Macbeth: Reclams Universal-Bibliothek

I'm not a big Shakespeare fan, so I won't rate any of his works very high

Classic tragedy.

I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.

Last winter I heard a report on NPR about Stalin's dacha in Sochi. Such featured some curious design features including a bulletproof sofa with extended headrests that prevented his head being exposed from behind to an assassin. The curtains were also shorter in length from the top to prevent someone from hiding from behind them. As I drove I mused as to what sort of world-view would emerge from someone's sense of self and safety?

The Bard's tale chooses not to address the policy of Macbeth but rather allows him only time to address his version of destiny in such a spirited supernatural environment. Macbeth is a rushed affair. It lacks the splendid pacing of Hamlet. Apparently Fortune favors the breathless as the narrative steps are sprinted and obstacles leaped like some wonky Wuxia. Despite all the gore, there isn't a great deal of introspection or even calculation. Such is strange but not so much as some things one finds on the Heath.(postscript: I just watched the Patrick Stewart led PBS film version: it was simply an avalanche.)

Manga Classics: Macbeth by William Shakespeare keeps the original text from the play, complementing it with gorgeous manga artwork. Macbeth is one of the Bard's most famous dramas, and my personal favourite of his dramas. As much as I love both the play, and manga style artwork, this book didn't resonate with me so much. It was good, don't get me wrong. I think it just really messed my mind up to have the classic text with this quite modern artwork. However, if you're a fan of the Manga Classics series, or of Macbeth, definitely check it out!***Many thanks to Netgalley and Udon Entertainment for providing an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

What can you say about Macbeth that's not already been said? I thought I would find it difficult to understand, having not read any Shakespeare before, but it just took a bit of slow reading and thinking about what the meaning might be. I think if you've not read Shakespeare before, this might be a good place to start.

My favorite Shakespeare play so far, due to the simple depth of the plot, the cool use of the witches, and the straightforward, yet dynamic characters.

Re-reading "Macbeth" to refresh my memory before going to see it on stage. Not even trying to assume I can write a review on this classic. But one thing jumped out at me this time: how it took almost no time at all for Macbeth to decide on his murderous deeds after the prophecy of the three witches. It seemed incredible to me how little he hesitated to fulfil that prophecy at the horrible cost. Even though he did have some guilty conscience that tormented him just before and after the king's murder, being urged by Lady Macbeth was all it took...The images are dark throughout, the choice of words is insanely striking. A very good Introduction to the play by Mark Van Doren.

Haven't read this since school. Thundering great stuff, and the witches are magnificent. 5/5

Audiobook. Strangely compelling. Narrated by Alan Cummings. A good part of the charm was the great Scottish reading. I have now downloaded his one man show of Macbeth. This is a very interesting project. Would probably be a .5 because of how interesting the project.

Not my favorite in any sense. An interesting read. Worth the read for the exposure to Shakespeare's writing. The story itself, however, wasn't as engaging for me personally. Because I read it at 2AM had something to do with it, I'm sure. I'll revisit it, I'm sure.

I got in a massive reading slump as I was into the 3rd act of this wonderful and short tragedy, so it took me a bit more to finish the book. The last 2 acts are packed with action and emotions and the characters are iconic to say the least: Lady Macbeth, the epitome of the power-hungry, manipulative and seemingly emotionless woman, she's the victim of her own humanity, her husband Macbeth whose mortal enemies are his doubtfulness and his mania for control, proof that misunderstanding or underestimating something can be truly fatal. Macduff and his pain are masterfully crafted and we can appreciate his weakness when he's with Malcolm and doesn't hide his feelings of despair and his strength when he faces Macbeth, the cause of his grief. It wasn't the easiest or quickest read I have done, but most definitely worth it. The intro by Cedric Watts is a nice addition as well.

Shakespeare can sometimes be intimidating if you aren't a) a English Lit major (or a former one); b) 500 years old; or c) accustomed to speaking in iambic pentameter. I'm none of the above, but love his language, imagery, and stories. This particular edition, featuring Nicholas Brooke's annotations, is the best edition of any Shakespeare I've read. His annotations are informative, but unobtrusive. He explains language that is obscure today, notes the double meanings that would have been commonly known in Shakespeare's time, and creates a context for the story and play.

Not fun to read. A cool line every 20 lines or so. Pretty good story, I would have enjoyed it more if it was written in regular, somewhat poetic prose.

A profoundly affecting play, Macbeth is Shakespeare's darkest tragedy, though perhaps not as nihilistic as the pre-Christian King Lear. Not that Macbeth's Christian era has any considerable redemptive effect on the play. There is Christian imagery throughout the play, of course, but I would contend with critics like Empson and Bloom that Shakespeare was not a particularly Christian playwright. It has hard to say anything about Shakespeare from his plays - he is the least auto-biographical writer in the Western tradition, one might say. He may well have been Christian (perhaps even Roman Catholic, as some have speculated) but I do not think his plays, Macbeth least of all, espouse any overt religious message. One can tack such a message onto Macbeth, if you wish, by investing Macbeth's opponents (young Malcolm, Ross, Macduff, and the other rebellious thanes of Scotland) with the ethos of 'good Christian knights', sent to kill the emissary of evil. But I would contend that this is a misguided misreading of the play. Macbeth may be morally abhorrent, but the play is closer in structure to a Sophoclean tragedy, with the focus nearly entirely on Macbeth, not on the 'avenging Christian heroes'.Bloom contends that Macbeth is extremely horrifying not because of its disturbing imagery and actions:Titus Andronicus is much more bloody, and yet less horrifying than Macbeth, and in any case, playgoers of his time could go to Tyburn to watch bloody executions. Rather, the horror is in Macbeth's extreme interiority and his proleptic imagination, which infects the whole play, as well as those who watch or read the play. Reading Macbeth awakens anxieties in us because it makes us aware of our own propensity and capacity for evil. 'Evil' is, of course, a particularly ambiguous term nowadays, with relativism making such a strong claim to our morality. But, within the confines of world morality, few would claim that Macbeth and his wife's initial ethos of 'the ends justify the means' is not particularly terrible. Even the Macbeths realise the horror of what they have done, though it has diverging effects on the two. In any case, the though that we may be capable of atrocities is uniquely tempting in this play. Macbeth is initially a 'golden boy', though we sense the danger of his propensity for slaughter, even though it is initially in service of the monarch. I never lost my admiration for Macbeth's bravery throughout the play, though I would strongly condemn his actions. It is this dichotomy between centripetal admiration, and a concurrent centrifugal revulsion, which draws one into Macbeth's unique psychology.Lady Macbeth is the only of other strong character in the play - the thanes and Malcolm are colourless in comparison. But she falls away after the beginning of Act III, and the play then focuses on Macbeth to the near-exclusion of everything else. This is unique in a Shakespearean tragedy - even Hamlet has his mother, uncle, and Horatio. Macbeth is left centre-stage, with his famous soliloquy on death ('Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...'). Though he is killed, we remain strangely uneasy at the end of the play. I think this is because of the above-mentioned identification with Macbeth: we fear our capabilities for evil, but, in a perverse sense, also exult in them. Even more perversely, I felt a distaste for king Malcolm and his easy morality. Perhaps I am merely a misanthropic egoist, always fearing that the 'do-gooding rabble' might come after me as well. All I can say to that is:Stars, hide your fires!Let not light see my black and deep desires.More seriously (well, you judge whether I was serious previously...) is the role of the witches / weird sisters in the play. Do they control Macbeth, planting the seed of murder in his mind? Or has he always had the potential for evil in him? The text is ambiguous about this, but I suspect that Macbeth considers evil long before the witches appear. For instance, they never, ever tell Macbeth to do anything. He comes to the idea of murder all by himself, with some promptings from his wife. And, conversely, when they make predictions to Banquo, Banquo does not run off to kill the monarch. Evil (whatever you mean by that word) seems to reside in humanity itself, not in the outside universe. Which is a bit of a cop-out: the witches are, after all, in the play. Bloom says, despite his fascination with the witches, that they are nearly redundant, which I would agree with, following my interpretation of Macbeth's own culpability. But, then, why did Shakespeare feel the need to add them to the play? Was it only because James I had an inordinate interest in witches and the supernatural in general? This hardly seems like a good enough reason for such a large aspect of the play. Is it because Holinshed mentions them in his Chronicles, on which the play is based? Shakespeare often leaves out things in Holinshed which he finds extraneous. Or did Shakespeare also find witches fascinating? It could be for anyone of these reasons, but I think the last is the most intriguing.This is, obviously, a great play. It is economical, fast-paced, and cuts to the bone of what Renaissance tragedy could do. It is also frightening, and more so the more one thinks about it. I could say much more about the play - I've left out a whole discussion on the use of humour in the Porter's scene, which Coleridge hated, but which De Quincey examined at length. I also haven't said much about the role of imagery in the play, or the pathetic fallacy of nature responding to the death of the king. Time is short, the art too long.On a last note: thank God this play isn't as amenable to post-modern reimagings as, say, Othello or The Tempest! I hate polemical interpretations which pervert Shakespeare's plays beyond all recognition. Retellings are fine, but don't give me a Marxist-feminist-structuralist play in which Macbeth is a hero of the proletariat, who kills the factory boss, but then descends into a homo-erotic coupling with the cross-dressing 'Lady' Macbeth, who convinces him to re-exploit the poor factory workers.Obviously, at the end, he is overthrown because of repressed longings for Malcolm, who resembles his mother. Obviously.God, help us.

1606, Shakespeares meest intense tragedie, confrontatie met de kracht van het kwaad.Ook zijn kortste stuk, sterk geconcentreerd. Doordrenkt met demonische energie (via woorden als duisternis en bloed).“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ that struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ and then is heard no more: it is a tale / told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing”.Spijtig van het zeer flauwe einde.

Before reading the play my instinct was to say that the three witches symbolize the three fates. The number is the same and the three witches finish each other's sentences in the way that the fates are usually portrayed as doing. The fact that what the witches predict comes true, and comes true only because Macbeth acted on their prophecy (rather like how Trelawney's prophecy in Harry Potter came true only because Voldemort acted on it).

The biggest difference between the witches and the fates is that (in spite of how popular culture portrays them) in their original mythology the fates do not try to cause harm. They simply do their job creating people's destiny, and occasionally recite a prophecy, without any malicious intent. The witches on the other hand are deliberately trying to lead Macbeth to corrupt his soul. The way that they hint to him that he has good things coming, just enough to make him act to gain those things, even at the expense of others. Even at the expense of his own soul. Because of this I think that the Weird Sisters represent demons, and Hecate, who reprimands them not for the harm that they have done, but for not letting her in on their fun; 'How did you dare/To trade and traffic with Macbeth/In riddles and affairs of death;/And I, the mistress of your charms,/The close contriver of all harms,/Was never call'd to bear my part,/ Or show the glory of our art?'

It appears to me that the Weird Sisters may represent demons, with Hecate representing Satan. Another possibility could be that the witches represent the potential for evil in Macbeth, easily egged on by Lady Macbeth because it is already within his capacity to commit.

The witches apply to the themes of violence and fate. In violence as they spur Macbeth onto violence in his second meeting with them, summoning visions of bleeding heads and murdered babies. And fate as they cause Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and Banquo to question whether the things they predicted would come to pass naturally, or if they will have to act to gain the prophecies.

Without the Weird Sisters the play would not have happened, unless something else took their place. They are responsible for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth resorting to violence, and all the chaos that ensues. They could have been replaced by Macbeth making a conscious decision to kill King Duncan to gain power, but that wouldn't have been as compelling.

Lady Macbeth pushed Macbeth to kill the king trusting on the words the witches enough to believe that Macbeth would become king, but not trusting enough to wait and see if he would become king without them taking action. Ultimately neither husband nor wife could live with the guilt.

(This review was originally a discussion post I wrote for an online Shakespeare class.)

It wasn't in my reading plans, but today when I came across "the Scottish play" I couldn't resist. What can I say that hasn't already been said? It is astonishing just how far ambition can push a person, and how difficult it is to live with the results. This is one of my favourites from Shakespeare. It never fails to entertain whether on the stage or on paper.

Classic. My favorite SS play.

Macbeth is, without a doubt, an awesome play. We read Macbeth sophomore year of high school, and I loved it, but my funniest memory of Macbeth was when some third graders got it in their heads to act out "Macbeth in space". Given that they didn't know the play as well as they thought, I gave them a quick synopsis, and this is some of what they came up with:Macbeth goes up to three (male) witches-"Am I going to be king?""Yes, until the forest moves.""How do you know?""We read it on the internet!"Then Macbeth and the king charge with swords, Macbeth knocks him down, and Lady Macbeth stabs him with a dagger and pretends to wash her hands. Then the trees come and kill Macbeth.They never actually go to outerspace...

Anyway, Macbeth is a play about this scottish dude and some witches come up to him and they're like "hey Macbeth! You're gonna be king!" and so Macbeth thinks: Ok it's my fate... so i have to make it happen! like a dummy. So he kills the king.. and the princes flee, and Macbeth becomes king! but to keep his secret he has to kill a whole bunch of other people...But Macbeth sucks as a king, and his wife, who was all evil before, is all weak and has gone crazy.Then Macduff (yes another Mac... it's scotland) comes around with the old king's son, Malcolm. And they're like.. "no way man, Malcolm's supposed to be king! Macbeth's a tyrant!" so they pretty much overthrow him.I know i gave it away but i'm just thinking probably everyone knows this story anyway. uhhhmm.....some facts about this story:# It's really funny# When they give this play people aren't allowed to say Macbeth until it's over... it's bad luck# In Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicolson books, Georgia and her schoolmates are giving the play Macbeth. Since she can't say the name, in her diary (or whatever the hell it is) she calls it MacUseless. Which is funny, because it is.

I read Lady Macbeth's part at school.

That should tell you all that you need to know about me.

The Scottish play is well known for those who know a thing or two about Shakespeare. This play tells the tale betrayal, guilt, hubris, and witchcraft, threading together plots and wordplay only as Shakespeare could do.Recommended for any fan of Shakespeare, or by any fan of British fantasy.

Having just read a biography about the bard, I read or better re-read the tragedy of Macbeth. Its strength lies in the fantastic special effects. Witches, ghosts and woods grab the attention much more than the bloody body count. While Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have become stock characters, they lack the inherent ambivalence that makes Shakespeare’s villains great. Mr and Mrs Macbeth are but a greedy power couple that loses control of the events it triggered. Incidentally, the tragedy of Macbeth nearly passes the Bechdel test – if only he had given names to the witches or created a female sidekick for Lady Macbeth. The visual nature of the play really calls for the theater not a reading.

I had never thought of reading “Macbeth”, but since I read, Romeo and Juliet at school and at home, I started to like how the structures of Shakespeare poems or plays were set up. What got my attention is the cover of the book because it has a king and a queen, so I thought it had to do with the rich and high-class society. After reading the beginning of the story, I thought Macbeth was a good and loyal man to King Duncan. All of the “Great men” turned out to be fake because all he wanted was to be king, but there was already a king. Three witches had told him that he was going to be king but he had to kill the king. His ambition led him to killing the king and any witness. His wife thought that killing the king was the quickest way to achieve the destiny the witches promised. Macbeth is duly proclaimed the new king of Scotland, but recalling the witches’ prophecy, he arranges the murder of his fellow soldiers Banquo and his son Fleance, both of whom represent a threat to his kingship. Fleance escapes but his dad dies. The next day, according to the witches’ prophecy Macbeth should be aware of an enemy called ‘not born of woman”. Macduff allegiances to young Malcolm and Macduff surrounds and kill Macbeth and Malcolm is crowned the King of Scotland. Not a very good ending for the protagonist but he got what he deserved because his ambition to be powerful lead him to the tomb. Finally, I think this is a great book and I recommended to anybody that likes ambition, mystery, witches, and magic. I love this book and I would like to read more Shakespeare books later on.

*some spoilers*Three witches meet Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, and greet him with tidings that he will become Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland. Macbeth can't stop thinking about it, and when the first prophecy comes true, he starts pondering regicide with his wife alongside goading him into action.This is the first of Shakespeare's plays that I ever read, and as such it holds a special place in my memory. In high school, it was the one play I was assigned to read, and I just remember the thrill of surprise as the prophecies that Macbeth put his trust in came back to bite him. The excitement didn't disappoint on rereading, even though I knew what was going to happen. I love the theme of fate vs. free will - could Macbeth have avoided his fate? Would he have become king if he did nothing, much like Banquo's prophecy is likewise fulfilled? The arc of the characters as guilt gnaws them fascinates me as well. One of my absolute favorites of Shakespeare's plays. 5 stars.

Obviously, Shakespeare is a poetic genius. This play is beautifully written and contains messages about morality. Although Shakespeare's writing can be sometimes hard to understand, I followed this play very well and found it very entertaining. It is interesting to notice the way that fate plays a huge role in the outcome of the play.

‘Let it come down.’Macbeth is a remarkably saturnine, poisonous play: a thread of muddy doom is woven through the fabric of its plot, and any hint of redemption obscured by dark, threatening clouds. That its skeleton is constructed with certain stock materials—vaulting ambition punished, the insidious and cruel female, the equivocal and often deleterious nature of prophecy—is curious given its transcendence of the maudlin trappings of most of these sorts of tragedies: Macbeth takes place, after all, on a somewhat epic-scale; unlike similar fictions, however, it doesn’t squeeze in its more human elements as mere padding between its battle scenes: the play is its human elements. Despite the conspicuous spilling of blood and the sometimes convoluted machinations of its political contexts, Macbeth is truly a tragedy of the soul.Relationships are strained here; and that of Lady Macbeth and her husband is, obviously, the most interesting and complex Shakespeare is offering: the veil between sanity and madness is delicate in a play where guilt is consistently put further on the backburner as the atrocities pile up. Lady Macbeth, seemingly a seething black hole of corruption and evil, provides us with an interesting contrast to the slow devolution of her husband: her own guilt manifests behind the curtain of consciousness, only reaching its climax offstage, where her (implied) suicide—and its motivation—remains somewhat mysterious and open to interpretation. Macbeth, on the other hand, remains unrepentant to the last, and we are treated to his gruesome undoing in exacting detail. Shakespeare has loaded the duality that exists in both of these characters with a great deal of psychological weight: the tension that boils between them is more complex than murderer and accessory (and we can pick who fits which title). Lady Macbeth’s convictions exist undeterred until she is confronted with their ramifications after-the-fact; Macbeth’s own convictions waver in the face of forethought, but once the transaction has been purchased with blood, he stands behind them, unwavering, to his very death. A haunted couple, they have become archetypes in our literature.Macbeth’s relationship with Banquo is less baroque. Banquo provides a foil of reason to Macbeth’s decline: Banquo represents the innocent who stands on the just side of fate, while Macbeth rises heavenwards, like Icarus, chasing destiny with dire results. This begs a question, however: how much of what takes place in Macbeth is solely the work of destiny? Certainly one can say that the prophecies regarding both Banquo and Macbeth coming to their fruition is confirmation of the play’s propensity towards the supernatural, but of Macbeth’s pursuit of fate…this is more curious: after all, why plot to kill Duncan and make yourself king if the cards have already been laid out towards this end? Or are Macbeth’s crimes exactly what the prophecy infers? This question could be argued in circles, certainly, because it exists beyond the constraints of the play. Macbeth’s vision is very dark, however, and I would lean towards the latter conclusion: predestination requires a fated evil as much as a fated good, and we do not always find ourselves in the position to choose. This is one of the more troubling truths examined in Macbeth.Macbeth is obsessed with the supernatural: with fate, with visions, with incantation, with prophecy. It is entirely natural, then, that its characters should be shrouded in the gloom of uncertainty: each of these people is swallowed up by the fog that surrounds them, whether for eventual good or ill. None of them leave this play without experiencing shattering transformation, both internal and external. But the play goes beyond average considerations in pursuit of more metaphysical themes: it suffocates us with its horrors and leaves us disconcerted by their import—chews at our hopes as much as at our fears. It implies, without beating us over the head, that perhaps free will is a more complicated privilege than we’d care to admit: that perhaps even that most elemental of freedoms is subject, somehow, to the caprices of fate.

We have much to learn from Maestro's use of language. In Macbeth, it is surprisingly accessible and fast-paced.

I marvel at his choice at what occurs offstage, like the murder of Duncan. Yet the murder of Macduff's family, including children, happens for all to see. It is postulated that the Duncan scene was cut by someone else. But it actually does something interesting. It increases Macbeth's increasingly murderous character, intensifies his evil as a progression in his paranoia.

I have many more thoughts , of course, but I must stew. Perhaps I'll return to solidify my thoughts on this masterly work of art.

This is one of my favorites! Macbeth's corruption, Lady Macbeth's savage ambition, the deliciously spooky menace of the witches... It's just such fun! And perfect late October reading (I could pretend that I fell behind in my “All Shakespeare in a Year” reading just so Macbeth would fall at the right time of year.)I've read this quite a few times before – my kids acted in an adapted version when they were small, in which “the Curse” was demonstrated when our Macbeth tripped and split his forehead on the edge of the cauldron, and my daughter was the cutest little witch ever – and, as with most great literature, the play just gets better with each reading. This time I supplemented my reading with Garry Wills's “Witches and Jesuits,” which, while perhaps a bit overstated in its claims, is interesting and pointed me to some aspects I'd previously missed, and also Marjorie Garber's wonderful chapter on the play in her “Shakespeare After All.” The Arkangel recording, with Hugh Ross and Harriet Walter (and David Tennant as the porter!) is marvelous, and, as a fun “extra” I watched the Shakespeare Retold version, in which Macbeth is a very ambitious head chef in a popular restaurant. Highly recommended.

This is one of my absolute favorite plays by Shakespeare. The "Scottish Play" contains the supernatural, riddles and memorable quotes. It is a testament about the times and a warning to those that would deceive others to get what they want. This play is a must read/see!