While nature remains an impassive witness that blossoms with wounded beauty and treacherous storms in “King Lear”, it embodies a mystic underworld rich with esoteric tradition and almost sacrilegious imagery in “Macbeth”.
Apparitions, ghosts and witches dance at the tune of lyrical prophecies and besiege the open plains of Scotland during nighttime. Only Macbeth hears their infantile incantations:

“The weyward sisters, hand in hand,
Posters of the sea and land,
Thus go do about, about.
Thrice to thine and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.”

Alliteration, wordplay and riddles acquire supernatural connotations due to the magical significance of the number “three”, for three witches there are and three times they repeat their capricious charms.
It is amidst this confusing, hallucinatory atmosphere that Macbeth arises as the merging point between reality and the afterlife, overshadowing the rest of the noblemen that sort of blur together in an undistinguishable mass of secondary characters.
His presence is so engulfing that defies categorization and the archetypal part of villain or murderer, like Edmund or the deceitful sisters in “King Lear”, becomes but a deficient label to describe the protagonist of this tragedy forged in imagination.
Spurred by the bewitched air and cradled by the shrouding dark, Macbeth covets the crown of Scotland devoid of greed or ambition, and like a frequent seer of the occult, he anticipates his doomed fate:

“She would have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.”

Lady Macbeth’s venomous speech, “unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top full Of direst cruelty!” drips with acidity towards her husband’s manliness but neither the reasons for her ambitious aspirations nor her apparent dissatisfaction with her condition as a female are revealed.
Yet it is prematurely disclosed in the opening scenes of Act I that the Macbeths are childless and that after betraying the King and his faithful friend Baquo, Macbeth seems to retaliate exaggeratedly against Madcuff and orders to have not only his wife but all his heirs brutally assassinated.
Can Macbeth’s actions derive from hurt pride? Envy? Fear?
The motives remain elusive, but the result is not. Because when “justice” is done, when the traitor is beheaded and Madcuff has proved his honor in avenging his family, he salutes Malcom, the heir to the throne of Scotland, and the public gathered there with the famous:

“Behold, where stands
The usurper’s cursèd head. The time is free.
I see thee compassed with thy kingdom’s pearl,
Whose voices I desire aloud with mine:
Hail, King of Scotland!”

Nevertheless, the escalating grandeur of Macbeth, which grows exponentially towards a climatic explosion, has eclipsed the aberrant bloodshed to secure the kingdom and demoted it to the trivial status of the ephemeral.
Macbeth’s days have been usurped by the dusky scented nights and his visionary faculty has been rewarded with the gift of immortality. He now throws his pennies in the fountain and wishes for nothing else, just like the reader.

8/25/23: Rereading with a class I am teaching with a focus on ghosts/liminal space. And also witches, which are kind of related entities. And apparitions, visions, smoke and fog and filthy air. And another kind of liminal space of sorts: Madness, a kind of alternative way f experiencing the world involving hallucinations (such as Lady Macbeth's handwashing of "blood" we never see). You don't believe in ghosts? You may also not believe in witchcraft or witches. Well even the most hardened rationalist believe that hallucinations happen. And dreams.

Are the witches even there? In Kurosawa's version of Macbeth, Throne of Blood, the witches appear to be ghosts, and the Lady Macbeth stand-in seems increasingly to become one. The chief ghost in Macbeth is Banquo, and that ghost becomes an instrument of guilt. Macbeth, out of control, fears his friend's ascent to the throne instead of him, foretold by the witches. But the ghost comes back to haunt him.

But I was just talking to a friend about this ghost theme and he eagerly opened his computer to show me the opening of the Michael Fassbender filmed version of the play, which opens with a funeral: The death of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's child, a daughter. The theory in this adaptation is that Macbeth/LM may be driven, not primarily by ambition, or greed, but by grief! "I have given suck. . ." LM says to Macbeth, and she makes other references to a child, so we know there was one, ignored by critics, largely? And me? So it's an interesting theory, one of many, about what drives the action (okay, violent murders).

I saw the film last night and was very moved by it. It's violent, but there's some ambivalence about it from Macbeth I hadn't seen before in any production. As he at battle, he sees and is dismayed by the death of so many young men. This is a grim interpretation of the (grim) play, but I have never seen so many kids highlighted in a production. At Duncan's party, a girl choir; at the killing of MacDuff's family (which historically takes place off stage), Macbeth, the grieving father, kills children, and in this production, Lady Macbeth more than hears about it: She is there, watching the slaughter, pushing the grieving mother off the edge into madness.

So we see reasons for the mental and moral decline of the Macbeths. Even the final swordfight to the death between Macbeth and MaCduff seems close to being suicidal for Macbeth. And I like the appearance of Fleance at the end, watching Macbeth die and taking his sword (Fleance, Banquo's son--who watched Macbeth kill his father in this version--was prophesied to be one day King).

So the usual interpretations highlight one of the usual motivations for the tragedy: Macbeth is ambitious and even ruthless for power; Lady Macbeth is a crazed madwoman who crazily pushes him to do what they both know is wrong; the witches manipulate the Macbeths to do all the killing. But in this one it is grief that is the driver. It's a new and exciting interpretation, which made me (more, not wholly) sympathetic to the grieving parents. It's not an excuse, but it's an explanation.

And this is the foggiest, smokiest version of the play I have ever seen. I loved it.

"Double, double, toil and trouble"--those pesky witches

3/26/19 update: In preparing to see a production of Macbeth as a chaperone on a class trip with my eighth grader, I dug out lots of materials to help him understand what is going on. Macbeth is my favorite Shakespeare, I have taught it many times, seen it many times; in other words, this is a recipe for disaster for my poor son, who might justifiably fear professorial pontification at every page he turns. To work against this tendency (in me) I just dug up guides to the play, such as MacBeth: For Kids (Shakespeare Can Be Fun series), Nina Packer's Tales from Shakespeare, a few dvd adaptations of the play, and oh, yeah, the play itself. And just left them casually strewn around the house, you know, IF you’re interested. . .

Luckily he is a very good reader, has seen a lot of plays performed, and was independently interested in the play without me breathing down his neck: “Oh, you know, I saw a Stratford [Ontario] production in 1979 with Macbeth AS one of the three murderers!” “In this Australian film version, the witches do drugs with Macbeth, obscuring his judgment!” and so on. . . which could, I know, have led to “Da-aaad!” The Chicago Shakespeare production was great, one of the yearly productions they do, done in fewer than 90 minutes with the witches at the opening dancing a kind of medieval hip hop, with strobe lights and surround sound, and a bloody (nearly headless) Banquo. My son loved it, and so did his classmates. And so did I, proud to see his first Macbeth with him (he’s seen one other Shakespeare play so far).

Original review, updated periodically:

Probably most works of literature can be read again and again to both recapture that experience you had when first reading it and become something new, given your changed life circumstances, theoretical and other reading you are doing, and so on. The basic English teacher's writing prompt about this great play is "who is responsible for the tragedy of Macbeth?" It fits the current call for making arguments in school, too. Yet the play is not just a summary of arguments you might make. It's a living, breathing entity. But this question of whodunnit is still an interesting question, because it causes you to make commitments about beliefs and what it is the play has to say about the world. This time around, I am interested in the insights the play provides about the nature of “madness”: Psychological instability, paranormal phenomena, altered states of consciousness, dream life, the foul/fair confusion of good and evil. I have kids with variously different minds: one with autism, one possibly with schizophrenia, one who would appear to possess psychic faculties, two have night terrors, go sleepwalking, strange phenomena that might have got you put in a dungeon for madness a few centuries ago. I’m interested in this play in part for personal reasons. As well as its being just damned good theater.

Shakespeare wrote the witches that open the play into the story he borrowed from Holinshed's Chronicles in part to honor (in exchange for his patronage from) King James, who had written a popular scholarly study of witchcraft, so the play purports to take witches and the darker side of the spiritual realm seriously. To contemporary, sophisticated audiences, the three weird sisters seem to be there for entertainment purposes, mainly, yet they also seem to know stuff—have paranormal knowledge—about what is going to happen to Macbeth and Banquo's son Fleance (who preceded James on the throne), so something is going on we have to either acknowledge or dismiss as fantasy.

But, as I find out from my working class students, almost every one of them seems to have someone in the family that believes in or is actively involved in some way in psychic phenomena such as the prescience Shakespeare's witches seem to possess, sometimes in conjunction with their beliefs in more conventional religion. In other words, some who are religious also have experience with extra-religious ideation.

But Macbeth is more than witches, when we think of challenges to conventional thinking: Macbeth, which mostly takes place in the dark, is one of four Shakespeare’s plays that features ghosts, and has both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth envisioning daggers and bloody hands and other things. What’s the relationship between the dark spiritual realm, psychic phenomena and "madness"? Lady Macbeth seems to drive her hubby to kill Duncan, and yet then seems to disintegrate, seeing blood on her hands, unable to get that damned spot out. And Macbeth sees the ghost of his murdered friend Banquo (because who had him murdered?). Do the witches make that happen, these ghostly images? Are they guilt-induced hallucinations? All these questions interest you more than a mere whodunnit.
Fait is foul and foul is fair! The world is turned upside down!

How do we limit the world when we limit our view of it to our (flawed) sense perceptions and rational deliberation? There are plenty of extra-sensory issues in the play to consider. The porter is drunk, and alters his perception through it. No one is sure what is happening because of the skewed relationship between appearance and reality. Stormy weather. . . Macbeth has murdered sleep, and sleep loss itself creates hallucinations. Visions abound. This is a dark and richly strange play in one sense about the madness of misplaced ambitions, ambitions possibly influenced by witches and/or a turn from good to “evil.”

My college Thespians put on a production in 1973 that featured a Macbeth that seemed to resemble “Tricky Dick,” Richard Nixon. A recent production here in Chicago featured Macbeth as Donald Trump with the witches as strippers he consults as life coaches. Rude? Funny? Macbeth is a canvas on which many theatrical productions have been painted.

n  n    Book Reviewn  n
Ah Macbeth... good old, dark and devious Macbeth. We read this as part of a 10th grade AP English course and watched a movie to compare the differences between the two versions. Everyone has his or her own take on Macbeth. I rather enjoyed the play back in high school and then again in college during my English major. It's nearly 500 years old. Even by today's standards, it has some of the most fun drama you could imagine. It's sort of like a reality TV show, don't you think?

Witches. Devious wife. Devilish husband. Death all around. Ghosts. Superstitious behavior. All great plot points. Amazing characters to work with. Fun and lyrical language. Can't say enough good things about it. But to flip the coin for a minute... was it too much all in one story? What are we supposed to learn from it? Who was this really about? Many open-ended questions I'd love to ask Mr. Shakespeare.

If you've never read it... it's necessary reading for classic / historical literature. If you've read it and didn't like it, why? I'd love to know.

For me, it hit the mystery sweet spot in a few ways, even though it wasn't quite a story about "who's the killer." It was more a thriller... "who else is gonna die?"

Tons of adaptions. Stage plays. It's a multi-media dream come true for directors, producers and actors. As a play, it's easy to follow and moves quickly.

n  n    About Men  n
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by. Note: All written content is my original creation and copyrighted to me, but the graphics and images were linked from other sites and belong to them. Many thanks to their original creators.
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Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing

n


هذا في رأيي هو أفضل سطر كتب عن العدمية في التاريخ
وهو السطر الذي استمد منه فولكنز عنوان روايته الشهيرة -الصخب والعنف

هذا هو كتابي المفضل رقم (1)‏
وسيظل كذلك ما حييت

نبوغ شكسبير لا يحتاج أحدا ليدلل عليه
فأكيف بالله عليكم أحلل أو أناقش عملا له
لا أملك الجرأة بعد
وإن أتتني الجرأة فهل تسعفني الكلمات؟

قصتي مع ماكبث تتلخص في هيام تام بكل حرف كُتب
وبكل مشهد صور

سطور ماكبث تطاردني في كل مكان
تحلق أمامي أبدية الخلود
تؤكد لي يوما بعد يوم أنها ستظل محفورة بداخلي

استطعتُ بعد عناء فصل قراءاتي عن هذا الهوس بماكبث
وتوقفت عن مقارنة كتاب مهما كانت عظمته بتلك السطور الشعرية المدهشة
وعلمت نفسي ان اتوقف عن التصرف بطفولية قائلة في سذاجة
بس ماكبث أحلى
بس ماكبث أعمق
بس ماكبث أهم‏

هذا كان من زمن بعيد يقترب من العشر سنوات
وفيه كان الانبهار يسيطر على كياني
ويعميني عن جماليات الأدب في كل مجال

ولكن يبقى هذا الامتنان العميق للكون
لأنه استطاع أن يقدم لذائقتي ولروحي ولكياني كله هذا العمل الذي ليس كمثله شيء

حاولت كثيرا أن أكتب عن ماكبث تحليلا يليق بها
ولكنني عجزت وعجز قلمي عن مجرد الخربشة عنها

ربما أفعل يوما
ولكن حتى الآن لا يبقى لي سوى هذا العشق الجارف لأعظم عمل أدبي على مر العصور
:
:
وسأظل أقشعر عند قراءة هذه السطور

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow‏,‏
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day‎‏,‏
To the last syllable of recorded time‏;‏
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle‏!‏
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player‏,‏
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage‏,‏
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury‏,‏
Signifying nothing‏

...

Act One. Scene Minus One.

A greasy spoon café on a Blasted Heath. Three Witches at a Table.

First Witch : It’s not warm, though, is it?

Second Witch : Cold it be and warm it bain’t –
This café could do with a coat of paint

Third Witch : I wish you wouldn’t do that all the time.

Second Witch : (To Waiter) Excuse me – what’s the soup of the day?

Waiter: Scotch broth.

Second Witch : What’s in it?

Waiter : Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Fillet of a fenny snake,
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab.

Second Witch : I’ll just have the salad then.

First Witch : Now listen – we know what we’re going to say when we meet Macbeth and Banquo tomorrow but what if we run in to King Duncan?

Third Witch : Okay, what about this – King thou be but not for long
Alas, O Dunc, it’s all gone wrong

First Witch : Wait – how about – You may be king but listen mate
We are the hags who know your fate
If you knew what we know Macbeth you’d hate
And by the way you should lose some weight

Second Witch : Yes, good! I hear they call him Dunkin’ Duncan at the palace.

Third Witch : What about if we run into Lady Macbeth?

First Witch : Well, she won’t be wandering round the battlefield will she? That’s not logical.

Third Witch : But sister weird and sister dear
This is a play by W Shakespeare
Great poet, philosopher and teacher
Logic ain’t the overriding feature

Second Witch : I’m going to do this one tomorrow – Hover through fog and filthy hair-

Third Witch : Hair? You should change that to air.

First Witch : The night draws on so must we run
But there’s time for some tea and an iced* bun

Second Witch : Macbeth hath not the greatest wit

Third Witch : But let’s agree he is quite fit.

Exeunt


*the stress is on the second syllable

مکبث نمايشنامه ي بسيار دردناک در مورد جاه طلبي است
طمع و زياده خواهي گاهي چنان انسان را اسير خود مي كند كه نه تنها چيزي عايدش نمي شود بلكه داشته هايش را هم از وي مي گيرد

كسي از آينده چيزي نمي داند ولي عده اي بر اين باورند كه انسانهايي هستند كه به كمك جادوگري از آينده افراد آگاه مي شوند.اما سوال اساسي اين است كه دانستن آينده به نفع آدمي است يا ضررش؟

مكبث در تقديرش آمده كه پادشاه خواهد شد. سه ساحره آينده را براي وي بازگو مي كنند،اما مكبث ديگر آن آدم پيشين نيست و از شجاعت و شمشيرش بجاي دفاع از خاك و مردمش ،براي هوس هاي قدرت طلبانه اش استفاده ميكند
...دانستن آينده باعث مي شود دستش به خون بسياري از مردم آلوده شود و

شايد اگر از آينده اش خبر نداشت با شجاعت و شرافتمندي روزي پادشاهي نيك نام ميشد
!!!

”Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

The Weird Sisters open Macbeth, fixing its ominous mood by their presence. Shakespeare clearly drew inspiration for these hags from the Norns of mythology — three crones controlling Fate, past, present, and future. Their greeting of Macbeth demonstrates this identity. They hail him Thane of Glamis, a title he already owned. They hail him Thane of Cawdor, a title he has (unbeknownst) just been awarded. And they hail him King hereafter, the title he will hold. The Sisters signal that Macbeth’s tragic fate has already been set in the very first act — the rest is just the watching of it unfold.

Lady Macbeth provides the most fascinating element of that unfolding fate. One of Shakespeare’s greatest characters, she’s strong, harsh, and ruthless. She is the dominate partner in Shakespeare’s great power couple, realizing from the first that her husband, though ambitious, might blanch from murder of a kinsman to attain their goal. Her speech, shaming and scolding him to carry through is bone chilling:

”I have given suck, and know
How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.”

The deed is done, their fate is sealed. Macbeth becomes king, and the play’s body count multiplies. We watch as conscience devours Macbeth while madness takes his Lady. The rest is just waiting for Birnam Wood to come to Dumsinane, as the Weird Sisters foretold.

Thinking about her (Macbeth by William Shakespeare) once again.

I wrote my thesis on this play! which, somehow, made me love it even more.

I also watched an opera adaptation of it and I can't say I recommend that particular experience (seriously though, why were there so many naked people?)

Anyways just had to remind the audience that I love this book and I am changing the rating to 5 stars, as she deserves.

[exits stage right]

--
original review:

best shakespeare play for the "what, you egg?" line alone

This was really interesting, and the audiobook I listened to was GREAT, but it wasn't my favorite Shakespeare.
Maybe I'm just not a fan of some tragedies? In Macbeth, everyone is just the worst, but it's very interesting to read about them even if I don't love it.
I want to try reading it again / seeing it, but reading it so spread out and not actually seeing it played out probably hurt my rating.

Witches, superstition and mysticism create one of the Bard's more fantastical of plays. Add to it the very real, human elements of self-doubt, manipulation, betrayal and soul-tormenting regret and you get one of the most enjoyable, poignant pieces of literature of all time.

Perhaps only Hamlet reaches a higher level of human suffering encapsulated (Yes, Lear comes close.) I love the hell out Shakespeare's most popular, most well-known play, but Hamlet's interminable introspection tends to mire the spirits and reading experience, especially re-readings. Macbeth endures just the right amount of suffering for my palate.

His betrayal of a friend for the chance to vault himself up the ladder of success seems like a very American idea, but so universal is the depiction of human failings that the story translates quite easily into the entertainment of other cultures. For an example, take the excellent Japanese film version "Throne of Blood".


(The witch scene is cree-pay!)


The Curse!
One of the things that furthers the play's legend is that many believe it to be cursed. All kinds of reasons for this have been bandied about. Disasters occurred, but those can/should probably be chalked up to chance accidents due to the high number of fight scenes and violent acts that take place. Nonetheless, a feeling developed that saying the title itself brought on bad luck, thus it was considered verboten to speak the name and so it became known as "The Scottish Play."

Scottish actor James McAvoy once explained to me the apparent real reason actors feared Macbeth: It being so popular, it was often put on by struggling theaters, but the production was so costly that instead of reviving the theater, it often hastened its financial ruin. If the theater went under the actors would then be out of work again, so landing a role in Macbeth became a double-edged sword.

عندما تتحرك الأشجار..و على يد رجل لم تلده امه هكذا سيتم قتلك يا ماكبث

عندما يتلاعب شكسبير بالألفاظ الي حدود تقنعني انني بلهاء حقا..لا اتقن الكتابة و لا حتى الكلام !!ا
الاخلاص و عدم الاخلاص ؛تظل ماكبث من افضل ما تم كتابته عن عواقبهما
هل هناك خير ضيق الأفق ؟
هل ماكبث بطل غبي؟
في رأيي نعم☆ فقد تحولت حياته إلى فوضى عارمة عندما طمس عقله..و انطلقت عواطفه و غرايزه لتتسع ثغرة واهنة في شخصيته..و تتحكم في اختياراته

هل ماكبث بطل شرير ؟