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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... linguistic and intellectual level , and echoes its words to our ears as if we ourselves were exploring corridors of shadow and stone . Kristian Smidt compares Macbeth and Marlowe's Dr. Faustus . Macbeth's bar- gain leaves him with a ...
... linguistic trap . Heidegger also claims that " it is not we who play with words , but the nature of language that plays with us " ( 1968 , 118 ) . In writing about the play's poetry , Madeleine Doran argues " if the plot is simple , the ...
... linguistic uncertainty in the play " ( 1985 , 172 ) . Whether they create or reflect ambiguity , they are the physical manifestation of their metaphysics ; as Sidney Homan sug- gests , the witches " embody the principle of equivocation ...
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 |