Macbeth: A Guide to the PlayThough written nearly 400 years ago, Shakespeare's Macbeth continues to capture the interest of modern audiences. Laden with political intrigue, supernatural elements, and complex psychological issues, Macbeth is a play of contemporary relevance, despite its tale of witches and ancient Scottish kings. While the play reflects seventeenth-century theological and political concerns, it also explores enduring themes, such as fate and free will, appearance and reality, order and disorder, ambition and obedience, and madness and sanity. Macbeth has been staged countless times, and it has also been produced for film and television. Numerous editions of the play exist, it is one of the most widely taught dramatic works, and scholars have written an enormous amount of criticism about it. This reference book is a comprehensive guide to the play. |
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... important to mere humans : " When the Battaile's lost , and wonne , " and " faire is foule , and foule is faire . " Although Alfred Harbage claims that these are the " musty crones of popular superstition , not ministers of fate [ but ] ...
... important in the audience's relationship to the play " ( 1983 , 193 ) . “ These characters pervert the interpretive process , ignoring poten- tial meanings in the things they see , imposing their own willful desires onto the visual ...
... important than what is denoted . It is seminal and it germinates into terror . ( 66 ) The Weird Sisters , then , reflect anxiety about language and its relationship to an object . Shakespeare goes back to a past time to make the ...
Contents
Critical Approaches | 117 |
The Play in Performance | 139 |
Selected Bibliography | 199 |
Copyright | |
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References to this book
Shakespeare's Visual Theatre: Staging the Personified Characters Frederick Kiefer Limited preview - 2003 |