scrubbing and sweeping and wiping and washing. She knew only work and care. She was the emblem of the hard life lived by most of the prince’s subjects. Then, with her sudden elevation, she was freed, freed from drudgery, freed from want, freed from care, freed to do as she wished.

Not so Ms Middleton. As the daughter of a prosperous middle-class family in a secular society in the 21st century she was as free as any young woman has ever been in human history. But when she accepted the hand of Prince William she imprisoned herself. She stepped into a role that she now has no choice but to inhabit. It cannot be easy.

She has to be what we require her to be – the epitome of a wife and a mother. So on her recent trip to Italy she was whisked to a kindergarten to play with other people’s children because that is what we want mothers to do.

As she played with them on the grass – immaculately dressed of course – she brought to mind the mother-in-law she never met. Princess Diana was another Cinderella, “the people’s princess” as the nauseating Tony Blair dubbed her. She too did lots of playing with children in front of the cameras.

In due course Ms Middleton will become the queen that Diana never got to be. And then she will be even more imprisoned, even more entombed. None of which is her fault. It is ours. Her life is the sacrifice we demand to maintain a myth buried deep in our psyche.

But it is the newt that makes this particular headline. Newts are not native to New Zealand. A small colony of European alpine newts was discovered in the Eastern Waikato in 2013, but they were promptly exterminated because of the threat they posed to native frogs.

The newt’s moment of greatest fame occurs in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. As the witches dance around the cauldron, cackling and cursing, they lob in ingredients to taste, prime among which are

eye of newt and toe of frog

wool of bat and tongue of dog

The newt is a lowly creature, a tiny dank dinosaur, a rudimentary salamander, blunt nosed, primitive and moving with the sinister gait of some miniature crocodile. It evokes a bestial archetype. And there on the website was film of this dark little animal writhing its way across the Princess’s milk-white palm. It was a potent juxtaposition. The image sang of beauty and the beast. It tugged on a primitive string. And that’s why I clicked on it.

There are no new stories. Just new versions of old ones. And those old ones still grip like a vice.