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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... Witch some of her chestnuts . She has a prize- " a Pilots Thumbe , / Wrackt , as homeward he did come . " Macbeth enters , echoing the Witches : " So foule and faire a day I have not seene . " Banquo notices the Witches " So wither'd ...
... witches , Furies , devils and fairies were virtually synonymous " ( 57 ) . Jean Seznec cites the medieval tendency ... witches and devils . Crucially for the Church , the furies , witches , and the Devil himself were doing the work of ...
... witches were a problem , since witches are not a part of modern society " ( 263-64 ) . In the Theodore Komisar- jevsky production at Stratford - on - Avon in 1933 , " The witches ... were hags plundering corpses on the battlefield ...
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 |