Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Johnbod (talk | contribs) at 12:40, 8 September 2013 (→External links: add holinshed). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Macbeth is a play written by William Shakespeare. It is considered one of his darkest and most powerful tragedies. Set in Scotland, the play dramatizes the corrosive psychological and political effects produced when evil is chosen as a way to fulfil the ambition for power.

The play is believed to have been written between 1603 and 1607, and is most commonly dated 1606. The earliest account of a performance of what was probably Shakespeare's play is April 1611, when Simon Forman recorded seeing such a play at the Globe Theatre. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book. It was most likely written during the reign of James I, who had been James VI of Scotland before he succeeded to the English throne in 1603. James was a patron of Shakespeare’s acting company, and of all the plays Shakespeare wrote during James’s reign, Macbeth most clearly reflects the playwright’s relationship with the sovereign.

Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, and tells the story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia, and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of arrogance, madness, and death.

Shakespeare's source for the tragedy is the account of King Macbeth of Scotland, Macduff, and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth.

In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed, and will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as "the Scottish play". Over the course of many centuries, the play has attracted some of the most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. It has been adapted to film, television, opera, novels, comic books, and other media.

WHEN Duncan the Meek reigned king of Scotland, there lived a great thane, or lord, called Macbeth. This Macbeth was a near kinsman to the king, and in great esteem at court for his valour and conduct in the wars; an example of which he had lately given, in defeating a rebel army assisted by the troops of Norway in terrible numbers.The two Scottish generals, Macbeth and Banquo, returning victorious from this great battle, their way lay over a blasted heath, where they were stopped by the strange appearance of three figures like women, except that they had beards, and their withered skins and wild attire made them look not like any earthly creatures. Macbeth first addressed them, when they, seemingly offended, laid each one her choppy finger upon her skinny lips, in token of silence; and the first of them saluted Macbeth with the title of thane of Glamis. The general was not a little startled to find himself known by such creatures; but how much more, when the second of them followed up that salute by giving him the title of thane of Cawdor, to which honour he had no pretensions; and again the third bid him "All hail! king that shalt be hereafter!" Such a prophetic greeting might well amaze him, who knew that while the king's sons lived he could not hope to succeed to the throne. Then turning to Banquo, they pronounced him, in a sort of riddling terms, to be lesser than Macbeth and greater! not so happy, but much happier! and prophesied that though he should never reign, yet his sons after him should be kings in Scotland. They then turned into air, and vanished: by which the generals knew them to be the weird sisters, or witches.While they stood pondering on the strangeness of this adventure, there arrived certain messengers from the king, who were empowered by him to confer upon Macbeth the dignity of thane of Cawdor: an event so miraculously corresponding with the prediction of the witches astonished Macbeth, and he stood wrapped in amazement, unable to make reply to the messengers; and in that point of time swelling hopes arose in his mind that the prediction of the third witch might in like manner have its accomplishment, and that he should one day reign king in Scotland.Turning to Banquo, he said: "Do you not hope that your children shall be kings, when what the witches promised to me has so wonderfully come to pass?" "That hope," answered the general, "might enkindle you to aim at the throne; but oftentimes these ministers of darkness tell us truths in little things, to betray us into deeds of greatest consequence."But the wicked suggestions of the witches had sunk too deep into the mind of Macbeth to allow him to attend to the warnings of the good Banquo. From that time he bent all his thoughts how to compass the throne of Scotland.Macbeth had a wife, to whom he communicated the strange prediction of the weird sisters, and its partial accomplishment. She was a bad, ambitious woman, and so as her husband and herself could arrive at greatness, she cared not much by what means. She spurred on the reluctant purpose of Macbeth, who felt compunction at the thoughts of blood, and did not cease to represent the murder of the king as a step absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of the flattering prophecy.It happened at this time that the king, who out of his royal condescension would oftentimes visit his principal nobility upon gracious terms, came to Macbeth's house, attended by his two sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, and a numerous train of thanes and attendants, the more to honour Macbeth for the triumphal success of his wars.The castle of Macbeth was pleasantly situated, and the air about it was sweet and wholesome, which appeared by the nests which the martlet, or swallow, had built under all the jutting friezes and buttresses of the building, wherever it found a place of advantage; for where those birds most breed and haunt, the air is observed to be delicate. The king entered well-pleased with the place, and not less so with the attentions and respect of his honoured hostess, lady Macbeth, who had the art of covering treacherous purposes with smiles; and could look like the innocent flower, while she was indeed the serpent under it.The king being tired with his journey, went early to bed, and in his state-room two grooms of his chamber (as was the custom) slept beside him. He had been unusually pleased with his reception, and had made presents before he retired to his principal officers; and among the rest, had sent a rich diamond to lady Macbeth, greeting her by the name of his most kind hostess.Now was the middle of night, when over half the world nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse men's minds asleep, and none but the wolf and the murderer is abroad. This was the time when lady Macbeth waked to plot the murder of the king. She would not have undertaken a deed so abhorrent to her sex, but that she feared her husband's nature, that it was too full of the milk of human kindness, to do a contrived murder. She knew him to be ambitious, but withal to be scrupulous, and not yet prepared for that height of crime which commonly in the end accompanies inordinate ambition. She had won him to consent to the murder, but she doubted his resolution; and she feared that the natural tenderness of his disposition (more humane than her own) would come between, and defeat the purpose. So with her own hands armed with a dagger, she approached the king's bed; having taken care to ply the grooms of his chamber so with wine, that they slept intoxicated, and careless of their charge. There lay Duncan in a sound sleep after the fatigues of his journey, and as she viewed him earnestly, there was something in his face, as he slept, which resembled her own father; and she had not the courage to proceed.She returned to confer with her husband. His resolution had begun to stagger. He considered that there were strong reasons against the deed. In the first place, he was not only a subject, but a near kinsman to the king; and he had been his host and entertainer that day, whose duty, by the laws of hospitality, it was to shut the door against his murderers, not bear the knife himself. Then he considered how just and merciful a king this Duncan had been, how clear of offence to his subjects, how loving to his nobility, and in particular to him; that such kings are the peculiar care of Heaven, and their subjects doubly bound to revenge their deaths. Besides, by the favours of the king, Macbeth stood high in the opinion of all sorts of men, and how would those honours be stained by the reputation of so foul a murder!In these conflicts of the mind lady Macbeth found her husband inclining to the better part, and resolving to proceed no further. But she being a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose, began to pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit into his mind, assigning reason upon reason why he should not shrink from what he had undertaken, how easy the deed was; how soon it would be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw contempt on his change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender it was to love the babe that milked her; but she would, while it was smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform that murder. Then she added, how practicable it was to lay the guilt of the deed upon the drunken sleepy grooms. And with the valour of her tongue she so chastised his sluggish resolutions, that he once more summoned up courage to the bloody business.So, taking the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle towards him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood; but when he tried to grasp at it, it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business he had in hand.Getting rid of this fear, he entered the king's room, whom he despatched with one stroke of his dagger. Just as he had done the murder, one of the grooms, who slept in the chamber, laughed in his sleep, and the other cried: "Murder," which woke them both, but they said a short prayer; one of them said: "God bless us!" and the other answered "Amen"; and addressed themselves to sleep again. Macbeth, who stood listening to them, tried to say "Amen," when the fellow said "God bless us!" but, though he had most need of a blessing, the word stuck in his throat, and he could not pronounce it.Again he thought he heard a voice which cried: "Sleep no more: Macbeth doth murder sleep, the innocent sleep, that nourishes life." Still it cried: "Sleep no more," to all the house. "Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more."With such horrible imaginations Macbeth returned to his listening wife, who began to think he had failed of his purpose, and that the deed was somehow frustrated. He came in so distracted a state, that she reproached him with his want of firmness, and sent him to wash his hands of the blood which stained them, while she took his dagger, with purpose to stain the cheeks of the grooms with blood, to make it seem their guilt.Morning came, and with it the discovery of the murder, which could not be concealed; and though Macbeth and his lady made great show of grief, and the proofs against the grooms (the dagger being produced against them and their faces smeared with blood) were sufficiently strong, yet the entire suspicion fell upon Macbeth, whose inducements to such a deed were so much more forcible than such poor silly grooms could be supposed to have; and Duncan's two sons fled. Malcolm, the eldest, sought for refuge in the English court; and the youngest, Donalbain, made his escape to Ireland.The king's sons, who should have succeeded him, having thus vacated the throne, Macbeth as next heir was crowned king, and thus the prediction of the weird sisters was literally accomplished.Though placed so high, Macbeth and his queen could not forget the prophecy of the weird sisters, that, though Macbeth should be king, yet not his children, but the children of Banquo, should be kings after him. The thought of this, and that they had defiled their hands with blood, and done so great crimes, only to place the posterity of Banquo upon the throne, so rankled within them, that they determined to put to death both Banquo and his son, to make void the predictions of the weird sisters, which in their own case had been so remarkably brought to pass.For this purpose they made a great supper, to which they invited all the chief thanes; and, among the rest, with marks of particular respect, Banquo and his son Fleance were invited. The way by which Banquo was to pass to the palace at night was beset by murderers appointed by Macbeth, who stabbed Banquo; but in the scuffle Fleance escaped. From that Fleance descended a race of monarchs who afterwards filled the Scottish throne, ending with James the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England, under whom the two crowns of England and Scotland were united.At supper, the queen, whose manners were in the highest degree affable and royal, played the hostess with a gracefulness and attention which conciliated every one present, and Macbeth discoursed freely with his thanes and nobles, saying, that all that was honourable in the country was under his roof, if he had but his good friend Banquo present, whom yet he hoped he should rather have to chide for neglect, than to lament for any mischance. Just at these words the ghost of Banquo, whom he had caused to be murdered, entered the room and placed himself on the chair which Macbeth was about to occupy. Though Macbeth was a bold man, and one that could have faced the devil without trembling, at this horrible sight his cheeks turned white with fear, and he stood quite unmanned with his eyes fixed upon the ghost. His queen and all the nobles, who saw nothing, but perceived him gazing (as they thought) upon an empty chair, took it for a fit of distraction; and she reproached him, whispering that it was but the same fancy which made him see the dagger in the air, when he was about to kill Duncan. But Macbeth continued to see the ghost, and gave no heed to all they could say, while he addressed it with distracted words, yet so significant, that his queen, fearing the dreadful secret would be disclosed, in great haste dismissed the guests, excusing the infirmity of Macbeth as a disorder he was often troubled with.To such dreadful fancies Macbeth was subject. His queen and he had their sleeps afflicted with terrible dreams, and the blood of Banquo troubled them not more than the escape of Fleance, whom now they looked upon as father to a line of kings who should keep their posterity out of the throne. With these miserable thoughts they found no peace, and Macbeth determined once more to seek out the weird sisters, and know from them the worst.He sought them in a cave upon the heath, where they, who knew by foresight of his coming, were engaged in preparing their dreadful charms, by which they conjured up infernal spirits to reveal to them futurity. Their horrid ingredients were toads, bats, and serpents, the eye of a newt, and the tongue of a dog, the leg of a lizard, and the wing of the night-owl, the scale of a dragon, the tooth of a wolf, the maw of the ravenous salt-sea shark, the mummy of a witch, the root of the poisonous hemlock (this to have effect must be digged in the dark), the gall of a goat, and the liver of a Jew, with slips of the yew tree that roots itself in graves, and the finger of a dead child: all these were set on to boil in a great kettle, or cauldron, which, as fast as it grew too hot, was cooled with a baboon's blood: to these they poured in the blood of a sow that had eaten her young, and they threw into the flame the grease that had sweaten from a murderer's gibbet. By these charms they bound the infernal spirits to answer their questions.It was demanded of Macbeth, whether he would have his doubts resolved by them, or by their masters, the spirits. He, nothing daunted by the dreadful ceremonies which he saw, boldly answered: "Where are they? let me see them." And they called the spirits, which were three. And the first arose in the likeness of an armed head, and he called Macbeth by name, and bid him beware of the thane of Fife; for which caution Macbeth thanked him; for Macbeth had entertained a jealousy of Macduff, the thane of Fife.And the second spirit arose in the likeness of a bloody child, and he called Macbeth by name, and bid him have no fear, but laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born should have power to hurt him; and he advised him to be bloody, bold, and resolute. "Then live, Macduff!" cried the king; "what need I fear of thee? but yet I will make assurance doubly sure. Thou shalt not live; that I may tell pale-hearted Fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder."That spirit being dismissed, a third arose in the form of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand. He called Macbeth by name, and comforted him against conspiracies, saying, that he should never be vanquished, until the wood of Birnam to Dunsinane Hill should come against him. "Sweet bodements! good!" cried Macbeth; "who can unfix the forest, and move it from its earth-bound roots? I see I shall live the usual period of man's life, and not be cut off by a violent death. But my heart throbs to know one thing. Tell me, if your art can tell so much, if Banquo's issue shall ever reign in this kingdom?" Here the cauldron sank into the ground, and a noise of music was heard, and eight shadows, like kings, passed by Macbeth, and Banquo last, who bore a glass which showed the figures of many more, and Banquo all bloody smiled upon Macbeth, and pointed to them; by which Macbeth knew that these were the posterity of Banquo, who should reign after him in Scotland; and the witches, with a sound of soft music, and with dancing, making a show of duty and welcome to Macbeth, vanished. And from this time the thoughts of Macbeth were all bloody and dreadful.The first thing he heard when he got out of the witches' cave, was that Macduff, thane of Fife, had fled to England, to join the army which was forming against him under Malcolm, the eldest son of the late king, with intent to displace Macbeth, and set Malcolm, the right heir, upon the throne. Macbeth, stung with rage, set upon the castle of Macduff, and put his wife and children, whom the thane had left behind, to the sword, and extended the slaughter to all who claimed the least relationship to Macduff.These and such-like deeds alienated the minds of all his chief nobility from him. Such as could, fled to join with Malcolm and Macduff, who were now approaching with a powerful army, which they had raised in England; and the rest secretly wished success to their arms, though for fear of Macbeth they could take no active part. His recruits went on slowly. Everybody hated the tyrant; nobody loved or honoured him; but all suspected him, and he began to envy the condition of Duncan, whom he had murdered, who slept soundly in his grave, against whom treason had done its worst: steel nor poison, domestic malice nor foreign levies, could hurt him any longer.While these things were acting, the queen, who had been the sole partner in his wickedness, in whose bosom he could sometimes seek a momentary repose from those terrible dreams which afflicted them both nightly, died, it is supposed, by her own hands, unable to bear the remorse of guilt, and public hate; by which event he was left alone, without a soul to love or care for him, or a friend to whom he could confide his wicked purposes.He grew careless of life, and wished for death, but the near approach of Malcolm's army roused in him what remained of his ancient courage, and he determined to die (as he expressed it) "with armour on his back." Besides this, the hollow promises of the witches had filled him with a false confidence, and he remembered the sayings of the spirits, that none of woman born was to hurt him, and that he was never to be vanquished till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane, which he thought could never be. So he shut himself up in his castle, whose impregnable strength was such as defied a siege: here he sullenly waited the approach of Malcolm. When, upon a day, there came a messenger to him, pale and shaking with fear, almost unable to report that which he had seen; for he averred, that as he stood upon his watch on the hill, he looked towards Birnam, and to his thinking the wood began to move! "Liar and slave!" cried Macbeth: "if thou speakest false, thou shalt hang alive upon the next tree, till famine end thee. If thy tale be true, I care not if thou cost as much by me": for Macbeth now began to faint in resolution, and to doubt the equivocal speeches of the spirits. He was not to fear till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane; and now a wood did move! "However," said he, "if this which he avouches be true, let us arm and out. There is no flying hence, nor staying here. I begin to be weary of the sun, and wish my life at an end." With these desperate speeches he sallied forth upon the besiegers, who had now come up to the castle.The strange appearance which had given the messenger an idea of a wood moving is easily solved. When the besieging army marched through the wood of Birnam, Malcolm, like a skilful general, instructed his soldiers to hew down every one a bough and bear it before him, by way of concealing the true numbers of his host. This marching of the soldiers with boughs had at a distance the appearance which had frightened the messenger. Thus were the words of the spirit brought to pass, in a sense different from that in which Macbeth had understood them, and one great hold of his confidence was gone.And now a severe skirmishing took place, in which Macbeth, though feebly supported by those who called themselves his friends, but in reality hated the tyrant and inclined to the party of Malcolm and Macduff, yet fought with the extreme of rage and valour, cutting to pieces all who were opposed to him, till he came to where Macduff was fighting. Seeing Macduff, and remembering the caution of the spirit who had counselled him to avoid Macduff, above all men, he would have turned, but Macduff, who had been seeking him through the whole fight, opposed his turning, and a fierce contest ensued; Macduff giving him many foul reproaches for the murder of his wife and children. Macbeth, whose soul was charged enough with blood of that family already, would still have declined the combat: but Macduff still urged him to it, calling him tyrant, murderer, hell-hound, and villain.Then Macbeth remembered the words of the spirit, how none of woman born should hurt him; and smiling confidently he said to Macduff: "Thou losest thy labour, Macduff. As easily thou mayest impress the air with thy sword, as make me vulnerable. I bear a charmed life, which must not yield to one of woman born.""Despair thy charm," said Macduff, "and let that lying spirit whom thou hast served, tell thee, that Macduff was never born of woman, never as the ordinary manner of men is to be born, but was untimely taken from his mother.""Accursed be the tongue which tells me so," said the trembling Macbeth, who felt his last hold of confidence give way; "and let never man in future believe the lying equivocations of witches and juggling spirits, who deceive us in words which have double senses, and while they keep their promise literally, disappoint our hopes with a different meaning. I will not fight with thee.""Then live!" said the scornful Macduff; "we will have a show of thee, as men show monsters, and a painted board, on which shall be written: 'Here men may see the tyrant!'""Never," said Macbeth, whose courage returned with despair; "I will not live to kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, and to be baited with the curses of the rabble. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed to me, who wast never born of woman, yet will I try the last." With these frantic words he threw himself upon Macduff, who, after a severe struggle, in the end overcame him, and cutting off his head, made a present of it to the young and lawful king, Malcolm; who took upon him the government which, by the machinations of the usurper, he had so long been deprived of, and ascended the throne of Duncan the Meek, amid the acclamations of the nobles and the people.

Characters

Plot

The play opens amidst thunder and lightning, and the Three Witches decide that their next meeting shall be with Macbeth. In the following scene, a wounded sergeant reports to King Duncan of Scotland that his generals—Macbeth, who is the Thane of Glamis, and Banquo—have just defeated the allied forces of Norway and Ireland, who were led by the traitorous Macdonwald and the Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, the King's kinsman, is praised for his bravery and fighting prowess.

In the following scene, Macbeth and Banquo discuss the weather and their victory. As they wander onto a heath, the Three Witches enter and greet them with prophecies. Though Banquo challenges them first, they address Macbeth, hailing him as "Thane of Glamis," "Thane of Cawdor," and that he shall "be King hereafter." Macbeth appears to be stunned to silence. When Banquo asks of his own fortunes, the witches inform him that he will father a line of kings, though he himself will not be one. While the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the witches vanish, and another thane, Ross, arrives and informs Macbeth of his newly bestowed title: Thane of Cawdor, as the previous Thane of Cawdor shall be put to death for his traitorous activities. The first prophecy is thus fulfilled, and Macbeth immediately begins to harbour ambitions of becoming king.

King Duncan welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, and declares that he will spend the night at Macbeth's castle at Inverness; he also names his son Malcolm as his heir. Macbeth sends a message ahead to his wife, Lady Macbeth, telling her about the witches' prophecies. Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husband’s uncertainty, and wishes him to murder Duncan in order to obtain kingship. When Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she overrides all of her husband’s objections by challenging his manhood, and successfully persuades him to kill the king that very night. He and Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncan’s two chamberlains drunk so that they will black out; the next morning they will frame the chamberlains for the murder. They will be defenceless, as they will remember nothing.

While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and a number of supernatural portents, including a hallucination of a bloody dagger. He is so shaken that Lady Macbeth has to take charge. In accordance with her plan, she frames Duncan's sleeping servants for the murder by placing bloody daggers on them. Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish nobleman, and Macduff, the loyal Thane of Fife, arrive. A porter opens the gate and Macbeth leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff discovers Duncan's body. Macbeth murders the guards to prevent them from professing their innocence, but claims he did so in a fit of anger over their misdeeds. Duncan’s sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland, respectively, fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires their demise as well. The rightful heirs' flight makes them suspects and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king. Banquo reveals this to the audience, and while sceptical of the new King Macbeth, remembers the witches' prophecy about how his own descendants would inherit the throne.

Despite his success, Macbeth, also aware of this part of the prophecy, remains uneasy. Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal banquet, where he discovers that Banquo and his young son, Fleance, will be riding out that night. Macbeth hires men to kill them. The assassins succeed in killing Banquo, but Fleance escapes. Macbeth becomes furious: he fears that his power remains insecure as long as an heir of Banquo remains alive. At the banquet, Macbeth invites his lords and Lady Macbeth to a night of drinking and merriment. Banquo's ghost enters and sits in Macbeth's place. Macbeth raves fearfully, startling his guests, as the ghost is only visible to himself. The others panic at the sight of Macbeth raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady Macbeth tells them that her husband is merely afflicted with a familiar and harmless malady. The ghost departs and returns once more, causing the same riotous anger and fear in Macbeth. This time, Lady Macbeth tells the lords to leave, and they do so.

Macbeth, disturbed, visits the three witches once more and asks them to reveal the truth of their prophecies to him. To answer his questions, they summon horrible apparitions, each of which offers predictions and further prophecies to allay Macbeth’s fears. First, they conjure an armored head, which tells him to beware of Macduff (4.1.72). Second, a bloody child tells him that no one born of a woman shall be able to harm him. Thirdly, a crowned child holding a tree states that Macbeth will be safe until Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill. Macbeth is relieved and feels secure, because he knows that all men are born of women and forests cannot move. Macbeth also asks if Banquo's sons will ever reign in Scotland: the witches conjure a procession of eight crowned kings, all similar in appearance to Banquo, and the last carrying a mirror that reflects even more kings. Macbeth realises that these are all Banquo's descendants having acquired kingship in numerous countries. After the witches perform a mad dance and leave, Lennox enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England. Macbeth orders Macduff's castle be seized, and, most cruelly, sends murderers to slaughter Macduff’s wife and children. Everyone in Macduff's castle is put to death, including Lady Macduff and their young son.

Meanwhile, Lady Macbeth becomes racked with guilt from the crimes she and her husband have committed. At night, in the king’s palace at Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady Macbeth’s strange habit of sleepwalking. Suddenly, Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a candle in her hand. Bemoaning the murders of Duncan, Lady Macduff, and Banquo, she tries to wash off imaginary bloodstains from her hands, all the while speaking of the terrible things she knows she pressed her husband to do. She leaves, and the doctor and gentlewoman marvel at her descent into madness. Her belief that nothing can wash away the blood on her hands is an ironic reversal of her earlier claim to Macbeth that “ little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.66).

In England, Macduff is informed by Ross that his "castle is surprised; wife and babes / Savagely slaughter'd" (4.3.204-5). When this news of his family’s execution reaches him, Macduff is stricken with grief and vows revenge. Prince Malcolm, Duncan’s son, has succeeded in raising an army in England, and Macduff joins him as he rides to Scotland to challenge Macbeth’s forces. The invasion has the support of the Scottish nobles, who are appalled and frightened by Macbeth’s tyrannical and murderous behaviour. Malcolm leads an army, along with Macduff and Englishmen Siward (the Elder), the Earl of Northumberland, against Dunsinane Castle. While encamped in Birnam Wood, the soldiers are ordered to cut down and carry tree limbs to camouflage their numbers.

Before Macbeth’s opponents arrive, he receives news that Lady Macbeth has killed herself, causing him to sink into a deep and pessimistic despair and deliver his "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy (5.5.17–28). Though he reflects on the brevity and meaninglessness of life, he nevertheless awaits the English and fortifies Dunsinane. He is certain that the witches’ prophecies guarantee his invincibility, but is struck with fear when he learns that the English army is advancing on Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam Wood, in apparent fulfillment of one of the prophecies.

A battle culminates in Macduff's confrontation with Macbeth as the English forces overwhelm his army and castle. Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, for he cannot be killed by any man born of woman. Macduff declares that he was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd" (5.8.15–16), (i.e., born by Caesarean section) and is not "of woman born" (an example of a literary quibble), fulfilling the second prophecy. Macbeth realises too late that he has misinterpreted the witches' words. Though he realises that he is doomed, he continues to fight. Macduff kills and beheads him, thus fulfilling the remaining prophecy.

Macduff carries Macbeth's head onstage and Malcolm discusses how order has been restored. His last reference to Lady Macbeth, however, reveals "'tis thought, by self and violent hands / Took off her life" (5.9.71–72), but the method of her suicide is undisclosed. Malcolm, now the King of Scotland, declares his benevolent intentions for the country and invites all to see him crowned at Scone.

Although Malcolm, and not Fleance, is placed on the throne, the witches' prophecy concerning Banquo ("Thou shalt get kings") was known to the audience of Shakespeare's time to be true: James VI of Scotland (later also James I of England) was supposedly a descendant of Banquo.

Sources

Macbeth has been compared to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Both Antony and Macbeth as characters seek a new world, even at the cost of the old one. Both are fighting for a throne and have a 'nemesis' to face to achieve that throne. For Antony the nemesis is Octavius, for Macbeth it is Banquo. At one point Macbeth even compares himself to Antony, saying "under Banquo / My Genius is rebuk'd, as it is said / Mark Antony's was by Caesar." Lastly, both plays contain powerful and manipulative female figures: Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth.

Shakespeare borrowed the story from several tales in Holinshed's Chronicles, a popular history of the British Isles known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In Chronicles, a man named Donwald finds several of his family put to death by his king, King Duff, for dealing with witches. After being pressured by his wife, he and four of his servants kill the King in his own house. In Chronicles, Macbeth is portrayed as struggling to support the kingdom in the face of King Duncan's ineptitude. He and Banquo meet the three witches, who make exactly the same prophecies as in Shakespeare's version. Macbeth and Banquo then together plot the murder of Duncan, at Lady Macbeth's urging. Macbeth has a long, ten-year reign before eventually being overthrown by Macduff and Malcolm. The parallels between the two versions are clear. However, some scholars think that George Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarum Historia matches Shakespeare's version more closely. Buchanan's work was available in Latin in Shakespeare's day.

No other version of the story has Macbeth kill the king in Macbeth's own castle. Scholars have seen this change of Shakespeare's as adding to the darkness of Macbeth's crime as the worst violation of hospitality. Versions of the story that were common at the time had Duncan being killed in an ambush at Inverness, not in a castle. Shakespeare conflated the story of Donwald and King Duff in what was a significant change to the story.

Shakespeare made another revealing change. In Chronicles, Banquo is an accomplice in Macbeth's murder of King Duncan. He also plays an important part in ensuring that Macbeth, not Malcolm, takes the throne in the coup that follows. In Shakespeare's day, Banquo was thought to be a direct ancestor of the Stuart King James I (Banquo's Stuart descent was disproven in the 19th century, when it was discovered that the Fitzalans actually descended from a Breton family). The Banquo portrayed in historical sources is significantly different from the Banquo created by Shakespeare. Critics have proposed several reasons for this change. First, to portray the king's ancestor as a murderer would have been risky. Other authors of the time who wrote about Banquo, such as Jean de Schelandre in his Stuartide, also changed history by portraying Banquo as a noble man, not a murderer, probably for the same reasons. Second, Shakespeare may have altered Banquo's character simply because there was no dramatic need for another accomplice to the murder; there was, however, a need to give a dramatic contrast to Macbeth—a role which many scholars argue is filled by Banquo.

Date and text

Macbeth cannot be dated precisely, owing to significant evidence of later revisions. As the play appears to celebrate King James' ancestors and the Stuart accession to the throne in 1603 (James believed himself to be descended from Banquo), scholars say that the play is unlikely to have been composed earlier than 1603 and suggest that the parade of eight kings—which the witches show Macbeth in a vision in Act IV—is a compliment to King James. The vast majority of critics think the play was written in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot because of possible internal allusions to the 1605 plot and its ensuing trials. In 1605, to commemorate King James’ escape, a medal was struck picturing a serpent hiding among lilies and roses. Shakespeare may allude to the image when Lady Macbeth says to her husband, "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't" (1.5.74-5).

Particularly, the Porter's speech (2.3.1–21) in which he welcomes an "equivicator", a farmer, and a tailor to hell (2.3.8-13), has been argued to be an allusion to the trial of the Jesuit Henry Garnet on 28 March 1606 and his execution on 3 May 1606, with "equivocator" referring to Garnet's defence of "equivocation". However, equivocation was also the subject of a 1583 tract by Queen Elizabeth's chief councillor Lord Burghley, and of the 1584 Doctrine of Equivocation by the Spanish prelate Martin Azpilcueta, which was disseminated across Europe and into England in the 1590s. But the porter says that the equivocator "committed treason enough for God's sake" (2.3.9-10), which specifically connects equivocation and treason and ties it to the Jesuit belief that equivocation was only lawful when used "for God's sake", strengthening the allusion to Garnet. The porter goes on to say that the equivocator "yet could/not equivocate to heaven" (2.3.10-11), echoing grim jokes that were current on the eve of Garnet's execution: i.e. that Garnet would be "hanged without equivocation" and at his execution he was asked "not to equivocate with his last breath." The porter's mention of a farmer could be another allusion to Garnet, who used "Farmer" as an alias. The "English tailor" the porter admits to hell (2.3.13), has been seen as an allusion to Hugh Griffin, a tailor who was questioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 27 November and 3 December 1607 for the part he played in Garnet's "miraculous straw", an infamous head of straw that was stained with Garnet's blood that had congealed into a form resembling Garnet's portrait, which was hailed by Catholics as a miracle. The tailor Griffin became notorious and the subject of verses published with his portrait on the title page.

Scholars also cite an entertainment seen by King James at Oxford in the summer of 1605 that featured three "sibyls" like the weird sisters; Kermode surmises that Shakespeare could have heard about this and alluded to it with the weird sisters. However, A. R. Braunmuller in the New Cambridge edition finds the 1605–6 arguments inconclusive, and argues only for an earliest date of 1603. The play is not considered to have been written any later than 1607, since, as Kermode notes, there are "fairly clear allusions to the play in 1607."

In addition, one suggested allusion supporting a date in late 1606 is the first witch's dialogue about a sailor's wife: "'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries./Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger" (1.6-7). This has been thought to allude to the Tiger, a ship that returned to England 27 June 1606 after a disastrous voyage in which many of the crew were killed by pirates. A few lines later the witch speaks of the sailor, "He shall live a man forbid:/Weary se'nnights nine times nine" (1.21-2). The real ship was at sea 567 days, the product of 7x9x9, which has been taken as a confirmation of the allusion, which if correct, confirms that the play could not have been written any earlier than July 1606.

Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text. The text that survives had been plainly altered by later hands. Most notable is the inclusion of two songs from Thomas Middleton's play The Witch (1615); Middleton is conjectured to have inserted an extra scene involving the witches and Hecate, for these scenes had proven highly popular with audiences. These revisions, which since the Clarendon edition of 1869 have been assumed to include all of Act III, scene v, and a portion of Act IV, scene I, are often indicated in modern texts. On this basis, many scholars reject all three of the interludes with the goddess Hecate as inauthentic. Even with the Hecate material, the play is conspicuously short, and so the Folio text may derive from a prompt book that had been substantially cut for performance, or an adapter cut the text himself.

Themes and motifs

Macbeth
The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

Ambition

A main theme within Macbeth is the destruction that follows when ambition goes beyond moral constraints. Macbeth is a brave general who is not naturally inclined to commit evil, yet he is deeply ambitious and desires power. He murders King Duncan against his better judgement and then wallows in guilt and paranoia. Toward the play's end, he is in a kind of boastful madness. Lady Macbeth pursues her goals with greater determination, yet is less capable of dealing with the guilt from her immorality. One of Shakespeare's most forceful female characters, she spurs her husband mercilessly to kill Duncan and urges him to be strong afterward, yet is herself eventually driven to death by the effect of Macbeth's murders on her conscience. In each case, ambition, spurred by the prophecies of the witches, is what drives the couple to commit their atrocities. An issue that the play raises is that once one decides to use violence to further one's quest for power, it is difficult to stop. Macbeth finds that there are always potential threats to the throne – such as Banquo, Fleance, and Macduff – and he is tempted to use violent means to dispose of them.

Masculinity

Lady Macbeth
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'

Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband by questioning his manhood, wishing herself to be “unsexed,” and does not contradict Macbeth when he says that a woman like her should give birth only to boys. In the same manner that Lady Macbeth goads her husband on to murder, Macbeth provokes the assassins he hires to murder Banquo by questioning their manhood. Such acts show that both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth equate masculinity with naked aggression; whenever they discuss manhood, violence follows. Their understanding of manhood allows the political order depicted in the play to descend into chaos.

However, in "Macbeth", women are prone to contain violence and evil intentions. The witches’ prophecies spark Macbeth’s ambitions and then encourage his violent behaviour, while Lady Macbeth provides the drive and the will behind her husband’s plotting. After reading the letter her husband has sent telling of the witches' prophecies about him, Lady Macbeth believes:

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it

— Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Act I, Scene V

Furthermore, the only divine being to appear is Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. Because "Macbeth" traces the root of chaos and evil to women, some critics argue that it is Shakespeare’s most misogynistic play. The male characters are similarly brutal and prone to evil as the women, but the aggression of the female characters is more striking because it contradicts expectations of how women ought to behave. Lady Macbeth’s behaviour certainly shows that women can be just as ambitious and ruthless as men. Whether it is the gender constraints of her society or because she is not fearless enough to kill, Lady Macbeth relies on manipulation of her husband rather than violence to achieve her ends.

The play does put forth less destructive definition of manhood towards the end. When Macduff learns of the murders of his wife and child, Malcolm consoles him unsympathetically with encouragement to take the news in “manly” fashion and use it to fuel his hatred of Macbeth. Macduff tells the young heir apparent that he has a mistaken understanding of masculinity. To Malcolm’s suggestion, “Dispute it like a man,” Macduff replies, “I shall do so. But I must also feel it as a man” (4.3.221–223). After hearing the news of his son's death at the hands of Macbeth, Siward receives this fact somewhat complacently. Malcolm responds: “He’s worth more sorrow / And that I’ll spend for him” (5.11.16–17). Malcolm’s comment shows that he has learned the lesson Macduff gave him on the feeling nature of true masculinity. It also suggests that, with Malcolm’s coronation, order will be restored to the Kingdom of Scotland.

Analysis

This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (September 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Macbeth is an anomaly among Shakespeare's tragedies in certain critical ways. It is short: more than a thousand lines shorter than Othello and King Lear, and only slightly more than half as long as Hamlet. This brevity has suggested to many critics that the received version is based on a heavily cut source, perhaps a prompt-book for a particular performance. That brevity has also been connected to other unusual features: the fast pace of the first act, which has seemed to be "stripped for action"; the comparative flatness of the characters other than Macbeth; the oddness of Macbeth himself compared with other Shakespearean tragic heroes.

As a tragedy of character

At least since the days of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, analysis of the play has centred on the question of Macbeth's ambition, commonly seen as so dominant a trait that it defines the character. Johnson asserted that Macbeth, though esteemed for his military bravery, is wholly reviled. This opinion recurs in critical literature, and, according to Caroline Spurgeon, is supported by Shakespeare himself, who apparently intended to degrade his hero by vesting him with clothes unsuited to him and to make Macbeth look ridiculous by several nimisms he applies: His garments seem either too big or too small for him – as his ambition is too big and his character too small for his new and unrightful role as king. When he feels as if "dressed in borrowed clothes", after his new title as Thane of Cawdor, prophesied by the witches, has been confirmed by Ross (I, 3, ll. 108–109), Banquo comments: "New honours come upon him, / Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould, / But with the aid of use" (I, 3, ll. 145–146). And, at the end, when the tyrant is at bay at Dunsinane, Caithness sees him as a man trying in vain to fasten a large garment on him with too small a belt: "He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause / Within the belt of rule" (V, 2, ll. 14–15), while Angus, in a similar nimism, sums up what everybody thinks ever since Macbeth's accession to power: "now does he feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe / upon a dwarfish thief" (V, 2, ll. 18–20).

Like Richard III, but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall. As Kenneth Muir writes, "Macbeth has not a predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown." Some critics, such as E. E. Stoll, explain this characterisation as a holdover from Senecan or medieval tradition. Shakespeare's audience, in this view, expected villains to be wholly bad, and Senecan style, far from prohibiting a villainous protagonist, all but demanded it.

Yet for other critics, it has not been so easy to resolve the question of Macbeth's motivation. Robert Bridges, for instance, perceived a paradox: a character able to express such convincing horror before Duncan's murder would likely be incapable of committing the crime. For many critics, Macbeth's motivations in the first act appear vague and insufficient. John Dover Wilson hypothesised that Shakespeare's original text had an extra scene or scenes where husband and wife discussed their plans. This interpretation is not fully provable; however, the motivating role of ambition for Macbeth is universally recognised. The evil actions motivated by his ambition seem to trap him in a cycle of increasing evil, as Macbeth himself recognises: "I am in blood/Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go o'er."

As a tragedy of moral order

The disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not limited to him. Almost from the moment of the murder, the play depicts Scotland as a land shaken by inversions of the natural order. Shakespeare may have intended a reference to the great chain of being, although the play's images of disorder are mostly not specific enough to support detailed intellectual readings. He may also have intended an elaborate compliment to James's belief in the divine right of kings, although this hypothesis, outlined at greatest length by Henry N. Paul, is not universally accepted. As in Julius Caesar, though, perturbations in the political sphere are echoed and even amplified by events in the material world. Among the most often depicted of the inversions of the natural order is sleep. Macbeth's announcement that he has "murdered sleep" is figuratively mirrored in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking.

Macbeth's generally accepted indebtedness to medieval tragedy is often seen as significant in the play's treatment of moral order. Glynne Wickham connects the play, through the Porter, to a mystery play on the harrowing of hell. Howard Felperin argues that the play has a more complex attitude toward "orthodox Christian tragedy" than is often admitted; he sees a kinship between the play and the tyrant plays within the medieval liturgical drama.

The theme of androgyny is often seen as a special aspect of the theme of disorder. Inversion of normative gender roles is most famously associated with the witches and with Lady Macbeth as she appears in the first act. Whatever Shakespeare's degree of sympathy with such inversions, the play ends with a thorough return to normative gender values. Some feminist psychoanalytic critics, such as Janet Adelman, have connected the play's treatment of gender roles to its larger theme of inverted natural order. In this light, Macbeth is punished for his violation of the moral order by being removed from the cycles of nature (which are figured as female); nature itself (as embodied in the movement of Birnam Wood) is part of the restoration of moral order.

As a poetic tragedy

Critics in the early twentieth century reacted against what they saw as an excessive dependence on the study of character in criticism of the play. This dependence, though most closely associated with Andrew Cecil Bradley, is clear as early as the time of Mary Cowden Clarke, who offered precise, if fanciful, accounts of the predramatic lives of Shakespeare's female leads. She suggested, for instance, that the child Lady Macbeth refers to in the first act died during a foolish military action.

Witchcraft and evil

In the play, the Three Witches represent darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses. Their presence communicates treason and impending doom. During Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as worse than rebels, "the most notorious traytor and rebell that can be." They were not only political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well. Much of the confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to straddle the play's borders between reality and the supernatural. They are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear whether they control fate, or whether they are merely its agents. They defy logic, not being subject to the rules of the real world. The witches' lines in the first act: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air" are often said to set the tone for the rest of the play by establishing a sense of confusion. Indeed, the play is filled with situations where evil is depicted as good, while good is rendered evil. The line "Double, double toil and trouble," communicates the witches' intent clearly: they seek only trouble for the mortals around them.

While the witches do not tell Macbeth directly to kill King Duncan, they use a subtle form of temptation when they tell Macbeth that he is destined to be king. By placing this thought in his mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his own destruction. This follows the pattern of temptation used at the time of Shakespeare. First, they argued, a thought is put in a man's mind, then the person may either indulge in the thought or reject it. Macbeth indulges in it, while Banquo rejects.

According to J. A. Bryant Jr., Macbeth also makes use of Biblical parallels, notably between King Duncan's murder and the murder of Christ:

No matter how one looks at it, whether as history or as tragedy, Macbeth is distinctively Christian. One may simply count the Biblical allusions as Richmond Noble has done; one may go further and study the parallels between Shakespeare's story and the Old Testament stories of Saul and Jezebel as Miss Jane H. Jack has done; or one may examine with W. C. Curry the progressive degeneration of Macbeth from the point of view of medieval theology.

Superstition and "the Scottish play"

While many today would say that any misfortune surrounding a production is mere coincidence, actors and other theatre people often consider it bad luck to mention Macbeth by name while inside a theatre, and sometimes refer to it indirectly, for example as "the Scottish play", or "MacBee", or when referring to the character and not the play, "Mr. and Mrs. M", or "The Scottish King".

This is because Shakespeare is said to have used the spells of real witches in his text, purportedly angering the witches and causing them to curse the play. Thus, to say the name of the play inside a theatre is believed to doom the production to failure, and perhaps cause physical injury or death to cast members. There are stories of accidents, misfortunes and even deaths taking place during runs of Macbeth.

According to the actor Sir Donald Sinden, in his Sky Arts TV series Great West End Theatres, "contrary to popular myth, Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth is not the unluckiest play as superstition likes to portray it. Exactly the opposite! The origin of the unfortunate moniker dates back to repertory theatre days when each town and village had at least one theatre to entertain the public. If a play was not doing well, it would invariably get 'pulled' and replaced with a sure-fire audience pleaser - Macbeth guaranteed full-houses. So when the weekly theatre newspaper, The Stage was published, listing what was on in each theatre in the country, it was instantly noticed what shows had NOT worked the previous week, as they had been replaced by a definite crowd-pleaser. More actors have died during performances of Hamlet than in the "Scottish play" as the profession still calls it. It is forbidden to quote from it backstage as this could cause the current play to collapse and have to be replaced, causing possible unemployment."

One particular incident that lent itself to the superstition was the Astor Place Riot. The cause of the riots was based on a conflict over two performances of Macbeth, and is usually ascribed to the curse.

Several methods exist to dispel the curse, depending on the actor. One, attributed to Michael York, is to immediately leave the building the stage is in with the person who uttered the name, walk around it three times, spit over their left shoulders, say an obscenity then wait to be invited back into the building. A related practice is to spin around three times as fast as possible on the spot, sometimes accompanied by spitting over their shoulder, and uttering an obscenity. Another popular "ritual" is to leave the room, knock three times, be invited in, and then quote a line from Hamlet. Yet another is to recite lines from The Merchant of Venice, thought to be a lucky play.

Legacy

Performance history

Shakespeare's Day to the Interregnum

The first actor to play Macbeth would have been Richard Burbage, chief tragedian of Shakespeare's company, The King's Men. The play required an effigy of his head, for its closing scene. The only eyewitness account of Macbeth in Shakespeare's lifetime was recorded by Simon Forman, who saw a performance at the Globe in 1610 or 1611. Scholars have struggled to explain the differences between his account and the play as it appears in the Folio; for example, the following does not accord with anything in the Folio text:

And when MackBeth had murdred the kinge, the blod on his hands could not be washed of by Any means, nor from his wiues handes, which handled the bloddi daggers in hiding them, By which means they became moch amazed and Affronted.

Conversely, he makes no mention of the apparition scene, or of Hecate, of the man not of woman born, or of Birnam Wood. As mentioned above, the Folio text is clearly a revision of the original play, probably adapted by Thomas Middleton (and unquestionably using Middleton's material), and is very short by Shakespeare's standards, suggesting abridgement. This has led to the conclusion that the play as we know it from the Folio was an adaptation for indoor performance at the Blackfriars Theatre (which was operated by the King's Men from 1608) - and even speculation that it represents a specific performance before King James. The play contains more musical cues than any other play in the canon as well as a significant use of sound effects.

Restoration and Eighteenth Century

The chill of the grave seemed about you when you looked on her; there was the hush and damp of the charnel house at midnight ... your flesh crept and your breathing became uneasy ... the scent of blood became palpable to you.

All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government on 6 September 1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them. Sir William Davenant, founder of the Duke's Company, adapted Shakespeare's play to the tastes of the new era, and his version would dominate on stage for around eighty years. Among the changes he made were the expansion of the role of the witches, introducing new songs, dances and 'flying', and the expansion of the role of Lady Macduff as a foil to Lady Macbeth. There were, however, performances outside the patent companies: among the evasions of the Duke's Company's monopoly was a puppet version of Macbeth.

Macbeth was a favourite of the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys, who saw the play on 5 November 1664 ("admirably acted"), 28 December 1666 ("most excellently acted"), ten days later on 7 January 1667 ("though I saw it lately, yet appears a most excellent play in all respects"), on 19 April 1667 ("one of the best plays for a stage ... that ever I saw"), again on 16 October 1667 ("was vexed to see Young, who is but a bad actor at best, act Macbeth in the room of Betterton, who, poor man! is sick"), and again three weeks later on 6 November 1667 (" Macbeth, which we still like mightily"), yet again on 12 August 1668 ("saw Macbeth, to our great content"), and finally on 21 December 1668, on which date the king and court were also present in the audience.

The first professional performances of Macbeth in North America were probably those of The Hallam Company.

In 1744, David Garrick revived the play, abandoning Davenant's version and instead advertising it "as written by Shakespeare". In fact this claim was largely false: he retained much of Davenant's more popular business for the witches, and himself wrote a lengthy death speech for Macbeth. And he cut more than 10% of Shakespeare's play, including the drunken porter, the murder of Lady Macduff's son, and Malcolm's testing of Macduff. Hannah Pritchard was his greatest stage partner, having her premiere as his Lady Macbeth in 1747. He would later drop the play from his repertoire upon her retirement from the stage. Mrs. Pritchard was the first actress to achieve acclaim in the role of Lady Macbeth - at least partly due to the removal of Davenant's material, which made irrelevant moral contrasts with Lady Macduff. Garrick's portrayal focused on the inner life of the character, endowing him with an innocence vacillating between good and evil, and betrayed by outside influences. He portrayed a man capable of observing himself, as if a part of him remained untouched by what he had done, the play moulding him into a man of sensibility, rather than him descending into a tyrant.

John Philip Kemble first played Macbeth in 1778. Although usually regarded as the antithesis of Garrick, Kemble nevertheless refined aspects of Garrick's portrayal into his own. However it was the "towering and majestic" Sarah Siddons (Kemble's sister) who became a legend in the role of Lady Macbeth. In contrast to Hannah Pritchard's savage, demonic portrayal, Siddons' Lady Macbeth, while terrifying, was nevertheless - in the scenes in which she expresses her regret and remorse - tenderly human. And in portraying her actions as done out of love for her husband, Siddons deflected from him some of the moral responsibility for the play's carnage. Audiences seem to have found the sleepwalking scene particularly mesmerising: Hazlitt said of it that "all her gestures were involuntary and mechanical ... She glided on and off the stage almost like an apparition."

In 1794, Kemble dispensed with the ghost of Banquo altogether, allowing the audience to see Macbeth's reaction as his wife and guests see it, and relying upon the fact that the play was so well known that his audience would already be aware that a ghost enters at that point.

Ferdinand Fleck, notable as the first German actor to present Shakespeare's tragic roles in their fullness, played Macbeth at the Berlin National Theatre from 1787. Unlike his English counterparts, he portrayed the character as achieving his stature after the murder of Duncan, growing in presence and confidence: thereby enabling stark contrasts, such as in the banquet scene, which he ended babbling like a child.

Nineteenth Century

Everyone seems to think Mrs McB is a Monstrousness & I can only see she's a woman - a mistaken woman - & weak - not a Dove - of course not - but first of all a wife.

Performances outside the patent theatres were instrumental in bringing the monopoly to an end. Robert Elliston, for example, produced a popular adaptation of Macbeth in 1809 at the Royal Circus described in its publicity as "this matchless piece of pantomimic and choral performance", which circumvented the illegality of speaking Shakespeare's words through mimed action, singing, and doggerel verse written by J. C. Cross.

In 1809, in an unsuccessful attempt to take Covent Garden upmarket, Kemble installed private boxes, increasing admission prices to pay for the improvements. The inaugural run at the newly renovated theatre was Macbeth, which was disrupted for over two months with cries of "Old prices!" and "No private boxes!" until Kemble capitulated to the protestors' demands.

Edmund Kean at Drury Lane gave a psychological portrayal of the central character, with a common touch, but was ultimately unsuccessful in the role. However he did pave the way for the most acclaimed performance of the nineteenth century, that of William Charles Macready. Macready played the role over a 30-year period, firstly at Covent Garden in 1820 and finally in his retirement performance. Although his playing evolved over the years, it was noted throughout for the tension between the idealistic aspects and the weaker, venal aspects of Macbeth's character. His staging was full of spectacle, including several elaborate royal processions.

In 1843 the Theatres Regulation Act finally brought the patent companies' monopoly to an end. From that time until the end of the Victorian era, London theatre was dominated by the actor-managers, and the style of presentation was "pictorial" - proscenium stages filled with spectacular stage-pictures, often featuring complex scenery, large casts in elaborate costumes, and frequent use of tableaux vivant. Charles Kean (son of Edmund), at London's Princess's Theatre from 1850 to 1859, took an antiquarian view of Shakespeare performance, setting his Macbeth in a historically accurate eleventh-century Scotland. His leading lady, Ellen Tree, created a sense of the character's inner life: The Times critic saying "The countenance which she assumed ... when luring on Macbeth in his course of crime, was actually appalling in intensity, as if it denoted a hunger after guilt." At the same time, special effects were becoming popular: for example in Samuel Phelps' Macbeth the witches performed behind green gauze, enabling them to appear and disappear using stage lighting.

In 1849, rival performances of the play sparked the Astor Place Riot in Manhattan. The popular American actor Edwin Forrest, whose Macbeth was said to be like "the ferocious chief of a barbarous tribe" played the central role at the Broadway Theatre to popular acclaim, while the "cerebral and patrician" English actor Macready, playing the same role at the Astor Place Opera House, suffered constant heckling. The existing enmity between the two men (Forrest had openly hissed Macready at a recent performance of Hamlet in Britain) was taken up by Forrest's supporters - formed from the working class and lower middle class and anti-British agitators, keen to attack the upper-class pro-British patrons of the Opera House and the colonially-minded Macready. Nevertheless, Macready performed the role again three days later to a packed house while an angry mob gathered outside. The militia tasked with controlling the situation fired into the mob. In total, 31 rioters were killed and over 100 injured.

Charlotte Cushman is unique among nineteenth century interpreters of Shakespeare in achieving stardom in roles of both genders. Her New York debut was as Lady Macbeth in 1836, and she would later be admired in London in the same role in the mid-1840s. Helen Faucit was considered the embodiment of early-Victorian notions of femininity. But for this reason she largely failed when she eventually played Lady Macbeth in 1864: her serious attempt to embody the coarser aspects of Lady Macbeth's character jarred harshly with her public image. Adelaide Ristori, the great Italian actress, brought her Lady Macbeth to London in 1863 in Italian, and again in 1873 in an English translation cut in such a way as to be, in effect, Lady Macbeth's tragedy.

Henry Irving was the most successful of the late-Victorian actor-managers, but his Macbeth failed to curry favour with audiences. His desire for psychological credibility reduced certain aspects of the role: He described Macbeth as a brave soldier but a moral coward, and played him untroubled by conscience - clearly already contemplating the murder of Duncan before his encounter with the witches. (Similar criticisms were made of Friedrich Mitterwurzer in Germany, whose performances of Macbeth had many unintentional parallels with Irving's.) Irving's leading lady was Ellen Terry, but her Lady Macbeth was unsuccessful with the public, for whom a century of performances influenced by Sarah Siddons had created expectations at odds with Terry's conception of the role.

Late nineteenth-century European Macbeths aimed for heroic stature, but at the expense of subtlety: Tommaso Salvini in Italy and Adalbert Matkowsky in Germany were said to inspire awe, but elicited little pity.

Twentieth Century to Present

And then Lady Macbeth says 'He that's coming / Must be provided for.' It's an amazing line. She's going to play hostess to Duncan at Dunsinane, and 'provide' is what gracious hostesses always do. It's a wonder of a line to play because the reverberations do the acting for you, make the audience go 'Aaaagh!'

Two developments changed the nature of Macbeth performance in the twentieth century: firstly developments in the craft of acting itself, especially the ideas of Stanislavski and Brecht, and secondly the rise of the dictator as a political icon. The latter has not always assisted the performance: it is difficult to sympathise with a Macbeth based on Hitler, Stalin or Idi Amin.

Barry Jackson, at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1923, was the first of the twentieth-century directors to costume Macbeth in modern dress.

In 1936, a decade before his film adaptation of the play, Orson Welles directed Macbeth for the Negro Theatre Project at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, using black actors and setting the action in Haiti: with drums and Voodoo rituals to establish the Witches scenes. The performance, dubbed The Voodoo Macbeth, proved inflammatory in the aftermath of the Harlem riots, accused of making fun of black culture and as "a campaign to burlesque negroes" until Welles persuaded crowds that his use of black actors and voodoo made important cultural statements.

The 'reconstructive movement' was concerned with the recreation of Elizabethan acting conditions, and would eventually lead to the creation of Shakespeare's Globe and similar replicas. One of the movement's offshoots was in the reconstruction of Elizabethan pronunciation: for example Bernard Miles' 1951 Macbeth, for which linguists from University College London were employed to create a transcript of the play in Elizabethan English, then an audio recording of that transcription, from which the actors, in turn, learned their lines.

The critical consensus is that there have been three great Macbeths on the English-speaking stage in the twentieth century, all of them commencing at Stratford-upon-Avon: Laurence Olivier in 1955, Ian McKellen in 1976 and Antony Sher in 1999. Olivier's portrayal (directed by Glen Byam Shaw, with Vivien Leigh as lady Macbeth) was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Kenneth Tynan expressed the view that it succeeded because Olivier built the role to a climax at the end of the play, whereas most actors spend all they have in the first two acts.

The play caused grave difficulties for the Royal Shakespeare Company, especially at the (then) Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Peter Hall's 1967 production was (in Michael Billington's words) "an acknowledged disaster" with the use of real leaves from Birnham Wood getting unsolicited first-night laughs, and Trevor Nunn's 1974 production was (Billington again) "an over-elaborate religious spectacle". But Nunn achieved success for the RSC in his 1976 production at the intimate Other Place, with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in the central roles. A small cast worked within a simple circle, and McKellen's Macbeth had nothing noble or likeable about him, being a manipulator in a world of manipulative characters. They were a young couple, physically passionate, "not monsters but recognisable human beings," but their relationship atrophied as the action progressed.

In Soviet-controlled Prague in 1977, faced with the illegality of working in theatres, Pavel Kohout adapted Macbeth into a 75-minute abridgement for five actors, suitable for "bringing a show in a suitcase to people's homes."

Spectacle became unfashionable in Western theatre throughout the twentieth century. In East Asia, however, spectacular productions have achieved great success, including Yukio Ninagawa's 1980 production with Masane Tsukayama as Macbeth, set in the sixteenth century Japanese Civil War. The same director's tour of London in 1987 was widely praised by critics, even though (like most of their audience) they were unable to understand the significance of Macbeth's gestures, the huge Buddhist altar dominating the set, or the petals falling from the cherry trees. Xu Xiaozhong's 1980 Central Academy of Drama production in Beijing made every effort to be unpolitical (necessary in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution): yet audiences still perceived correspondences between the central character (who the director had actually modelled on Louis Napoleon) and Mao Zedong. Shakespeare has often been adapted to indigenous theatre traditions, for example the Kunju Macbeth of Huang Zuolin performed at the inaugural Chinese Shakespeare Festival of 1986. Similarly, B. V. Karanth's Barnam Vana of 1979 had adapted Macbeth to the Yakshagana tradition of Karnataka, India. In 1997, Lokendra Arambam created Stage of Blood merging a range of martial arts, dance and gymnastic styles from Manipur, performed in Imphal and in England. The stage was literally a raft on a lake.

The RSC again achieved critical success in Gregory Doran's 1999 production at The Swan, with Antony Sher and Harriet Walter in the central roles, once again demonstrating the suitability of the play to smaller venues. Doran's witches spoke their lines to a theatre in absolute darkness and the opening visual image was the entrance of Macbeth and Banquo in the berets and fatigues of modern warfare, carried on the shoulders of triumphant troops. In contrast to Nunn, Doran presented a world in which king Duncan and his soldiers were ultimately benign and honest, heightening the deviance of Macbeth (who seems genuinely surprised by the witches' prophesies) and Lady Macbeth, in plotting to kill the king. The play said little about politics, instead powerfully presenting its central characters' psychological collapse.

Screen

Twentieth Century

The earliest known film Macbeth was 1905's American short Death Scene From Macbeth, and short versions were produced in Italy in 1909 and France in 1910. Two notable early versions are lost: Ludwig Landmann produced a 47-minute version in Germany in 1913, and D. W. Griffith produced a 1916 version in America featuring the noted stage actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Tree is said to have had great difficulties adapting to the new medium, and especially in confining himself to the small number of lines in the (silent) screenplay, until an ingenious cameraman allowed him to play his entire part to an empty camera, after which a real camera shot the film.

In 1947, David Bradley produced an independent film of Macbeth, intended for distribution to schools, most notable for the designer of its eighty-three costumes: the soon-to-be-famous Charlton Heston.

Orson Welles' 1948 Macbeth, in the director's words a "violently sketched charcoal drawing of a great play," was filmed in only 23 days and on a budget of just $700,000. These filming conditions allowed only a single abstract set, and eclectic costumes. Dialogue was pre-recorded, enabling the actors to perform very long individual takes, including one of over ten minutes surrounding the death of Duncan. Welles himself played the central character, who dominates the film, measured both by his time on screen, and by physical presence: high-angle and low-angle shots and deep-focus close-ups are used to distort his size in comparison to other characters. Welles retained from his own 1936 stage production the image of a Voodoo doll controlling the fate of the central character: and at the end it is the doll we see beheaded. The film's allegorical aspect is heightened by Welles' introduction of a non-Shakespearean character, the Holy Father (played by Alan Napier), in opposition to the witches, speaking lines taken from Shakespeare's Ross, Angus and the Old Man. Contemporary reviews were largely negative, particularly criticising Welles' unsympathetic portrayal of the central character. Newsweek commented: "His Macbeth is a static, two-dimensional creature as capable of evil in the first scene as in the final hours of his bloody reign."

Joe MacBeth (Ken Hughes, 1955) established the tradition of resetting the Macbeth story among 20th-century gangsters. Others to do so include Men of Respect (William Reilly, 1991), Maqbool (Vishal Bhardwaj, 2003) and Geoffrey Wright's Australian 2006 Macbeth.

In 1957, Akira Kurosawa used the Macbeth story as the basis for the "universally acclaimed" Kumunosu-jo (in English known as Throne of Blood or (the literal translation of its title) Cobweb Castle). The film is a Japanese period-piece (jidai-geki), drawing upon elements of Noh theatre, especially in its depiction of the evil spirit who takes the part of Shakespeare's witches, and of Asaji, the Lady Macbeth character, played by Isuzu Yamada, and upon Kabuki Theatre in its depiction of Washizu, the Macbeth character, played by Toshiro Mifune. In a twist on Shakespeare's ending, the tyrant (having witnessed Cobweb Forest come to Cobweb Castle) is killed by volleys of arrows from his own archers.

In 1960, George Schaefer directed Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson in a made-for-TV film which later had a limited theatrical release. (The three had also worked together on the 1954 Hallmark Hall of Fame TV version of the play.) Neither of the central couple was able to adapt their stage acting style to the screen successfully, leading to their roles being described by critics as "recited" rather than "acted".

Roman Polanski's 1971 Macbeth was the director's first film after the brutal murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, and reflected his determination to "show violence the way it is ... if you don't show it realistically then that's immoral and harmful." His film showed deaths only reported in the play, including the execution of Cawdor, and Macbeth stabbing Duncan, and its violence was "intense and incessant." Made in the aftermath of Zeffirelli's youthful Romeo and Juliet, and financed by Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner, Polanski's film featured a young sexy lead couple, played by Jon Finch (28) and by Francesca Annis (25), who controversially performed the sleepwalking scene nude. The unsettling film score, provided by the Third Ear Band, invoked "discord and dissonance." While using Shakespeare's words, Polanski alters aspects of Shakespeare's story, turning the minor character Ross into a ruthless Machiavellian, and adding an epilogue to the play in which Donalbain (younger son of Duncan) arrives at the witches' lair, indicating that the cycle of violence will begin again.

The Nunn/McKellen/Dench RSC Other Place stage performance discussed above was adapted for TV and broadcast by Thames Television (see Macbeth (1978 film)).

William Reilly's 1991 Men of Respect, another film to set the Macbeth story among gangsters, has been praised for its accuracy in depicting Mafia rituals, said to be more authentic than those in The Godfather or GoodFellas. However the film failed to please audiences or critics: Leonard Maltin found it "pretentious" and "unintentionally comic" and Daniel Rosenthal describes it as "providing the most risible chunks of modernised Shakespeare in screen history." In 1992 S4C produced a cel-animated Macbeth for the series Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, and in 1997 Jeremy Freeston directed Jason Connery and Helen Baxendale in a low budget, fairly full-text, version.

In Shakespeare's script, the actor playing Banquo must enter the stage as a ghost. The major film versions have usually taken the opportunity to provide a double perspective: Banquo visible to the audience from Macbeth's perspective, but invisible from the perspective of other characters. Television versions, however, have often taken the third approach of leaving Banquo invisible to viewers, thereby portraying Banquo's ghost as merely Macbeth's delusion. This approach is taken in the 1978 Thames TV production, Jack Gold's 1983 version for BBC Television Shakespeare, and in Penny Woolcock's 1997 Macbeth on the Estate. Macbeth on the Estate largely dispensed with the supernatural in favour of the drug-crime driven realism of characters living on a Birmingham housing estate: except for the three "weird" (in the modern sense of the word) children who prophesy Macbeth's fate. This production used Shakespeare's language, but encouraged the actors - many of whom were locals, not professionals - to speak it naturalistically.

Twenty-first Century

21st-century cinema has re-interpreted Macbeth, relocating "Scotland" elsewhere: Maqbool to Mumbai, Scotland, PA to Pennsylvania, Geoffrey Wright's Macbeth to Melbourne, and Allison L. LiCalsi's 2001 Macbeth: The Comedy to a location only differentiated from the reality of New Jersey, where it was filmed, through signifiers such as tartan, Scottish flags and bagpipes. Alexander Abela's 2000 Makibefo was set among, and starred, residents of Faux Cap, a remote fishing community in Madagascar. Leonardo Henriquez' 2000 Sangrador (in English: Bleeder) set the story among Venezuelan bandits and presented a shockingly visualised horror version.

Billy Morrissette's Scotland, PA reframes the Macbeth story as a comedy-thriller set in a 1975 fast-food restaurant, and features James LeGros in the Macbeth role and Maura Tierney as Pat, the Lady Macbeth character: "We're not bad people, Mac. We're just under-achievers who have to make up for lost time." Christopher Walken plays vegetarian detective Ernie McDuff who (in the words of Daniel Rosenthal) " his uniquely offbeat menacing delivery to innocuous lines." Scotland, PA's conceit of resetting the Macbeth story at a restaurant was followed in BBC Television's 2005 ShakespeaRe-Told adaptation.

Vishal Bhardwaj's 2003 Maqbool, filmed in Hindi and Urdu and set in the Mumbai underworld, was produced in the Bollywood tradition, but heavily influenced by Macbeth, by Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 The Godfather and by Luc Besson's 1994 Léon. It deviates from the Macbeth story in making the Macbeth character (Miyan Maqbool, played by Irfan Khan) a single man, lusting after the mistress (Nimmi, played by Tabbu) of the Duncan character (Jahangir Khan, known as Abbaji, played by Pankaj Kapoor). Another deviation is the comparative delay in the murder: Shakespeare's protagonists murder Duncan early in the play, but more than half of the film has passed by the time Nimmi and Miyan kill Abbaji.

In 2004 an "eccentric" Swedish/Norwegian film, based on Alex Scherpf's Ice Globe Theatre production of Macbeth, was said by critic Daniel Rosenthal to owe "more to co-director Bo Landin's background in natural history documentaries than to Shakespeare." More conventional adaptations of 21st-century stage productions to television include Greg Doran's RSC production filmed in 2001 with Antony Sher and Harriet Walter in the central roles, and Rupert Goold's Chichester Festival Theatre Macbeth televised in 2010 with Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood as the tragic couple. The cast of the latter felt that the history of their stage performance (moving from a small space at Chichester to a large pros-arch stage in London to a huge auditorium in Brooklyn) made it easier for them to "re-scale", yet again, their performances for the cameras.

In 2006, Geoffrey Wright directed a Shakespearean-language, extremely violent Macbeth set in the Melbourne underworld. Sam Worthington played Macbeth. Victoria Hill played Lady Macbeth and shared the screenplay credits with Wright. The director considered her portrayal of Lady Macbeth to be the most sympathetic he had ever seen. In spite of the high level of violence and nudity (Macbeth has sex with the three naked schoolgirl witches as they prophesy his fate), intended to appeal to the young audiences that had flocked to Romeo + Juliet, the film flopped at the box office.

Other Media

Literature

There have been numerous literary adaptations and spin-offs from Macbeth. Russian Novelist Nikolay Leskov told a variation of the story from Lady Macbeth's point of view in Lady Macbeth of Minsk, which itself became a number of films and an opera by Shostakovich. Maurice Baring's 1911 The Rehearsal fictionalises Shakespeare's company's inept rehearsals for Macbeth's premiere. Gu Wuwei's 1916 play The Usurper of State Power adapted both Macbeth and Hamlet as a parody of contemporary events in China. The play has been used as a background for detective fiction (as in Marvin Kaye's 1976 Bullets for Macbeth) but was also used as the basis of James Thurber's parody of the whodunit genre The Macbeth Murder Mystery, in which the protagonist reads Macbeth applying the conventions of detective stories, and concludes that it must have been Macduff who murdered Duncan. Comics and graphic novels have utilised the play, or have dramatised the circumstances of its inception: Superman himself wrote the play for Shakespeare in the course of one night, in the 1947 Shakespeare's Ghost Writer.

Macbeth has been adapted into plays dealing with the political and cultural concerns of many nations. Eugène Ionesco's Macbett satirised Macbeth as a meaningless succession of treachery and slaughter. Wale Ogunyemi's A'are Akogun, first performed in Nigeria in 1968, mixed the English and Yoruba languages. Welcome Msomi's 1970 play Umabatha adapts Macbeth to Zulu culture, and was said by The Independent to be "more authentic than any modern Macbeth" in presenting a world in which a man's fighting ability is central to his identity. Joe de Graft adapted Macbeth as a battle to take over a powerful corporation in Ghana in his 1972 Mambo or Let's Play Games, My Husband. Dev Virahsawmy's Zeneral Macbeff, first performed in 1982, adapted the story to the local Creole and to the Mauritian political situation. (The same author later translated Macbeth itself into Mauritian creole, as Trazedji Makbess.) And in 2000, Chuck Mike and the Nigerian Performance Studio Workshop produced Mukbutu as a direct commentary on the fragile nature of Nigerian democracy at the time.

Music and Audio

Macbeth is, with The Tempest, one of the two most-performed Shakespeare plays on BBC Radio, with 20 productions between 1923 and 2005.

The extant version of Macbeth, in the First Folio, contains dancing and music, including the song "Come Away Hecate" which exists in two collections of lute music (both c.1630) arranged by Robert Johnson. And, from the Restoration onwards, incidental music has frequently been composed for the play: including works by William Boyce in the eighteenth century. Davenant's use of dance in the witches' scenes was inherited by Garrick, which in turn influenced Giuseppe Verdi to incorporate a ballet around the witches' cauldron into his opera Macbeth. Verdi's first Shakespeare-influenced opera, with libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, incorporated a number of striking arias for Lady Macbeth, giving her a prominence in the early part of the play which contrasts with the character's increasing isolation as the action continues: she ceases to sing duets and her sleepwalking confession is starkly contrasted with the "supported grief" of Macduff in the preceding scene. Other music influenced by the play includes Richard Strauss's 1890 symphonic poem Macbeth. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn incorporated themes depicting the female characters from Macbeth in the 1957 Shakespearean jazz suite Such Sweet Thunder: the weird sisters juxtaposed with Iago (from Othello), and Lady Mac represented by ragtime piano because, as Ellington put it, "we suspect there was a little ragtime in her soul". Another Jazz collaboration to create hybrids of Shakespeare plays was that of Cleo Laine with Johnny Dankworth, who in Laine's 1964 Shakespeare and All That Jazz juxtaposed Titania's instructions to her fairies from A Midsummer Night's Dream with the witches' chant from Macbeth. In 2000, Jag Panzer produced their heavy metal concept-album retelling Thane to the Throne.

Visual Arts

The play has inspired numerous works of art. The scene in which Lady Macbeth seizes the daggers, as performed by Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, was a touchstone throughout Henry Fuseli's career, including works in 1766, 1774 and 1812. The same performance was the subject of Johann Zoffany's painting of the Macbeths in 1768. In 1786, John Boydell announced his intention to found his Shakespeare Gallery. His chief innovation was to see the works of Shakespeare as history, rather than contemporary, so instead of including the (then fashionable) works depicting the great actors of the day on stage in modern dress, he commissioned works depicting the action of the plays. However the most notable works in the collection disregard this historicising principle: such as Fuseli's depiction of the naked and heroic Macbeth encountering the witches. William Blake's paintings were also influenced by Shakespeare, including his Pity, inspired by Macbeth's "Pity, like a naked new-born babe, striding the blast." Sarah Siddons' triumph in the role of Lady Macbeth led Joshua Reynolds to depict her as The Muse of Tragedy.

• Johann Zoffany's depiction of Hannah Pritchard and David Garrick in Macbeth.
• Henry Fuseli's 1766 depiction of Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, with the daggers.
• Henry Fuseli's later (1812) reworking of Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, with the daggers.
• James Caldwell's engraving, after Henry Fuseli, of Macbeth's encounter with the witches.
• Pity by William Blake, based on Macbeth's "Pity, like a naked new-born babe, striding the blast."
• Joshua Reynolds depicted Sarah Siddons as The Muse of Tragedy, largely due to her triumph in the role of Lady Macbeth.
• John Singer Sargent's painting of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, in a gown decorated with green beetle wings.

Notes

Citations

Unless otherwise specified, all citations of Macbeth refer to Muir (1984), and of other works of Shakespeare refer to Wells and Taylor (2005).

1. Muir, Kenneth, ed. (1984) Macbeth. The Arden Shakespeare, Second Series, 11th ed., p. xxxvi.
2. Orgel (2002, 33)
3. Coursen (1997, 11–13)
4. Coursen (1997, 15–21)
5. Coursen (1997, 17)
6. ^ Nagarajan, S. (1956). "A Note on Banquo". Shakespeare Quarterly. 7 (4): 371–376. JSTOR 2866356.
7. Palmer, J. Foster (1886). "The Celt in Power: Tudor and Cromwell". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 3: 343–370. doi:10.2307/3677851.
8. Maskell, D. W. (1971). "The Transformation of History into Epic: The 'Stuartide' (1611) of Jean de Schelandre". The Modern Language Review. 66 (1): 53–65. JSTOR 3722467.
9. Braunmuller (1997). Macbeth (PDF). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 2–3. ISBN 0-521-29455-X.
10. Brooke (2008, 59–64)
11. Paul, Henry Neill (1950). The Royal Play of Macbeth: When, Why, and How It Was Written by Shakespeare. New York: Macmillan. p. 227.
12. Kermode, Frank (1974). "Macbeth". The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 1308. ISBN 0-395-04402-2. For details on Garnet, see Zagorin, Perez (1996). "The Historical Significance of Lying and Dissimulation—Truth-Telling, Lying, and Self-Deception". Social Research. 63 (3): 863–912.
13. Braunmuller (1997) pp. 5–8.
14. Rogers, H. L. "An English Tailor and Father Garnet's Straw". Review of English Studies 16: 61 (February 1965), 44-9; pp. 44-5.
15. Rogers (1965) pp. 45-7.
16. ^ Kermode, Riverside Shakespeare, p. 1308.
17. Braunmuller (1997), pp. 5–8
18. Loomis, E.A. "The Master of the Tiger", Shakespeare Quarterly, 7:4 (Winter, 1956); Brooke, Nicholas (ed.) The Tragedy of Macbeth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 59–64
19. Brooke (2008, 57)
20. Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us. In: John Wain (ed.): Shakespeare. Macbeth. A Casebook. Bristol: Western Printing Services (1968), pp. 168–177
21. Kliman, 14.
22. Perkins, William (1618). A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft, So Farre forth as it is revealed in the Scriptures, and manifest by true experience. London: Cantrell Legge, Printer to the Universitie of Cambridge. p. 53. Retrieved 24 June 2009.
23. Coddon, Karin S. (1989). "'Unreal Mockery': Unreason and the Problem of Spectacle in Macbeth". ELH. 56 (3): 485–501. JSTOR 2873194.
24. ^ Frye, Roland Mushat (1987). "Launching the Tragedy of Macbeth: Temptation, Deliberation, and Consent in Act I". The Huntington Library Quarterly. 50 (3): 249–261.
25. "Full text of "Hippolyta S View Some Christian Aspects of Shakespeare S Plays"". Archive.org. 28 August 1960. Retrieved 1 November 2009.
26. "Internet Archive: Free Download: Hippolyta S View Some Christian Aspects Of Shakespeare S Plays". Archive.org. Retrieved 1 November 2009.
27. ^ Robert Faires, "The curse of the play", Austin Chronicle, 13 October 2000.
28. Tritsch, Dina (April 1984). "The Curse of 'Macbeth'. Is there an evil spell on this ill-starred play?". pretallez.com. Retrieved 28 November 2010.
29. Great West End Theatres Sky Arts. 10 August 2013
30. Dunning, Brian (7 September 2010). "Toil and Trouble: The Curse of Macbeth". skeptoid.com. Retrieved 28 November 2010.
31. Babylon 5 – The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, Volume 6 by J. Michael Straczynski, Synthetic Labs Publishing (2006).
32. Garber, Marjorie B. (2008). Profiling Shakespeare. Routledge. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-415-96446-3.
33. Brooke (2008, 6)
34. Brooke (2008, 36)
35. Orgel (2002, 32-33)
36. Brooke (2008, 36); Orgel (2002, 33)
37. Brooke (2008, 34-36); Orgel (2002, 158-161); Taylor (2002, 2)
38. Brooke (2008, 35-36)
39. Williams (2002, 119)
40. Marsden (2002, 21).
41. Tatspaugh (2003, 526-527)
42. Lanier (2002, 28-29)
43. Orgel (2002, 155)
44. Morrison (2002, 231-232)
45. Orgel (2002, 246)
46. Potter (2001, 188)
47. Gay (2002, 158)
48. Williams (2002, 124)
49. ^ Williams (2002, 125)
50. Williams (2002, 124-125)
51. Potter (2001, 189); Williams (2002, 125-126)
52. Moody (2002, 43)
53. ^ Gay (2002, 159)
54. McLuskie (2005, 256-257)
55. Williams (2002, 126)
56. Gay (2002, 167)
57. Holland (2007, 38-39); Moody (2002, 38-39)
58. ^ Lanier (2002, 37)
59. Williams (2002, 126-127)
60. ^ Williams (2002, 127)
61. Moody (2002, 38)
62. Schoch (2002, 58-59); Williams (2002, 128)
63. Schoch (2002, 61-62)
64. The Times 14 June 1853, cited by Gay (2002, 163-164)
65. Schoch (2002, 64)
66. Morrison (2002, 237)
67. Lanier (2002, 37); Booth (1995, 311-312); Holland (2002, 202); Morrison (2002, 238)
68. Morrison (2002, 239); Gay (2002,162)
69. Gay (2002, 161-2)
70. Gay (2002, 164)
71. Williams (2002, 129)
72. Williams (2002, 129-130)
73. Gay (2002, 166-167); Williams (2002, 130)
74. Williams (2002, 130)
75. McLuskie (2005, 253)
76. Williams (2002, 130-131)
77. Smallwood (2002, 102)
78. Forsyth (2000, 284); Hawkes (2003, 577)
79. O'Connor (2002, 83 and 92-93)
80. Williams (2002, 131)
81. Williams (2002, 130-131); Brooke (2008, 47-48)
82. Billington (2003, 599)
83. Billington (2003, 599-600)
84. Michael Billington, cited by Gay (2002, 169)
85. Williams (2002, 132-134); Gay (2002, 169)
86. Holland (2007, 40) and see also Tom Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth.
87. Williams (2002, 134-135)
88. Holland (2002, 207)
89. Gillies (2002, 268)
90. Gillies (2002, 270)
91. Gillies (2002, 276-278)
92. Gillies (2002, 278-279)
93. Walter (2002, 1); Billington (2003, 600)
94. Billington (2003, 600)
95. Williams (2002, 134)
96. Brode (2001, 177)
97. Freedman (2000, 49)
98. Brode (2001,178-179)
99. Orson Wells, cited by Rosenthal (2007, 99)
100. Rosenthal (2007, 98-99)
101. Guntner (2000, 124)
102. Forsyth (2000, 284-285)
103. Rosenthal (2007, 99)
104. Mason (2000, 188-189)
105. Brode (2001, 183)
106. Rosenthal (2007, 100-102)
107. Rosenthal (2007, 110-111)
108. ^ Rosenthal (2007, 123-124)
109. ^ Rosenthal (2007, 127-128)
110. Guntner (2000, 125)
111. Rosenthal (2007, 103)
112. Rosenthal (2007, 103-104)
113. Howard (2003, 617)
114. Rosenthal (2007, 105)
115. McKernan & Terris (1994, 93)
116. Brode (2001, 185-187)
117. Rosenthal (2007, 107-108)
118. Rosenthal (2007,108)
119. Brode (2001, 189)
120. Brode (2001, 187-189), Rosenthal (2007, 107-109)
121. Sanders (2007, 147)
122. Brode (2001, 191)
123. Guntner (2000, 126-127)
124. Willems (2000, 36); McKernan & Terris (1994, 99)
125. Brode (2001, 193); Rosenthal (2007, 110)
126. Holland (2007, 43)
127. Rosenthal (2007, 112-3)
128. ^ Forsyth (2000, 289-290)
129. Howard (2003, 618)
130. Jess-Cooke (2006, 174-175)
131. Rosenthal (2007, 114-117)
132. Rosenthal (2007, 118-120)
133. Rosenthal (2007, 121-122)
134. Rosenthal (2007, 122)
135. Jess-Cooke (2006, 177-178)
136. Rosenthal (2007, 124)
137. Rosenthal (2007, 125-126)
138. Walter (2002, 65)
139. Interview with Kate Fleetwood on DVD of Macbeth (2010 film)
140. Interview with Geoffrey Wright in "Making of Documentary" on DVD of Macbeth (2006 film)
141. Rosenthal (2007, 127)
142. Brode (2001, 192)
143. Sanders (2007, 156)
144. Lanier (2002, 119)
145. Gillies (2002, 267)
146. Osborne (2007, 129)
147. Lanier (2002, 85)
148. Lanier (2002, 136-137)
149. Hortmann (2002, 219)
150. Banham (2002, 292)
151. Banham (2002, 286-287), citing The Independent 8 August 1997
152. Banham (2002, 296)
153. Banham (2002, 289-292)
154. Banham (2002, 289)
155. Banham (2002, 297)
156. Greenhalgh (2007, 186 and footnote 39 on 197)
157. Brooke (2008, 225)
158. Sanders (2007, 32)
159. Sanders (2007, 60)
160. Sanders (2007, 83 & 112-116)
161. Sanders (2007, 16)
162. Sanders (2007, 17 & 20)
163. Macbeth 1.1.10-11; A Midsummer Night's Dream 3.1.154-166); Sanders (2007, 22-23)
164. Lanier (2002, 72)
165. ^ Orgel (2007, 74)
166. Orgel (2002, 247-249)
167. Orgel (2007, 75)
168. ^ Orgel (2007, 76)
169. ^ Macbeth 1.7.21-22; Orgel (2007, 77)
170. Orgel (2002, 248)
171. Orgel (2007, 74); Orgel (2002, 246-247)
172. Schoch (2002,59)

References

• Adams, Joseph Quincy (1917). Shakespearean Playhouses. Houghton Mifflin. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bald, Robert Cecil (1928). Review of English Studies. 4. Oxford University Press: 429–31. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Banham, Martin; Mooneeram, Roshni and Plastow, Jane Shakespeare and Africa in Wells and Stanton (2002, 284-299)
• Barnet, Sylvan (1998). "Macbeth on Stage and Screen". In Barnet, Sylvan (ed.). Macbeth. Signet Classics. New American Library. pp. 186–200. ISBN 978-0451524447. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bentley, Gerald Eades (1941). The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. Vol. 6. Clarendon Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Billington, Michael Shakespeare and the Modern British Theatre in Wells and Orlin (2003, 595-606)
• Bloom, Harold (1999). Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. ISBN 1-57322-751-X. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Booth, Michael R. Nineteenth-Century Theatre in Brown (1995, 299-340)
• Braunmuller, Albert R. (1997). "Introduction". In Braunmuller, Albert R. (ed.). Macbeth. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–93. ISBN 0-521-22340-7. Retrieved 16 August 2012. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Brode, Douglas (2001). Shakespeare at the Movies: From the Silent Era to Today. Berkley Boulevard.
• Brooke, Nicholas (ed.) and Shakespeare, William (2008). The Oxford Shakespeare: Macbeth. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953583-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Brown, John Russell (ed.) (1995). The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285442-9. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
• Brown, Langdon (1986). Shakespeare around the Globe: A Guide to Notable Postwar Revivals. Greenwood Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bryant, Jr., J. A. (1961). Hippolyta’s View: Some Christian Aspects of Shakespeare’s Plays. University of Kentucky Press. Retrieved 1 November 2009. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Burnett, Mark Thornton and Wray, Ramona (eds.) (2006). Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0 7486 2351 5. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Chambers, E. K. (1923). The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 2. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-811511-3. OCLC 336379. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Coddon, Karin S. (1989). "'Unreal Mockery': Unreason and the Problem of Spectacle in Macbeth". ELH. 56 (3). Johns Hopkins University: 485–501. doi:10.2307/2873194. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Coursen, Herbert R. (1997). Macbeth: A Guide to the Play. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30047-X. Retrieved 15 August 2012. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Dunning, Brian. "Toil and Trouble: The Curse of Macbeth". Skeptoid: Critical analysis of Pop Phenomena. Skeptoid.com. Retrieved 28 November 2010. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Faires, Robert (13 October 2000). "The curse of the play". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved 19 August 2012. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Forsyth, Neil Shakespeare the Illusionist: Filming the Supernatural in Jackson (2000, 274-294)
• Freedman, Barbara Critical Junctures in Shakespeare Screen History: The Case of Richard III in Jackson (2000, 47-71)
• Garber, Marjorie B. (2008). Profiling Shakespeare. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-96446-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gay, Penny Women and Shakespearean Performance in Wells and Stanton (2002, 155-173)
• Gillies, John; Minami, Ryuta; Li, Ruri and Trivedi, Poonam Shakespeare on the Stages of Asia in Wells and Stanton (2002, 259-283)
• Greenhalgh, Susanne Shakespeare Overheard: Performances, Adaptations and Citations on Radio in Shaughnessy (2007, 175-198).
• Guntner, J. Lawrence Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear on Film in Jackson (2000, 117-134), especially the section Macbeth: of Kings, Castles and Witches at 123-128.
• Halliday, F. E. (1964). A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1965. Penguin. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hawkes, Terence Shakespeare's Afterlife: Introduction in Welles and Orlin (2003, 571-581)
• Hodgdon, Barbara and Worthen, W. B. (eds.) (2005). A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance. Blackwell Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-4051-8821-0. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Holland, Peter Touring Shakespeare in Wells and Stanton (2002, 194-211)
• Holland, Peter Shakespeare Abbreviated in Shaughnessy (2007, 26-45)
• Hortmann, Wilhelm Shakespeare on the Political Stage in the Twentieth Century in Wells and Stanton (2002, 212-229)
• Howard, Tony Shakespeare on Film and Video in Wells and Orlin (2003, 607-619)
• Jackson, Russell (ed.) (2000). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 63975 1. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
• Jess-Cooke, Carolyn Screening the McShakespeare in Post-Millennial Shakespeare Cinema in Burnett and Wray (2006, 163-184).
• Kermode, Frank (1974). "Macbeth". In Evans, C. Blakemore (ed.). The Riverside Shakespeare. Houghton Mifflin. pp. 1307–11. ISBN 0-395-04402-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kliman, Bernice; Santos, Rick (2005). Latin American Shakespeares. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 0-8386-4064-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lanier, Douglas (2002). Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture. Oxford Shakespeare Topics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-818703-3.
• Marsden, Jean I. Improving Shakespeare: from the Restoration to Garrick in Wells and Stanton (2002, 21-36).
• Maskell, David W. (1971). "The Transformation of History into Epic: The 'Stuartide' (1611) of Jean de Schelandre". Modern Language Review. 66. Modern Humanities Research Association: 53–65. doi:10.2307/3722467. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mason, Pamela Orson Welles and Filmed Shakespeare in Jackson (2000, 183-198), especially the section Macbeth (1948) at 184-189.
• McKernan, Luke and Terris, Olwen (1994). Walking Shadows: Shakespeare in the National Film and Television Archive. British Film Institute. ISBN 0-85170-486-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• McLuskie, Kathleen Shakespeare Goes Slumming: Harlem '37 and Birmingham '97 in Hodgdon & Worthen (2005, 249-266)
• Moody, Jane Romantic Shakespeare in Wells and Stanton (2002, 37-57).
• Morrison, Michael A. Shakespeare in North America in Wells and Stanton (2002, 230-258)
• Muir, Kenneth (1984) . "Introduction". In Muir, Kenneth (ed.). Macbeth (11 ed.). The Arden Shakespeare, Second Series. pp. xiii–lxv. ISBN 978-1-90-343648-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Nagarajan, S. (1956). "A Note on Banquo". Shakespeare Quarterly. 7 (4). Folger Shakespeare Library: 371–6. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• O'Connor, Marion Reconstructive Shakespeare: Reproducing Elizabethan and Jacobean Stages in Wells and Stanton (2002, 76-97)
• Orgel, Stephen (2002). The Authentic Shakespeare. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-91213-x. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• Orgel, Stephen Shakespeare Illustrated in Shaughnessy (2007, 67-92)
• Osborne, Laurie Narration and Staging in Hamlet and its Afternovels in Shaughnessy (2007, 114-133)
• Palmer, J. Foster (1886). "The Celt in Power: Tudor and Cromwell". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 3. Royal Historical Society: 343–70. doi:10.2307/3677851. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Paul, Henry Neill (1950). The Royal Play of Macbeth: When, Why, and How It Was Written by Shakespeare. Macmillan Publishers. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Perkins, William (1618). A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft, So Farre forth as it is revealed in the Scriptures, and manifest by true experience. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 24 June 2009. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Potter, Lois Shakespeare in the Theatre, 1660-1900 in Wells and de Grazia (2001, 183-198)
• Rosenthal, Daniel (2007). 100 Shakespeare Films. British Film Institute. ISBN 978-1-84457-170-3.
• Sanders, Julie (2007). Shakespeare and Music: Afterlives and Borrowings. Polity Press. ISBN 978-07456-3297-1.
• Schoch, Richard W. Pictorial Shakespeare in Wells and Stanton (2002, 58-75)
• Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-60580-9. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)

• Shirley, Francis (1963). Shakespeare's Use of Off-stage Sounds. University of Nebraska Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Smallwood, Robert Twentieth-Century Performance: The Stratford and London Companies in Wells and Stanton (2002, 98-117)
• Spurgeon, Caroline (1969). "Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us". In Wain, John (ed.). Shakespeare: Macbeth: A Casebook. Casebook Series, AC16. Macmillan. pp. 168–177. ISBN 0-876-95051-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Straczynski, J. Michael (2006). Babylon 5 – The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, Vol. 6. Synthetic World. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tanitch, Robert (2007). London Stage in the 20th Century. Haus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-904950-74-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tanitch, Robert (1985). Olivier. Abbeville Press Publishing. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tatspaugh, Patricia Performance History: Shakespeare on the Stage 1660-2001 in Wells and Orlin (2003, 525-549)
• Taylor, Gary Shakespeare Plays on Renaissance Stages in Wells and Stanton (2002, 1-20)
• Tritsch, Dina (April 1984). "The Curse of 'Macbeth'. Is there an evil spell on this ill-starred play?". Showbill. Playbill. Retrieved 28 November 2010. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Walter, Harriet (2002). Actors on Shakespeare: Macbeth. Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0571214075.
• Wells, Stanley and de Grazia, Margreta (eds.) (2001). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 65881 0. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Wells, Stanley and Orlin, Lena Cowen (eds.) (2003). Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924522-3. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Wells, Stanley and Stanton, Sarah (eds.) (2002). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 79711 X. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Wells, Stanley and Taylor, Gary (eds.); et al. (2005). The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works (Second Edition). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-926718-7. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |first= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Willems, Michèle Video and its Paradoxes in Jackson (2000, 35-46)
• Williams, Simon The Tragic Actor and Shakespeare in Wells and Stanton (2002, 118-136)
• Zagorin, Perez (1996). "The Historical Significance of Lying and Dissimulation—Truth-Telling, Lying, and Self-Deception". Social Research. 63 (3). The New School for Social Research: 863–912. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

Performances

• Footage of Orson Welles' landmark "Voodoo Macbeth" – with informative annotations
• Performances and Photographs from London and Stratford performances of Macbeth 1960–2000 – From the Designing Shakespeare resource
• The Shakespeare Video Society edition (Google Video – 2 hours 12 mins)
• Macbeth on Film
• PBS Video directed by Rupert Goold starring Sir Patrick Stewart

Audio recording

• Macbeth: Free Full-length Recording on ejunto.org
• 1953 Best Plays radio adaptation at Internet Archive
• 1947 Theatre Guild on the Air radio adaptation at Internet Archive

Text of play

• Annotated Text at The Shakespeare Project -– annotated HTML version of Macbeth.
• Macbeth Navigator – searchable, annotated HTML version of Macbeth.
• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare – Entire play in basic HTML.
• Classic Literature Library – HTML version of Macbeth.
• Project Gutenberg: Macbeth – ASCII plain-text from Project Gutenberg
• shakespeareNet – Act by Act summary of Macbeth
• No Fear Shakespeare – By Sparknotes – Original Text and a Modern Translation side-by-side

Holinshed

• Relevant extracts from Holinshed

Commentary

• Macbeth Analysis and Textual Notes
• Annotated Bibliography of Macbeth Criticism
• Shakespeare and the Uses of Power by Steven Greenblatt

Maps

• Macbeth's Scotland on Google Maps This map shows some of the primary locations in Macbeth.

v t e William Shakespeare
Plays	Comedies All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Cymbeline Love's Labour's Lost Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles, Prince of Tyre ✻ The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen ✻ The Winter's Tale Tragedies Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Hamlet Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus and Cressida Histories King John Edward III ✻ Richard II Henry IV 1 2 Henry V Henry VI 1 ✻ 2 3 Richard III Henry VIII ✻ Early editions Quarto publications First Folio Second Folio Related Problem plays Late romances Henriad Characters A–K L–Z Ghost character Chronology Performances Settings Scenes
Poems	Shakespeare's sonnets comparison to Petrarch A Lover's Complaint The Phoenix and the Turtle The Rape of Lucrece Venus and Adonis
Apocrypha	Plays Arden of Faversham The Birth of Merlin Cardenio ✻† Double Falsehood Edmund Ironside Fair Em Locrine The London Prodigal Love's Labour's Won † The Merry Devil of Edmonton Mucedorus The Puritan The Second Maiden's Tragedy Sejanus His Fall Sir John Oldcastle Sir Thomas More ✻ The Spanish Tragedy Thomas Lord Cromwell Thomas of Woodstock Ur-Hamlet † Vortigern and Rowena A Yorkshire Tragedy Poems The Passionate Pilgrim To the Queen
Life and works	Birthplace Bibliography Complete Works Translations Coat of arms Collaborations Editors English Renaissance theatre Globe Theatre Handwriting Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men The Theatre Curtain Theatre Music New Place Portraits Religious views Sexuality Spelling of his name Stratford-upon-Avon Style Will Grave
Legacy	Attribution studies Authorship question Bardolatry Festivals Gardens Influence Memorials Screen adaptations Shakespeare and Star Trek Shakespeare's influence on Tolkien Works titled after Shakespeare Institutions Folger Shakespeare Library Shakespeare Quarterly Royal Shakespeare Company Royal Shakespeare Theatre Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Shakespeare's Globe (replica) Shakespeare Institute
Family	Anne Hathaway (wife) Susanna Hall (daughter) Hamnet Shakespeare (son) Judith Quiney (daughter) Elizabeth Barnard (granddaughter) John Shakespeare (father) Mary Arden (mother) Gilbert Shakespeare (brother) Joan Shakespeare (sister) Edmund Shakespeare (brother) Richard Shakespeare (grandfather) John Hall (son-in-law) Thomas Quiney (son-in-law)
✻ Shakespeare and other authors † Lost Category

Template:Link GA

• Use dmy dates from August 2011
• 1603 plays
• English Renaissance plays
• Macbeth
• Regicides
• Plays set in Scotland
• Scottish monarchs in popular culture
• Shakespearean tragedies
• Plays adapted into films
• Plays based on real people
• Suicide in fiction