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Shakespeare Ebooks Shakespeare - Macbeth
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Shakespeare - Macbeth |
Macbeth is William Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and one of his most popular works. It is frequently performed at professional and community theatres around the world.
The play is seen as an archetypal tale of dangers of the lust for power and betrayal of friends. It is loosely based upon the historical account of Macbeth of Scotland by Hector Boece which flattered the antecedents of Boece's patron King James IV of Scotland (the ancestor of James I of England), and greatly maligned the real Macbeth. It incorporates characteristic features of a morality play. Scholars think it an archetypal Jacobean play, with plenty of endorsements of James I's reign, and place its composition around 1606. There is considerable evidence that the text of the play as we have it incorporates later revisions by Thomas Middleton, who inserted popular passages (notably an extra scene involving the witches, for such scenes proved highly popular with audiences) from his own play The Witch (1615).
Actors often consider the play to be 'unlucky', and usually refer to it as 'The Scottish Play' rather than by name. The characters are sometimes referred to as 'Mackers' and 'Lady Mackers'. To say the name of the play inside a theatre is considered to doom the production to failure. |
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| DETAILS |
| Format: | PDF
| Allows Print: | YES |
| FileSize: | 98Kb | | |
| Pages: | 81 | | |
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