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Title: The Tragedy of Macbeth: With New and Updated Critical Essays and a Revised Bibliography (The Signet Classic Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare, Sylvan Barnet ISBN: 0-451-52677-5 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: April, 1998 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.31 (86 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Powerful, beyond words, lives forever in your mind
Comment: This play is great! I've always liked Shakespearean comedy and tragic romance, and I didn't want to read this play at first, but when I did--it got me.
For those who want to read a play full of word play, appearance and reality in the world and for you, irony and Christian innuendoes, Macbeth is for you. The word play, especially the surprising comparison of murder with "Tarquin's ravishing", and the really effective ones like ambition with drunkeness, will make you read it again and again. There is a haunting soliloquy in Act 5 that Macbeth gives about life--it's famous and most would have heard of it, but nothing beats reading it together with the play.
Behind every successful man there is a woman, and behind every tragic hero there should be a tragic heroine. Lady Macbeth will repulse you and gain your pity. Don't despise her, folks, she just squashed her femininity thinking it was the best thing to do. She wouldn't have to ask evil forces to take away her human compassion if she didn't have any to begin with.
A must-read, and must-savour.
Rating: 5
Summary: Rapt Withal
Comment: Shakespeare's shortest and bloodiest tragedy, MACBETH is also possibly the most serious. Macbeth is a warrior who has just had his greatest victory, but his own "vaulting ambition," the spectral promises of the three weird sisters, and the spurring on of his wife drive him to a treason and miserable destruction for which he himself is completely responsible. The ominous imagery of the fog that hovers over the first scene of the play symbolizes the entire setting of the play. Shakespeare's repeated contrasts of such concepts as fair and foul, light and darkness, bravery and cowardice, cut us to the quick at every turn. MACBETH forces us to question "what is natural?" "what is honor?" and "Is life really 'a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing?'" Few plays have ever illustrated the torments of Guilt (especially how it deprives one of Sleep) so vividly and stirringly.
I have read this play curiously as a child, excitedly as a teenager, passionately as a college student, and lovingly as a graduate student and adult. Like all of Shakespeare's writing, it is still as fresh, and foreboding, and marvelous as ever. As a play it is first meant to be heard (cf. Hamlet says "we shall hear a play"), secondarily to be seen (which it must be), but, ah, the rich rewards of reading it at one's own pace are hard to surpass. Shakespeare is far more than just an entertainer: he is the supreme artist of the English language. The Arden edition of MACBETH is an excellent scholarly presentation, offering a bounty of helpful notes and information for both the serious and casual reader.
Rating: 5
Summary: A very useful edition of a great play
Comment: Macbeth has always been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. It is vivid, has blood & murder, magic, visions, treachery, and just deserts. I mean, what is not to love? The play moves along quickly and isn't one of the longer plays. For all these reasons and more, audiences love it.
But there is a lot more to the play than the plot outline might suggest. Shakespeare brilliantly works out the subtleties of character through the action, interactions, and self-discussions in the play. It isn't a simple "action" play, it is also a masterwork of revealing the character of the characters even when they are themselves unaware of the trap they are leaping into.
I am partial to the Arden editions because I trust the text, love the extensive notes, and the introductory and additional material that helps give the play context and talks about sources Shakespeare almost certainly used. In this case Holinshed's "Chronicles of Scotland". Throughout this edition there are also discussions of the textural problems of this play: where some things seem to be missing, what might be interpolations, and so forth.
This is a very useful edition of a great play.
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Title: Hamlet (Shakespeare Made Easy: Modern English Version Side-By-Side With Full Original Text) by William Shakespeare, Alan Durband ISBN: 0812036387 Publisher: Barrons Educational Series Pub. Date: February, 1986 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Othello by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722816 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1993 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: The TEMPEST by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722905 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: King Lear by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722727 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722719 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1992 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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