Product Description

The Shakespeare Made Easy series aims to take the fear out of Shakespeare. By having Shakespearean and Modern English facing each other, pupils will find it easier to comprehend the text. Through discussion of the life, work and theatre of Shakespeare pupils can gain a more rounded understanding of these classic works.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26177 in Books
• Published on: 1984-12-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 223 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
One of Shakespeare's greatest, but also bloodiest tragedies, was written around 1605/06. Many have seen the story of Macbeth's murder and usurpation of the legitimate Scottish King Duncan as having obvious connection to contemporary issues regarding King James I (James VI of Scotland), and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. King James was particularly fascinated with witchcraft, so the appearance of the witches chanting "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" at the opening of the play seemed particularly topical, as was Macbeth's betrayal of Banquo, from whom James claimed direct descent.

However, the play is clearly far more than a piece of royal entertainment. It is also a fast-moving and dramatically satisfying piece of theatre. Macbeth's existential struggle between loyalty to his King and his "Vaulting ambition" is fascinating to watch, as his is struggle with Lady Macbeth, and her own terrifying refusal of her maternal role. The play shows an intensification of Shakespeare's interest in mothers and their effect upon ruling masculinity, and also contains some of the most memorable speeches in the entire canon, including Macbeth's reflections that ultimately life "is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing". --Jerry Brotton

About the Author
Robert S. Miola is Gerard Manley Hopkins Chair of English at Loyola College. He is the author of Shakespeare's Reading, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy: The Influence of Plautus and Terence, Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy: The Influence of Seneca, and The Comedy of Errors: Critical Essays, as well as dozens of articles on sixteenth-century English literature.

Customer Reviews

Not dark enough
I was disappointed by this CD, particularly as the Naxos recording of King Lear with Schofield is so fine and the Richard III with Branagh a worthy production. Dillane, rated as a fine actor, fails badly to convey the steel and darkness of Macbeth for the early part of this play. Famous soliloquies,'Is this a dagger' fall flat. Later, he improves but fails yet to hit the heights. Finoa Shaw as Lady Macbeth, however, is magnificent. The CD also has some annoying quirks of recording, one scene sounding as if it has been recorded in a shower room

Shakespeare's shortest and "sweetest" (purest) tragedy.
Historical inaccuracies aside (Macbeth was one of Scotland's great kings), this stands as one of Shakespeare's most brilliant plays. It's his shortest tragedy, and has been declared (as the Folger edition quotes) "wholly tragic." Plenty of ambiguities to sort through as well as a wealth of famous lines ('out, out, brief candle!', 'the be all and the end all', 'I begin to grow weary of the sun', etc etc).

I always recommend the Folger editions over others. They have the footnotes on the facing pages (so they aren't disruptive but are at the same time accessible), illustrative images from Shakespeare's time, and a scholarly essay at the end. They are also very clear (without being pedantic) about the uncertainties in editing the work (between folios and quartos, although no quarto editions of MacBeth were published in his time).

Lay on, Macduff!
While I was basically familiar with Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth, I have only recently actually read the bard's brilliant play. The drama is quite dark and moody, but this atmosphere serves Shakespeare's purposes well. In Macbeth, we delve deeply into the heart of a true fiend, a man who would betray the king, who showers honors upon him, in a vainglorious snatch at power. Yet Macbeth is not 100% evil, nor is he a truly brave soul. He waxes and wanes over the execution of his nefarious plans, and he thereafter finds himself haunted by the blood on his own hands and by the ethereal spirits of the innocent men he has had murdered. On his own, Macbeth is much too cowardly to act so traitorously to his kind and his country. The source of true evil in these pages is the cold and calculating Lady Macbeth; it is she who plots the ultimate betrayal, forcefully pushes her husband to perform the dreadful acts, and cleans up after him when he loses his nerve. This extraordinary woman is the lynchpin of man's eternal fascination with this drama. I find her behavior a little hard to account for in the closing act, but she looms over every single male character we meet here, be he king, loyalist, nobleman, courtier, or soldier. Lady Macbeth is one of the most complicated, fascinating, unforgettable female characters in all of literature.

The plot does not seem to move along as well as Shakespeare's other most popular dramas, but I believe this is a result of the writer's intense focus on the human heart rather than the secondary activity that surrounds the related royal events. It is fascinating if sometimes rather disjointed reading. One problem I had with this play in particular was one of keeping up with each of the many characters that appear in the tale; the English of Shakespeare's time makes it difficult for me to form lasting impressions of the secondary characters, of whom there are many. Overall, though, Macbeth has just about everything a great drama needs: evil deeds, betrayal, murder, fighting, ghosts, omens, cowardice, heroism, love, and, as a delightful bonus, mysterious witches. Very many of Shakespeare's more famous quotes are also to be found in these pages, making it an important cultural resource for literary types. The play doesn't grab your attention and absorb you into its world the way Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet does, but this voyage deep into the heart of evil, jealousy, selfishness, and pride forces you to consider the state of your own deep-seated wishes and dreams, and for that reason there are as many interpretations of the essence of the tragedy as there are readers of this Shakespearean masterpiece. No man's fall can rival that of Macbeth's, and there is a great object lesson to be found in this drama. You cannot analyze Macbeth without analyzing yourself to some degree, and that goes a long way toward accounting for the Tragedy of Macbeth's literary importance and longevity.