Years after first adding this to my "Shakespeare" shelf, I finally sat down and did it. So here, long overdue, is

The Scottish Play, abridged:

WITCHES: Bibbity bobbity boo! Time to fuck with the mortals!

DUNCAN: Isn’t Macbeth great? Now there’s a guy I can always trust to have my back. I should promote him.

MACBETH AND DUNCAN: WEEEEE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIEEEENDS. YES WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, WEEEE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, NO TIME FOR -

WITCHES: ThaneofGlamisandCawdorandFutureKingsayswhat?

MACBETH: What?

WIT More...

Don't you kind of hate how we've entered the decadent phase of Goodreads wherein perhaps fifty percent (or more) of the reviews written by non-teenagers and non-romancers are now naked and unabashed in their variously effective attempts at being arch, wry, meta, parodic, confessional, and/or snarky?

Don't you kind of pine (secretly, in the marrow of your gut's merry druthers) for the good ol' days of Goodreads (known then as GodFearingGoodlyReading.com) when all reviews were uniformly plainspoke More...

After a discussion of this play that went over 100 comments, a review seems at once superfluous and necessary to give greater exposure to an excellent conversation. One of the best things about Goodreads is that it provides a forum to hash out discrepancies of opinion thoughtfully and passionately, so that our own feelings and understandings can be challenged by and challenging for others. I think what you’ll find below is a perfect example of this, enacted by people who care deeply about Shakes More...

There are two reasons to love this play.

The first reason is Lady Macbeth. Man, that girl has got it goin’ on. Have you ever found yourself in the running for, say, a new position that’s opened up at your company, a position for which you—along with one of your equally worthy colleagues, perhaps—might qualify? You may not have given much thought to your professional advancement before, but now that this promotion has been dangled before you, it has ignited a spark of ambitious desire. Imagine the More...

I love Lady MacBeth. I don't have a crush on her, she's not a sigh-over kind of woman. This isn't a school girl crush on a member of the High School Musical cast. She is fierce, in a way that Tyra Banks only wishes should could be. (Actually if Tyra Banks had any ability to act, any at all, I'd be willing to pay money to see a performance of her as Lady M. Think about it. The height, the growl, the skewed, surfacing craziness that is a mandatory part of the Lady's personality.) Lady MacBeth make More...

For the Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament, Macbeth (30) versus The Complete Sherlock Holmes (19)

This early draft of Macbeth, recently translated from the original Klingon, casts new light on the play and has already caused its fair share of controversy. We present two extracts.
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MACBETH:

Surely no man suspects I killed the King?
Or if they do, they durst not breathe a word
Knowing our wrath...

ATTENDANT:

Well, actually, my lord
There's quite a few dow More...

Celebrity Death Match tournament versus The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The Twisted Sisters
I was worried about my colleague, the great respected private detective Sherlock Holmes. The pressure to uphold his reputation was great. He was up at all hours of the night, often muttering to himself that this or such and such was "Elementary, my dear Watson" and ways to upstage me in games of Trivial Pursuit. One evening I caught him with an opened second box of the game and he was memorizing the ques More...

i love this play like a simile I can't come up with.

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well that last review pretty much sums up anything i could possibly ever say. i even stole that first line up there from one of the reviews above. sometimes it's okay More...

For the Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament, Macbeth (30) versus 1984 (22)

ANCHORMAN:

... and now over to Northern Airstrip One, where Macduffian freedom fighters and our East Asian allies are close to encircling the Eurasian-backed dictator Macbeth's last stronghold. We have a journalist reporting live now from just outside Dunsinane Castle.

[Windswept Scottish Highlands scene. JOURNALIST in combat gear in foreground, camouflaged soldiers carrying branches behind him. Sound of automatic weapo More...

The play starts with the standard three witches, (which Shakespeare practically invented) plotting the assassination of Duncan.Why the King of Scotland is to be killed is never explained.The weird sisters maybe just like to cause evil.Their tool is Macbeth , a lord and very ambitious man, married to an even more, woman.Scotland in the mid 11th century is barbaric,bloody,and with the nobles always fighting for power.The English and Norsemen also battle for influence in that rough land.A great opp More...

Location: Central California coast. A beach.

ESTEBAN: [aside] Methinks that the cover art for this Bantam Classic edition makes Macbeth and Lady Macbeth looketh much alike. 'Tis freakish!
Forsooth, gender is all over the place in this play: the bearded sisters are hermaphroditical, Macduff is some kind of übermensch because he has avoided the taint (heh) of natural birth. Is Macbeth some kind of frustrated homosexual? If so, it serves those gay bashing medieval Scottish bastards right! Burn it al More...

This was my first ever Shakespeare.

We studied it in high school in Year Eleven. It was the only Shakespeare we studied in High School. Now, in the last three years of high school, my daughters read a play by Shakespeare every year.

I remember, before I started reading this play, how afraid I was. I knew, you see, it was very important that I understand Shakespeare – even if I had to pretend. It was that important that I understand him. I knew that this was going to be a test of my ‘intelligence More...

Currently re-reading for, what, the fifth tenth time? I FUCKING LOVE IT.

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How on earth can I ever write a review that does justice to this superlative-defying work of drama? Despite three periods of intense study including research into academic works, I continue to find new layers to this piece, and that, in my opinion, is the mark of a true masterpiece (Not that anyone is implying Macbeth is anything but).

The beautiful language, fabulous characters and the sheer, unad More...

For the Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament, Macbeth vs The Complete Sherlock Holmes

When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years ’82 and ’90, I happen to come upon a half-forgotten adventure that is probably the strangest of them all. My faithful readers, who are no stranger to odd going-ons involving my famous friend’s cases, would be reminded of stories such as The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Sussex Vampire. Yet, this particular case is partic More...

yeah. i'm an english teacher and a theatre major and i? don't really love macbeth. it bores me on many levels and i'm seriously considering NOT teaching it in brit lit this year. yes, it has interesting motifs with blood and water, power and revenge, and the whole tragic hero thing, but eh. i just. can't. connect. with. macbeth. and that? makes me not really 'love' a play. even if i hate the main character, i need to feel some sort of connection and i just don't here.

I’m a nervous wreck during exams, so I tend to read snack-books by day (can't deal with anything else). Sadly that hellish period gives me insomnia and I wake up, stare at the ceiling, and fail to see the point in anything short of Shakespeare or maybe suicide.
That’s how I found myself reading a girly porn book with a half naked couple on the cover called “Private Arrangements” and Shakespeare practically at the same time. They both having letters and all. Broken down by themes:

The Plot
The femal More...

Some thoughts from studying & teaching Macbeth....

This critical edition of Macbeth puts the play into the context of cultural controversies. One hot topic of Shakespeare’s time was this problem about “Does God determine all things before they begin, or are human beings free to create their own [eternal] destinies?” And it was very hot; wars were raging all over Europe in the latter half of the 16th century over Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. Shakespeare, man of the age More...

القصة تحتوى على تحليل رائع للنفس البشريه وكيف يتحول الانسان من شخص نبيل مخلص الى قاتل ومجرم ماهو الجزء الكامن على أطراف النفس البشريه وماهى الرغبة الكامنه فى الاعماق التى تدفع الانسان لهذا التحول الرهيب .ومن أهم شخصيات القصة الليدى مكبث التى باتت مضرب للمثل فى الشر والقصه من أحب قصص شكسبير إلى نفسى وقد قرأت حزء منها بالنص الاصلى واستمتعت به جدا على الرغم من صعوبة النص الاصلى

"I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er."

A sure sign you're totally fucked.

I like to come at Macbeth from an historical perspective, a perspective where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are not anti-heroes, but heroes of the highest order.

How is that possible you ask? Because Macbeth is taking what is rightfully his.

Modern audiences, and perhaps even audiences in Shakespeare's day (although that seems unlikely since they would have had a greater everyday knowledge of the power structures of Scottish clans), look at Macbeth as the story of power corrupting absolutely. We see i More...

An adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' a tragic tale of witches, murder and betrayal. This book was a Treetops Classics guided reading book that I used with my high ability Year 4 group, whom read at a Level 4. It has been adapted by Ian Blake in prose form, in order to make it accessible for children. I found it useful in introducing children to different versions of classic works, and it sparked some interesting discussion about classic literature. At times the group did struggle with some o More...

So I didn't love this as much as the other Shakespeare I have read, but it was still way fun to know where so many passages I have heard before come from. I found the intro/prologue fascinating as I learned how long it took Shakespeare to write this (ten days), and to learn why he wrote it the way he did. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were blood thirsty people, but I found it interesting that Shakespeare focused so much on how their bloody deeds eventually made them go insane and want to die. I espec More...

a few thoughts of mine....


On Macbeth’s Ambivalence

“My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is but what is not . . . If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me without my stir” (1.3.139-42, 1.3.144-5).

Upon hearing himself greeted as the Thane of Cawdor (1.3.105), and thus having heard the devil speak true (1.3.107), Macbeth becomes lost in a rapture that undoes what he had previously thought More...

I went and saw this play in Shakespeare in the Park, and though I had read it for school already, and at the time hadn't cared that much for it. By the time the play was over I had changed my mind, it is a great play, and I think that is one of the best things to do with an author like William Shakespeare, although reading the plays are great, I ended up loving this book, after seeing it at the park, seeing the mannerisms and word inflections that you just don't get in by reading.
The play itself More...

"Are you going to see Shakespeare in the park tonight or what? Macbeth starts tonight. You said you’d go and see it."
"Dammit. I did didn’t I? Okay, what time?"
"Meet at my place around six. Oh, and we’re going to get some wine."

I wasn’t in the mood to see Shakespeare. I was miserable, for various reasons. Still, I went.

“Welcome to Shakespeare in the park. Please no flash photography.” the recorded message said.

I thought about her, and what she was doing at that exact moment, and I started drinki More...

Macbeth is best read as a look at a certain kind of marriage: a man and a woman, both ambitious, who partner-up to propel forward their joint fortunes. Neither would have achieved royalty without the other---and neither would have become a murderer in the process. The synergy between them is fascinating. As usual, Shakespeare has a genius for human psychology.

Teaching the play throughout the 1990s, I was continually struck by how strongly the play reminded me of one well-known American marriage More...