MacBeth

[Breathless Horror]

I searched, but couldn't find a thread for this awesome play. So I decided to make one, because I'm bored and just finished reading it for english class.

What did you think of it? Favorite lines, fav characters, why you did/didn't like it? Discuss!

My favorite part was MacBeth's "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy.

"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-27)

[Post Modern Girl]

I know you started a thread about Macbeth, but have you looked at Hamlet?

Hamlet is a masterpiece and there is various parts to it that relate quiet closley to Macbeth.

I done coursework on Lady Macbeth, she was the brains behind it all.

[Nevan]

Hah - I recited that very same piece for my oral exam when I was in school! It's my favourite as well.

[StasisInDarkness]

"Something wicked this way comes..."

I love Macbeth. It's not my favorite Shakespeare (I'm a huge Hamlet fan...bit obsessed with Ophelia, actually), but it is certainly one of his best.

Plus, Lady Macbeth is one of the most intriguing female characters in literary history.

[Green.Lady]

I enjoy it. I'm particularly fond of the first witch. Some awesome rhyming there.

I've studied it wayyy too much at school, though...

[spoon!]

Slightly relevant:

The old cartoon show "Gargoyles" lifted a lot from Shakespeare's material, and MacBeth was a large part of it.

Lady MacBeth definitely ranks up there as one of Shakespeare's most popular villains, second I think to Iago ("Othello").

[Breathless Horror]

Originally Posted by Green.Lady

I enjoy it. I'm particularly fond of the first witch. Some awesome rhyming there.

I've studied it wayyy too much at school, though...

Isn't that the truth! I've always found that it is so much harder to enjoy a book/play/poem when you know there is going to be extensive essay writing and assignments on it later.

I haven't read Hamlet yet, though I did watch a recording of it being performed. I'll see if I can hunt it down amidst my parents old books, or more likely the local library.

[Delkaetre]

I always loved King Lear, a tale that had been around for centuries before Shakespear put it on stage. "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!"
MacBeth certainly has its high points as well, though- the first time I read it, it was because I'd found out that Terry Pratchetter had written "Wyrd Sisters" based upon it. I very much enjoyed reading the play and noting the parallels and parodies that Pratchett made.

[gothicusmaximus]

This is going to be very controversial, but I always though that the whole plot-device-prophecy-loophole through which Macduff finally overcame Macbeth was so stupid that even contemporary Hollywood auidences wouldn't buy it. It's hard to grasp the true idiocy of it because Shakespeare's verse is so well-engineered, but seriously, two foes locked in a heated sword duel:

"Haha! No man born of woman can defeat me!"
"C SECTION MOTHERFUCKER"
"NOoOOOoOOOO!"

Hamlet is my favorite.

[Methadrine]

I like The Tempest. It's so.. split up. The ending is also not what one expects.

[MariusCesar]

I haven't read MacBeth yet. But I have read Romeo & Juliet in HS. I've just started reading Julius Ceasar after watching episodes of HBO's Rome. Great series & great book.

Marius

[Xombie]

Originally Posted by Post Modern Girl

I know you started a thread about Macbeth, but have you looked at Hamlet?

Hamlet is a masterpiece and there is various parts to it that relate quiet closley to Macbeth.

I done coursework on Lady Macbeth, she was the brains behind it all.

That's because Shakespeare either stole somebody else's plot, or he re-used his over and over and over with different characters and settings.

[gothicusmaximus]

Originally Posted by Xombie

That's because Shakespeare either stole somebody else's plot, or he re-used his over and over and over with different characters and settings.

What constituted 'stealing' in Shakespeare's time was substantially different from what does today. The conception of 'intellectual property' in the Elizabethan age wasn't all too divorced from that of the greeks of Sophocles' day, who looked upon nearly every thing as a contribution to some common cultural corpus from which any poet or artist could draw freely.
Shakespeare liberally borrowed from, and on rare occassion even plagiarized, the works of others because this had not yet been established as a reprehensible thing. His skill as a playwright and poet can't be challenged on this basis.

Also, could you provide an example of Shakespeare recycling plots?

[Delkaetre]

King Lear's an example.

Shakespeare didn't exactly 'steal' other people's stories. He re-wrote old legends and folk tales and put them on stage. Like Disney rewrote classic stories like Snow White and puts them in the cinema.

[gothicusmaximus]

Originally Posted by Delkaetre

King Lear's an example.

Shakespeare didn't exactly 'steal' other people's stories. He re-wrote old legends and folk tales and put them on stage. Like Disney rewrote classic stories like Snow White and puts them in the cinema.

Well, he did that, and he also did what we modern folk might consider stealing. "As You Like It", for example, is taken from a novel written by Thomas Lodge just ten years earlier, and sizeable chunks of "Antony and Cleopatra" are lifted directly from a then-current translation of Plutarch's "Lives".

[KontanKarite]

You guys have ensured the doom of this forum.

Thanks a lot.

[Sir Canvas Corpsey]

I think Shakespeare has a beautiful way of writing but I just can't stand him, first and foremost because his work is shoved down your throat from the start of schooling to the end ( this year we convinced our Literature to swap Much Ado for Henrik Ibsen's Heddagabbler )

Secondly it's not that I don't have the attention span for his work but I just can't get enthralled in his work like others do.

Thirdly people who splash and slash and paint Shakespeare as the be all and end all of literature, portraying him as a great man, which irritates me to no end, quite similarly to people who say Poe was a great man.

Great writers, yes, men? No, they ere both gutless cowards who ran from their problems

[gothicusmaximus]

Examples of Shakespeare being a gutless coward please?

[KontanKarite]

Please yes. Kaythxbai.

[Sir Canvas Corpsey]

An example? Now that's a fair request, I knew i had one when i posted that message, i swear it involved his wife or something to that nature, oh dear I must be getting old

[Apathy's_Child]

Originally Posted by Ravenmother

I like them both...but Shakespear is my bag. There is a line that is something like "put out the light" but I can't remember how it reads as it has been years since I read them both...but I will find it.^_^

That's Othello - "put out the light, then put out the light." Extinguish the lamp, then strangle wife. Check.

Macbeth is my favourite Shakespeare. Overall I think the dude's pretty overrated but it's good literature even so. Favourite quote from anywhere in Shakespeare is from M - "life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

[gothicusmaximus]

Originally Posted by Sir Canvas Corpsey

An example? Now that's a fair request, I knew i had one when i posted that message, i swear it involved his wife or something to that nature, oh dear I must be getting old

Yeah. He wasn't a gutless coward, or at least no record exists of him being cowardly to any exceptional degree. Poe wasn't necessarily a contemptible person either, he just wasn't a paragon of virtue, for which one can hardly fault him.

[Sir Canvas Corpsey]

Originally Posted by gothicusmaximus

Yeah. He wasn't a gutless coward, or at least no record exists of him being cowardly to any exceptional degree. Poe wasn't necessarily a contemptible person either, he just wasn't a paragon of virtue, for which one can hardly fault him.

I admit I did overreact with that statement, and I retract it in it's majority ( though i am sure i once found something supporting it )however I am still annoyed by the people who immediately assume that since someone was amazing in one area that they are therefore some type of god

[Apathy's_Child]

Othello rules. Iago's a funny motherfucker.

[LadyStardust]

Originally Posted by gothicusmaximus

This is going to be very controversial, but I always though that the whole plot-device-prophecy-loophole through which Macduff finally overcame Macbeth was so stupid that even contemporary Hollywood auidences wouldn't buy it. It's hard to grasp the true idiocy of it because Shakespeare's verse is so well-engineered, but seriously, two foes locked in a heated sword duel:

"Haha! No man born of woman can defeat me!"
"C SECTION MOTHERFUCKER"
"NOoOOOoOOOO!"

Hamlet is my favorite.

The "self-fulfilling prophecy" theme is one of the oldest ones there is. One of the early examples is Greek tragedy. Oedipus Rex, for example. The Greeks believed that Fate was the most powerful phenomenon in existence. Even Zeus, the king of the gods, was at the mercy of Fate. What hope did MacBeth have of escaping it?