5/27/2023 0 Comments Macbeth plotMacbeth was still in 'fool's paradise' and was living according to what the witches had said, not in what was happening in real life. Knowing that Banquo's children will eventually rule Scotland he orders them also to be killed. Overcome by the guilt in the time following Duncans passing Lady MAcbeth takes her own life, although struggling after this Macbeth still doesnt understand reality and keeps himself illusioned under the witches spell. A unique series of events which follow make Macbeth believe that destiny in fact has it set that he will be leader, motivated by this spell Macbeth murders King Duncan with the help of Lady Macbeth and he is knighted King of Scotland. Noble Scotsman Macbeth meets 3 witches during a storm who tell him he will be king. I will probably give Shakespeare's works, in whatever form, a miss for a while now. Spectators cheered when their favourite actors entered the stage and bad actors were jeered at and sometimes pelted with whatever came to hand! Well there would have been plenty of that going on during a performance of 'Macbeth'. And because the Elizabethans did not bathe very often, the audiences were generally rather smelly and the ladies in the upper tiers often sniffed perfume and bags of sweetly-scented herbs to cover the stink rising from the groundlings! Others took their place in the tiers of seating and had a better view of proceedings but had to pay extra for the privilege. People paid a penny to stand in the central space and watch and those who did just that were known as 'the groundlings' because they stood on the ground. There were no actresses on stage as all the female characters were played by boys, wearing wigs and make-up. we must constantly be on guard against it' - yes, indeed!Īs for the second essay, The Globe was built on the South Bank of the River Thames in 1599 and because it was an open air theatre, plays were only put on during daylight hours in spring and summer. Interestingly he suggests that the play was the 16th-century equivalent of a modern horror story and that the changes that come over Macbeth's character suggest that the potential for evil is 'lurking inside us all'. The promises that the witches made to Macbeth proved to be hollow and Macduff kills him - retribution for Macbeth executing Macduff's wife and children. He goes on to suggest that the evil in the play does not come from the witches but from Macbeth himself well, murdering King Duncan and then condemning Duncan's sons as murderers speaks for itself! But in the end Macbeth loses everything his wife goes mad and dies and when the English army invaded Scotland his noblemen turned against him. In the former, the author tells us that Shakespeare wrote the play in 1605, four years after James I took the throne and that he wrote the three witches into it to flatter the new monarch who had previously written a book about witchcraft and who had granted Shakespeare's acting company the title of 'The King's Men' in 1603. Perhaps the best thing about this edition is that there are two essays at the end, 'Evil in Macbeth' and 'Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre'. I was not particularly thrilled although it did keep my interest and the illustrations were quirky enough to enhance the text. I chose 'Macbeth' because it is my daughter's favourite Shakespeare play and because one hears so much about it. I thought, therefore, that I would read 'A Shakespeare Story' as adapted by others to see if that held any more appeal to me than did the actual works themselves. I must confess that I am not a great Shakespeare fan, I am interested in the man himself but most of his works do not appeal to me (I did enjoy 'Julius Caesar' when at school).
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