Macbeth (Shakespeare)

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David Garrick as Macbeth. Etching by Charles White, 1775

Macbeth ( The Tragedy of Macbeth ) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare . The work is about the rise of the royal general Macbeth to King of Scotland , his change to regicide and after further murderous acts, which should serve to maintain his power, his fall. Shakespeare probably completed the work around 1606. The only surviving authoritative text version can be found in the First Folio from 1623. In his drama, the author linked historical facts about the historical Scottish King Macbeth and the contemporary English King James I with superstition, mythology and fiction. The first mention of a performance is believed to be on April 20, 1611.

Important figures

The main actors are:

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

Macbeth , first Thane of Glamis and later also by Cawdor, is at the beginning a loyal vassal of King Duncan of Scotland. But after he was prophesied by three witches that he would rule as king over Scotland, he and Lady Macbeth , his ambitious wife, decide to murder the king. After Duncan's murder, Macbeth is crowned king and establishes a tyranny. Both his wife, the lady, and Macbeth himself are characterized by great ambition and striving for power, but lose their minds and their humanity in the course of events over their crimes. From the fifth scene on, Lady Macbeth functions as both a parallel and a contrasting figure to the protagonist. As a confidante and conspirator, she provides the dramaturgically necessary interlocutor for the hero, who can no longer speak openly with most of the other actors. As an influential, unscrupulous seductress, she is an important driving force behind the protagonist by activating his or her evil potential. While Macbeth initially appears timid and weak in planning the regicide, Lady Macbeth appears here as a dominant, superior and harsher or “more masculine” figure; an apparently effeminate man faces an apparently manly woman. With this reversal of the normal, natural relationship between the sexes according to contemporary Elizabethan ideas, a central characteristic of evil is expressed: perversion and unnatural. Lady Macbeth's fearlessness and determination and drive, however, are caricatures of actual male virtues; like the witches, she is a kind of hybrid being, no longer a woman, but also not a man, and thus condemned to sterility. With the perversion embodied by Lady Macbeth as a characteristic of evil, the inherent sterility of crime is hinted at from the very beginning. Her shortsighted thinking also illustrates the basic myopia and irrationality of evil.

In the second part of the drama, Lady Macbeth is no longer a factor in the external plot, but after her sudden, sudden collapse, she plays an important role in the atonement theme of the drama, in that Shakespeare places her at the center of the motif of inner hell and the loneliness of the criminal. After it breaks up and goes mad, Macbeth gains dominance as the actual protagonist and also proves to be the dominant figure in his misdeeds and crimes by consistently treading the path of evil once he has taken with his actions, whereby he has quite different psychological stages such as fear, feeling of threat, renewed determination, panic, deceptive security, or numbness and nihilism.

King Duncan and his sons

Duncan is the rightful King of Scotland at the beginning of the play, his sons are the elder Malcolm and the younger Donalbain . After the rebellion is put down, Duncan appoints Malcolm as his successor. Duncan is later murdered by Macbeth and his wife; Duncan's sons are accused of the crime and flee the country. Malcolm later returns and becomes the new king after Macbeth's death.

The thanes

The Thanes (princes) take on different roles in the play.

Banquo is initially the royal general and friend of Macbeth. He is prophesied to become the progenitor of kings. After Macbeth came to power, Banquo increasingly turned away from him. To prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled, Macbeth has Banquo murdered. Banquo's son Fleance, however, manages to escape.

Macduff , the Thane of Fife , is Macbeth's strongest adversary. He disapproves of his seizure of power and doubts his claim that Duncan was murdered by his own sons. When he fled to England to forge an alliance against the tyrant, Macbeth had his family murdered.

The Thanes Lennox, Rosse, Menteith, Angus and Caithness initially take a benevolent or at least neutral stance towards the new king. Only when Macbeth's madness increases more and more and demands more and more victims do they switch one by one to the other side.

Hecate and the three witches

Macbeth, Banquo and the Witches, illustration from the Holinshed Chronicles

The three witches , who are referred to in English editions as The Weird Sisters or in German translations as the "weird sisters" or sometimes also as the "Sisters of Fate", at the beginning plan to meet Macbeth and prophesy that he would be King of Scotland and Banquo the progenitor of a royal family. After his seizure of power, Macbeth visits the witches again to have his future fate prophesied, and believes he is safe thanks to the witches' ambiguous prophecies.

In the first print version of the folio edition from 1623 , Hecate , goddess of witchcraft, encourages the sisters in their approach and gives them additional impetus. Together with the witches, she embodies the supernatural and unnatural sides of fate.

In the current Shakespeare studies and textual criticism it is controversial to what extent the role and actually go back Hecate attributed to her passages in the first folio edition of Shakespeare or subsequent, non-authoritative additions to the original work version by other authors such as Middleton pose .

Like Lady Macbeth, who calls on the spirits to overcome their gender and transform the nurturing motherly love into ruthless violence, the witches symbolize on the one hand a demonized or diabolical femininity that acts as a catalyst for regicide and the other crimes and misdeeds of the protagonist, at the same time, however, poses a deadly threat or danger to the patriarchal order or rule.

On the other hand, the witches, who are only called that in the stage directions and otherwise appear as “Weird Sisters”, occupy a space in the play in which existing opposing orders become unstable. “Weird”, or in the original version “weyward”, does not only mean scary, supernatural or fateful, but also headstrong, stubborn or unpredictable.

Thus the witches have no individual form or identity; even their gender is unclear, as they have feminine features but also wear beards. Likewise, their sudden appearance and disappearance, or Macbeth's and Banquo's doubts as to whether they are not just an illusion, raise questions about their true nature or position. Macbeth's failure lies precisely in the fact that he does not recognize that in their ambiguous language the comprehensible temporal order of the past, present and future is being dissolved. He only takes their prophecies literally. The witches are linked to the world of Scottish royalty without being subject to its structures of rule; However, it remains unclear to what extent they actually affect the events and want or can determine them. After Act IV, Scene 1, they no longer appear and are not banned or "exorcised" by Malcolm or Macduff.

action

Act I.

In the first act , the central characters as well as the setting and theme are presented ( exposure ): Macbeth is prophesied of his ascent to king by the three witches.

The drama begins with the ghostly appearance of three witches who, in the midst of a thunderstorm, discuss when and where they want to meet again. At the same time, the last battle of Duncan's royal troops against the Norwegian King Sweno , who is supported by the rebel Macdonwald, takes place near Forres . In the encampment near the battlefield, King Duncan is informed that Macdonwald had been defeated by Macbeth and that the Thane of Cawdor had also supported the Norwegians. After the Scots' victory, Duncan orders that the office and dignity of the treacherous Thane of Cawdor be transferred to Macbeth.

Together with Banquo, Macbeth meets the witches on his way back from the battle in a heath. These address him as Thane of Cawdor and prophesy that he will soon be king; On the other hand, they announce to his companion Banquo that he will one day be the ancestor of kings. Macbeth, ignorant of recent military events, is more confused than convinced by this prophecy. Shortly afterwards, however, when Rosse informs him of the king's decision, his appointment as Thane of Cawdor, and the first part of the prophecy is quickly fulfilled, he ponders and secretly makes friends with the thought of the old king To relieve Duncan.

Informed by her husband of the strange encounter with the witches, the ambitious Lady Macbeth urges her husband to act: Since she ruled out the possibility that her husband could ascend the throne naturally, she without further ado contemplates the murder of King Duncan. Macbeth at first shrinks from doing so, but in order not to appear as a coward in front of his wife and to prove his manliness, which she has questioned, finally gives in and agrees to kill Duncan during his imminent visit to Macbeth's castle in Inverness . The couple begin to prepare for their crime, while Duncan and his sons and the Thanes and their entourage arrive as guests in Inverness.

Act II

The second act describes the rising storyline : Macbeth murders Duncan and makes himself the new king. Up to this point, however, he is not only acting on his own initiative, but is incited to act by his wife, who dispels his concerns.

When Banquo and his son Fleance want to go to their room to sleep, they come across Macbeth in the pitch-dark courtyard. Banquo admits that the witches' prophecies haunted him in dreams. Macbeth, on the other hand, claims not to think about it, but agrees to revisit the matter with Banquo at a later date. After Banquo and Fleance say goodbye, a floating, blood-stained dagger suddenly appears before Macbeth's eyes . He interprets this as a supernatural sign and an invitation to action and does it when Lady Macbeth rings a bell that has been agreed as a signal.

When Lady Macbeth, who previously numbed the king's guards with a sleeping pill, appears in the courtyard to check on her husband, she finds Macbeth completely disturbed. To the horror of his wife, he still carries the murder weapons with him instead of handing them to the sleeping guards as agreed. Since he strictly refuses to enter the chamber with the blood-covered corpse of the king a second time in order to bring the daggers there, Lady Macbeth takes on the matter herself. After their return, suddenly a violent throbbing can be heard from the castle gate. The two quickly disappear to clean their hands from the blood and put on their night robes.

In the meantime, the castle gatekeeper, who was in a very bad mood at this early hour of the morning, has woken up and opens the gate - not without letting Macduff and Lennox who are waiting outside knock many times in vain - to finally let them in. When Macbeth, supposedly awakened by the noise, appears at the gate, Macduff asks about Duncan's condition, whereupon Macbeth leads him to the king's chamber. Macduff discovers the murder, raises the alarm and causes the entire court society to be extremely excited. In the general confusion, Macbeth slays Duncan's two valets as the alleged murderers. While Macduff becomes suspicious of this act, the king's sons, Donalbain and Malcolm, decide to flee to Ireland and England, respectively , because they are afraid of being murdered and also suspected of having killed their father.

Act III

The turning point of the plot only follows in the 3rd act , when Macbeth has the opportunity to rethink his actions and decides not to back down. He orders the murder of his friend Banquo. But the mounting opposition to the usurper heralds Macbeth's doom.

After Duncan's death and the flight of his sons, Macbeth is crowned king as third in line to the throne . But he fears for his position, on the one hand because Banquo knows about the witches, and on the other hand because their prophecy says that Macbeth will not be the progenitor of the royal line. He sends murderers to have Banquo and his son Fleance murdered. They manage to kill Banquo, but Fleance escapes. When Macbeth finds out, he reacts very indignantly, as he now has to continue to fear for his reign.

That same evening, Macbeth gives a banquet to celebrate his coronation. When Banquo's ghost appears and takes a seat in Macbeth's chair, the king is frightened and confused. But since only he himself can perceive Banquo, the society is extremely alarmed by the strange behavior of the king, who shrinks back from an empty chair. Lady Macbeth tries to save the situation and gloss over her husband's tell-tale exclamations by initially excusing his hallucinations as a temporary and harmless family disease. But when the incident repeats itself, she breaks off the celebration and sends the guests home.

In the face of these events, Macbeth decides to visit the three witches a second time to find out about his future.

Act IV

The 4th act delays the inevitable dissolution, as Macbeth receives a glimmer of hope through the second prophecy that he can still escape doom.

In a cave, the witches brew a potion as - in the words of the second witch " Something wicked this way comes " ( Something evil comes your way ) - Macbeth knocking on the door, in enters and asks the old women, him his further fate to prophesy. The witches then conjure up three apparitions: The first, an armed head , instructs him to beware of Macduff. The second, a bloody child , tells him that no one born of a woman can ever harm him. The third vision, a crowned child with a tree in hand , promises Macbeth that he has nothing to fear as long as the forest of Birnam does not come to Dunsinane . The king is delighted with these new prophecies, but urges the witches to tell him whether Banquo's descendants will really be kings. The three sisters then confront Macbeth with further apparitions: eight figures, dressed like kings and apparently descendants of Banquo, and finally Banquo himself as the last in the series. With this vision, the witches disappear, leaving Macbeth alone.

Lennox appears and reports to the King that Macduff has fled to England to lead a rebellious army with Malcolm against Macbeth. In revenge, he orders Macduff's wife and children to be murdered. Macduff, who forges an alliance against Macbeth with Malcolm and King Edward in England , falls into deep despair when he learns of the crime. Together with Malcolm and Siward , the Earl of Northumberland and English military leaders, Macduff goes to war against Macbeth.

Act V

The 5th act resolves the central conflict of the piece.

At Dunsinane Castle, Macbeth is turning more and more into a bitter tyrant, while his wife, plagued by a guilty conscience about her guilt for Duncan's death, suffers from nightmares and begins to walk and fantasize in her sleep until she finally loses her mind and that Life takes. This means that all of the king's former confidants and friends have either fled or died.

The approaching troops hide behind camouflaging branches and twigs from the forest of Birnam in order to be able to advance unnoticed to Dunsinane. When Macbeth sees the "walking forest", he realizes that this part of the prophecy will come true.

At first, however, no one is able to kill the king. Finally, Macduff Macbeth faces a duel. In response to the tyrant's scornful remark that no person born to a woman is capable of killing him, Macduff replies that he was not born of his mother, but that he was cut out of her belly by caesarean section ahead of time . Macbeth nevertheless refuses to surrender and is killed in a duel by Macduff. Then Duncan's son Malcolm is proclaimed the new King of Scotland.

Text and dating

Facsimile of the first edition of Macbeth in the first folio

The exact time of the creation and publication of the piece is unknown. In contrast to the majority of Shakespeare's dramas, however, the period of origin can be clearly delimited based on clear evidence. The piece can only have been created after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 and the accession of the Scottish King Jacob I to the throne . The piece is about Scottish history; Banquo as one of the main characters is one of the unhistorical ancestors of Jacob I. In contrast to the works of Shakespeare that were created during the reign of Elizabeth I, in which mostly an unfavorable image of the Scots is portrayed as hereditary enemies of England, Shakespeare portrays the country and its people positively In addition, the latest possible date of creation, the so-called terminus ante quem , is historically documented as a further limit date: The work must have been created before 1611, as a detailed report by the contemporary astrologer Dr. Simon Forman about a performance of Macbeth at the Globe Theater .

In general, there is a consensus in current Shakespeare research that the drama should be set to the year 1606. This is in line with today's notion of Shakespeare's tragedies as following a line of development in which Macbeth (1606) between King Lear (1605/06) and Antony and Cleopatra (before 1608). However, this is based only on indications that are not clear, especially the clear allusion in the monologue of the drunken porter to a high treason trial from 1606. However, this allusion cannot be identified with absolute certainty, as the name of the accused Jesuit Henry Garnet , who was involved in the powder conspiracy , is not explicitly mentioned in Shakespeare, and the trial may have been a popular topic of conversation for a long time.

Only the text in the folio from 1623, the first complete edition of Shakespeare's plays, has survived as an early print version. The manuscript that served as the master copy must have been of relatively good quality, as only a relatively small number of recognizable errors or passages that make no sense can be found. It is generally assumed that it was a prompt book for a theater performance. In addition to the brevity of the text, this assumption is based only on the fact that some stage instructions are formulated as information to the director.

However, there are two problems: Numerous lines are incorrectly separated, so that there are irregularities in the meter. Most editors today attribute this to errors in setting the text. There are also inconsistencies between scenes III.V and IV.I, which suggests that later changes were made. In III.VI Macbeth learns of Macduff's escape; a scene later he is amazed. It is also mostly assumed that the Hecate scenes (III.V and IV.I) were only added later. Hecates' meter, the iambus , does not correspond to the trochee of the other witches; In addition, the stage directions are not clear and only the first lines of the two songs are printed, the full text of which can be found in the burlesque piece The Witch (approx. 1613) by Thomas Middleton. Therefore, today's Shakespeare researchers and text editors generally assume that the songs or the entire scenes most likely originate from Middleton and were only later added to the original text of Shakespeare.

With about 2,350 verses, Macbeth is by far Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. For this reason, numerous previous editors considered the folio text of the drama to be an incomplete version of the play, possibly abbreviated for performance purposes, and speculated about missing scenes such as additional planning discussions between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In the meantime, Shakespeare research has largely abandoned the hypothesis of an only abbreviated transmission of the text in the folio edition, since the compact layout of the entire work and the coherence of the plot make a justification for extensive text losses or deletions appear unconvincing or valid.

On the other hand, there is currently general consensus that the sudden appearance of the chief witch Hecate in III.V and IV.I could not have been part of the original version. On the other hand, the question of whether these additions or additions were made without authorization by a third party or with Shakespeare's consent, or even by Shakespeare himself, is controversial and can hardly be decided with certainty.

Literary templates and cultural references

As in earlier plays, Shakespeare refers to the Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland , published in 1587 , in which Raphael Holinshed tells the story of the historical Macbeth. In Macbeth , Shakespeare does not limit himself to Holinshed's report, but makes structural changes in various places. In Holinshed's chronicles, Duncan is portrayed as a weak king who, through excessive indulgence, destabilizes the empire. In his submission, Macbeth was a strict but just ruler for over ten years, who according to old Scottish law, as it is said, had a legitimate claim to the crown before he developed into a tyrant. Shakespeare also deviates from Holinshed's portrayal with regard to the character of Banqo. He is murdered by Macbeth at Holinshed, but until then he has not only acted as Macbeth's accomplice in regicide. Presumably he is exonerated by Shakespeare in his play because he was considered the ancestor of the Stuarts and thus of King James I by the contemporary audience. Another change concerns the figure of Lady Macbeth, who appears in the source solely as the protagonist's wife without an essential role or function.

The story found at Holinshed is taken from Shakespeare as a framework, but the plot is streamlined. While in Holinshed's portrayal the plot extends over a lifetime, Shakespeare condenses the plot moments into a swift sequence of cause and effect. In order to emphasize the ambiguities and the difficulties of recognizing good and bad, which are a central theme of the drama, more dramatically, Shakespeare makes the basic positions clearer: With Holinshed, Macbeth and Banquo, as Scottish military leaders, both act partly reprehensible in the course of their political careers Well. In Shakespeare's play, on the other hand, Banquo remains steadfast in the realm of good until his assassination, whereas Macbeth, who is also initially one of the good guys, changes to the realm of evil without reservation after succumbing to the temptation to regicide.

Shakespeare turns Lady Macbeth, who is only mentioned in one sentence in Holinshed, into a partner who acts as a driving force as well as a figure in contrast to the protagonist. He does find suggestions for this in another section of the Chronicles of Holinshed, which is not directly connected with the account of Macbeth; Nevertheless, Lady Macbeth is, to a far greater extent than the other characters in the play, a fictional construction serving to dramatize.

In this way, the foundation of Holinshed's story, which is already oriented towards the exemplary but has no special expressive potential, becomes a drama in Shakespeare that uses a historical case to address the problem of evil on the individual level of meaning as individual entanglement in guilt and Atonement, on the socio-political level as overthrow and restoration as well as on the metaphysical level as a confrontation between heavenly and infernal forces or as a struggle between nature and unnatural model and staged dramaturgically.

Some editors like Kenneth Muir, the editor of the Arden Shakespeare , assume that Shakespeare next to Holinshed's Chronicles , the magazine published in 1582 in Latin Rerum Historia Scoticarum of George Buchanan as inspiration for his design of Macbeth could have used; the majority of today's Shakespeare researchers or editors, however, consider this assumption to be questionable or not particularly plausible.

As a source for the witch scenes, Shakespeare could possibly have used The Discovery of Witchcraft (1584) by Reginald Scott or James' Daemonology (1597), if he did not resort to common knowledge at the time. Some editors also cite a short Latin play, Tres Sybyllae , by Mathew Gwinne (also Gwinn) as a possible source for the encounter between the witches and Macbeth , which was performed on the occasion of a visit by James I to Oxford in 1605. However, there is no evidence that Shakespeare actually saw this performance.

In addition, the works of the Roman playwright Seneca may have inspired Shakespeare's work as well. The tragedies of Seneca, popular at the time, often deal with treason, murder and the supernatural, like Macbeth . Lady Macbeth , for example, can be compared to Seneca's Klytaimnestra with all of her revenge motifs from his tragedy Agamemno .

Jacob I may also have had an indirect influence on the design of the drama: As a court poet, Shakespeare probably wanted to please his royal patron. The positive portrayal of Duncan, the rightful king, the portrayal of Macbeth as a cowardly murderer and tyrant as well as the mention of Jacob's alleged ancestor Banquo are probably - although historically incorrect - due to this fact. In the fourth act, when, in a prophetic vision before the eyes of the terrified Macbeth, the series of descendants who fathered his sacrifice appear, King Jacob himself appears as the last and eighth. In addition, the poet takes up the motif of the miraculous king.

It is also possible that contemporary events, such as the Gunpowder Plot , could have influenced Shakespeare in his work on Macbeth .

In his literary biography of the Scottish Queen Maria Stuart , Stefan Zweig also sees a “strange analogy” to Shakespeare's drama Macbeth , which from his point of view is more than random, and throws it on the basis of his psychological-philosophical studies of the dramatic events in the life of Maria Stuart speculatively asks whether Shakespeare possibly served real events around the historical figures Maria Stuart, Lord Bothwell and Lord Darnley as inspiration for important plot elements of the characters Lady Macbeth, Macbeth and King Duncan.

interpretation

Shakespeare's story allows for several different interpretations: from the parable about people's greed for power to the question of the predestination of fate to sin and guilt as an eternal human theme. A central theme of the drama is the Divine Right , an idea in which the king, as a just ruler by God's grace, is at the center of the state. Jacob I described this idea in his work Basilikon Doron . Macbeth violates this order by his violent seizure of power, which not only results in chaos and reign of terror in Scotland, but ultimately also Macbeth's violent death.

According to Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare illustrates and criticizes this violation of the natural order by depriving Macbeth of his heroism and not only depicting it as extremely bloodthirsty with the help of suitable metaphors, but also deliberately making it laughable. Thus, Macbeth's clothing repeatedly appears either too big or too small for its wearer, just as his ambition is too big and his character too small for his new illegitimate role as king. The game begins with this motif right at the beginning of the piece: When Macbeth feels “ dressed in borrowed clothes ” after his new title, prophesied by the witches, is confirmed as Thane von Cawdor von Rosse ( I, 3, lines 108–109), Banquo comments on this with the words: “The new dignity narrows him / How strange a garment fits into the body even through habit /” (“ New honors come upon him, / Like our garments, cleave not to their mold, / But with the aid of use ", I, 3, lines 145-146).

Towards the end of the tragedy, when the tyrant tries to keep Birnam forest at bay, Caithness describes him as a man who tries in vain to hold too large a garment together with a too small belt: “He can no longer / The wildly indignant state buckle / In the belt of order ”(“ he cannot buckle his distemper'd cause / Within the belt of rule ”, V, 2, lines 14-15). And Angus sums up in another negative nimism what everyone has been thinking since Macbeth seized power: "Now he feels that dignity / Too wide and loose, like the giant's skirt / Hangs around the thief's dwarf" (" Now does he feel his title / Hange loose about him, like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief ", V, 2, lines 18-20).

After Malcolm has ascended the throne as the rightful king, divine order is deemed to have been restored. However, it is questionable whether it will last: not only the Thanes, who had previously sworn allegiance to Macbeth, pose a possible threat to the young king, but also his brother Donalbain, who is still in exile .

The sleepwalking Lady Macbeth , painting by Johann Heinrich Füssli

Reception history and work criticism

Compared to Shakespeare's other Great Tragedies, especially Hamlet and Lear , the peculiarity of Macbeth is less based on the fascination that emanates from the title character, but is more determined by the work's characteristic features such as its particular accessibility and comprehensibility. The one-strand, straightforward plot is relatively easy to follow; Likewise, the main characters, despite their complexity, are not fundamentally puzzling or incomprehensible. The stage world in which the play takes place, with its feudal rulers, thanes and weird sisters, is far removed from the real everyday world, but shows characters who are no more foreign than the kings or witch figures in fairy tales. The problems addressed in the play, such as the temptation to power, political murder or the question of how crime can be combated, are determined by timeliness and are mostly more present for the majority of today's recipients than the subject of an empire division or fratricide or an order to blood revenge.

Although Macbeth is by no means a simple piece, it requires comparatively little communication or understanding and, in addition to its brevity, has long been used as a model for dealing with Shakespeare's drama in schools and universities. At present, Macbeth is the most frequent Shakespeare play on the curriculum, not only in England and America, but also in German-speaking countries.

Despite different interpretations in detail, Macbeth has never experienced completely controversial interpretations in any epoch of its reception history. In this respect, the work can be seen as a model for the reception of Shakespeare's dramas. In every age there are individual ways of looking at things according to the zeitgeist; In subsequent epochs, these interpretive approaches are either ignored or adopted and expanded, so that the interpretation of the work has become more and more complex and multifaceted in the course of its reception history.

Immediately after the theater reopened in 1660, Macbeth was performed again and became one of the classics in the stage repertoire. At the time, the play's popularity was primarily due to its high entertainment value for contemporary audiences: Samuel Pepys , one of the most important chroniclers of the restoration era and an author of theater life at the time, praised the work in his diary as “ a most excellent play for variety; a most excellent play in all respects, but especially in divertisement, though it be a deep tragedy. »

Although Pepys' judgment may be based to a certain extent on the arrangement of the play by William Davenant , it nevertheless points to the dramaturgical level that is fundamental for the effect of the play: Macbeth is based on one, although this is not necessarily apparent at first glance long, carefully planned sequence of entertainment and acting scenes. In addition to the chain of variations between sumptuous court scenes characteristic of the tragedies, the piece not only offers the four witch scenes, which do not have a deeper meaning in all passages, but also an abundance of dance interludes, spoken chants, witch kitchens, magical phenomena or the phantasmagoric “show of eight kings ". In addition, murders, killings and executions are reported throughout the play. At the beginning the double battle is presented indirectly, at the end a campaign in nine parts with two sword fights is staged. There is also a ghost scene, a drunk scene with jokes about drinking and fornication as well as a modification of the popular insane motif and the sleepwalking scene of Lady Macbeth.

In literary criticism, which began in the 18th century, the characters of the play were the focus of attention until the 20th century, especially the title figure and Lady Macbeth. At first the two were seen simply as heroic villains and unscrupulous, hideous villains, then the view of their characters became increasingly complex and complex. They became closer and closer to the recipient's ego, be he reader or spectator, and finally became figures of everyone: people who, like each of us, give in to temptation and, spurred on by their own ambition and external forces, surrender to evil: Lady Macbeth quickly and without hesitation, Macbeth hesitant and reflecting on the consequences. You then have to learn that regicide does not represent the end of the crime, as it is hopefully formulated in the play itself, but rather it is at the beginning of an inexorable chain of crimes and self-destruction.

The development of the acting style from the late 18th century onwards contributed to further psychologization; the declamatory characters in the drama became complex personalities.

Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth, painting by Robert Smirke , approx. 1790–1810

One of the most effective representations in the history of Macbeth's stage was that of Lady Macbeth by Sarah Siddons . Her empathetic conception of the figure of Lady Macbeth set the style for a generation of other actresses.

The interpretation of the characters was supplemented by new interpretations in the 20th century. Around 1930 a discussion and analysis of the thematic aspects of the piece began, which expanded the old, simplistic labeling of the work as drama of ambition with a more differentiated, sometimes speculative interpretation of the key scenes: Aspects such as the right order of nature came to the fore and their dangers, the relationship between fateful fortune and free Willem, topics such as desire and delusions or the power of evil and the problematic resistance of the good, as well as the thematization of Christian and non-Christian ideas in the literary examination of the work.

The concentration of Macbeth's work analysis on the language used now also turned out to be fruitful. The condensed, allusive language gives the viewer an insight into Macbeth's thoughts and feelings.

The ambivalence of the often cited paradoxical or antithetical chiasm " Fair is foul, and foul is fair " (Ii, 11; German in the translation by Schiller: "Ugly should be beautiful, beautiful ugly!") Corresponds to an abundance of ambiguities in the dialogues. The atmosphere of the night, in which numerous scenes take place both literally and figuratively, is only created verbally, since the Elizabethan stage was played in daylight.

The unbildliche, real language with a rich imagery interwoven. In the menagerie of symbolic evil animals, such as the toad and the witch's cat, the snake under the flower, the wild horses or the ominous owl, Shakespeare draws partly on metaphorical, partly on real beings.

The history of reception and interpretation in Macbeth is less determined by contradiction and controversy than by continuation and accumulation. But there are tendencies, one of which is the increased consideration and changed evaluation of the socio-political dimension of the work. Like all Shakespeare tragedies, Macbeth deals on the one hand with dynasties and the individuals who founded them, on the other hand with political bodies and organs in which each character in the drama has a meaning as a member and functional element. Whereas in the early history of the interpretation of the work Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were primarily seen as individuals and an intimate couple, in the more recent discussion they are seen more as two political actors.

The interpretation of the socio-political order or norm on which the work is based has also changed. The vast majority of today's interpreters and critics no longer assume that Macbeth is based on the idea of ​​a pre-established order that existed before the regicide by the protagonist and is finally restored by the transfer of the crown to Malcolm. Rather, the order is seen as unstable or fragile from the start and only temporarily or partially restored in the end.

With the turn of academic criticism towards the theatrical aspects of Shakespeare's dramas in the last few decades, dramaturgical questions are increasingly being asked. More recent interpretations deal primarily with the structure and dramatic function of individual scenes and their assembly into series of scenes, which are linked by an arc of tension and each strive towards a goal, initially to the night and the regicide, then to the banquet and finally to the final battle the fulfillment of the witches' prophecies.

Performance history

Macbeth was apparently quite a popular play with theater audiences from the start; the text was reprinted several times as early as the 17th century on the basis of the folio edition from 1623, partly with additional material or in a version adapted for the stage. The work has been one of Shakespeare's most frequently performed plays since 1660.

The first written mention of a performance of Macbeth is found in Simon Forman , who reports a performance on April 20, 1611 at the Globe Theater .

“On Saturday, April 20, the Globe first showed how Macbeth and Banqo, two Scottish princes, rode through a forest and three fairies or nymphs stood before them, who greeted Macbeth and said to him, 'Hail, Macbeth, because thou shalt be king, but beg no kings'. […] And Macbeth devised a plan to murder Duncan, and through the persuasion of his wife he murdered the king in his own castle, where he was a guest, and many amazing things were seen that night. "

- Simon Forman
Macbeth in the 1935 production of Orson Welles with the Negro Unit Ensemble of the Federal Theater Project
Charles Kean as Macbeth, 1858

In the course of the 17th century, Macbeth gained great popularity and was staged by William Davenant in 1667 in an opulent version that remained authoritative until the middle of the next century. In this production, the witch scenes were transformed by Davenant into comical interludes with dancing and singing; In subsequent performances, too, the farcical was accentuated for a long time, in that the witches continued to be played by men when female actresses were already allowed on English stages.

It was only when actresses took over the roles of witches that these characters were later sexualized and demonized. In the 18th century, the political aspects of the drama took a back seat in favor of a concentration on the psychology of the protagonists. In the second half of the 18th century, David Garrick , Charles Macklin and John Philip Kemble , among others, worked on the material , who stood out for his particularly unconventional interpretation and is considered to be the one who embodied Macbeth in the kilt for the first time , although this also distinguished Macklin.

With Hannah Pritchard as Lady Macbeth, the role of Lady Macbeth in particular was reinforced in Garrick's production, which in this respect was largely taken over by Kemble; As with Garrick, the murders were ultimately presented as her work in the portrayal by Sarah Siddons at Kemble. In contrast, Macbeth, whose behavior was largely portrayed as determined by her, embodied the noble and sensitive tragedy hero of Romanticism in this performance practice . To this end, the attack on the Macduff family and the death of Siwards were canceled; their murder was only given as a brief account, whereas Macbeth's appearance in the dying scene was embellished with a text full of sentimental piety. At the same time, the spectacle dominated Kemble's performance again: despite a thoroughly serious treatment of the role of witches, by 1794 at the latest he had a choir of over 50 singing and dancing comic witches. The gatekeeper scene, on the other hand, was left out in his productions.

William Charles Macready as Macbeth, drawing by JJ Weber, October 1843

In the 19th century, different interpretations of the work came on the stage. Samuel Phelps staged the work as a melodrama ; Henry Irving played the title character as a cowardly and bloodthirsty murderer and Ellen Terry portrayed Lady Macbeth as a self-sacrificing, loving wife. William Charles Macready tried to balance the earlier idea of ​​a heroic protagonist and the younger conception of a weak, but to create criminal character; In her interpretation of Lady Macbeth, Helen Faucit emphasized her feminine traits. In some performances at the end of the century, under the influence of recent developments in psychology, Macbeth was also presented as a " neurasthenic ". Charles Kean was particularly successful in the 19th century with a staging that was true to history and the work.

In the 20th century the complexity of the figure of Macbeth was emphasized; likewise, the shift away from portraying Lady Macbeth as a ruthless "monster" continued. Since the end of the 19th century it was also no longer customary to play the Hecate scenes. At the beginning of the 20th century, the drama was staged in several expressionist interpretations, for example in the productions by Arthur Hopkins in New York in 1921, by Leopold Jessner in Berlin in 1922 or as a study on the war under the direction of HK Ayliff in London in 1928 brought.

Macbeth was first performed in modern costume in 1928 . Orson Welles moved the action to post-colonial Haiti in 1935 , cast all roles with black actors and caused a sensation with what was then known as Voodoo -Macbeth.

During the Nazi era , Macbeth was very popular on German stages; In post-war German productions, the work was rather staged as a study of the metaphysical dimensions of the horror of the past, in order to avoid too clear political parallels between Macbeth and Adolf Hitler . English post-war performances, on the other hand, emphasized Macbeth's psychology, for example in the productions by Glenn Byam Shaw in 1955 and Trevor Nunn for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1976. Adrian Noble, on the other hand , interpreted Macbeth in his 1986 RSC production as the tragedy of the destruction of a marriage as a result of the childlessness of the Protagonist and his wife. Heiner Müller, in turn, presented Scotland in his radical version of Macbeth after Shakespeare in 1972 as a "slaughterhouse"; The uncontrollable, omnipresent violence was attributed to a failed social order.

Over the course of the 20th century, the character of Macbeth was created by such famous actors as Ralph Richardson (1952), Laurence Olivier (1937 and 1955), Eric Porter (1962), Paul Scofield (1967), Sir Patrick Stewart (2010), Nicol Williamson (1947), Sir Ian McKellen (1976 ) portrayed in a production by Trevor Nunn or Peter O'Toole (1980). Female stars like Judith Anderson (1937), Helen Mirren (1974), Judi Dench (1976) and Corinna Harfouch (1983 under the direction of Heiner Müller at the Berliner Volksbühne ) played the role of Lady Macbeth. Gert Voss and Kirsten Dene were the main actors in Claus Peymann's production at the Vienna Burgtheater in 1992 .

Adaptations

Stage versions

One of the more recent adaptations of Shakespeare's work for the theater is Eugène Ionesco's play Macbett , published in 1972 , which as an absurd theater shows a completely disorderly universe.

The American dramaturge Charles Marowitz presented the protagonist as the helpless victim of a diabolical conspiracy pact between the witches and Lady Macbeth in his theatrical collage A Macbeth: freely adapted from Shakespeare's tragedy a year earlier in 1971 .

In contrast, Linda Mussmann drew the audience's attention to the perspective of Lady Macbeth in her multimedia fragments MACBETH in 1990 with an attempt to deconstruct and reconstruct the figure.

Film adaptations

Since the first film adaptation of the play in 1908 by the American director James Stuart Blackton , there have been numerous cinema and television versions in the 20th century, often as a stage adaptation of various performances, in particular by the Royal Shakespeare Company, such as the television adaptation of the famous RSC production of Trevor Nunn from the Year 1979.

In addition to the influential, expressively staged film Macbeth - Der Königsmörder (1948) by Orson Welles, the more political film interpretations The Castle in the Spider's Web Forest (original title Kumonosu-jō , literally "Castle Spider Web", are independent and noteworthy film adaptations in Shakespeare research . English title Throne of Blood ) by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa from 1957 and the American-British film drama Macbeth by French-Polish director Roman Polanski with Jon Finch and Francesca Annis .

Kurosawa and Polanski both show an interpretation of the Shakespeare material that disavows any belief in positive rule beyond violence, injustice or tyranny. Polanski comes closer to Shakespeare's original text, but adds a final scene showing Malcolm's brother Donalbain visiting the witches' place to suggest that the misfortune of the misinterpreted prophecies will continue. Kurosawa does not use the original Shakespeare text and moves the plot to historical Japan, but seeks to absorb Shakespeare's subtle imagery and translate it visually.

A more recent film adaptation was an opulent British film adaptation of Macbeth by the Australian director Justin Kurzel with Michael Fassbender (Macbeth) and Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth. Kurzel tries to stage the original material as a treatise on human darkness and bloodthirstiness.

Settings

Verdi: Macbeth - first act, second image - illustration for the 1865 performance at the Théâtre-Lyrique in Paris

Giuseppe Verdi composed the most famous musical adaptation of Shakespeare's original . His opera Macbeth , premiered in Florence in 1847 with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and Andrea Maffei , was published in Paris in 1865 in a revised version with a French libretto. The Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch and the librettist Edmond Flegein created the lyrical drama of the same name , also premiered in Paris in 1910.

Hippolyte Chelard: Macbeth , title page of the piano reduction, Munich 1828

An opera by the French composer Hippolyte Chelard in three acts (libretto by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle ), which is very loosely based on Shakespeare's Macbeth , was premiered under the same title in June 1827 at the Paris Opera . A year later in June 1828 a revised four-act version in the German translation by Caesar Max Heigel was played in Munich and in January 1840 in Dreden; a German-language version in five acts was performed in Weimar in October 1860.

Richard Strauss wrote his first tone poem Macbeth (op. 23, TrV 163) from 1886–1888 , which is available in three different versions and was performed for the first time in Weimar in 1890 and in the third revised version in Berlin in 1891.

The American jazz musician Duke Ellington wrote the jazz suite Such Sweet Thunder , which was recorded in the recording studio in 1956/57 and performed for the first time publicly on April 28, 1957 in a concert in New York's "Town Hall".

The opera Macbeth by Salvatore Sciarrino , based on Shakespeare's tragedy, was premiered on June 6, 2002 in the Schlosstheater Schwetzingen and voted "World Premiere of the Year" in the critics' survey of the Opernwelt magazine .

Pascal Dusapin's opera Macbeth Underworld premiered on September 20, 2019 at the Brussels Opera House La Monnaie / De Munt .

Novel version

The writer Jo Nesbø wrote a novel in which the plot is relocated to modern times in 1972 and to Fife , Scotland . The people are mainly found with the local police and in the criminal milieu.

Text output

English
  • AR Braunmuller (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, revised edition 2008, reissue 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-68098-1 .
  • Nicholas Brooke (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Oxford University Press 1990. ISBN 978-0-19-953583-5 .
  • Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason (Eds.): William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Bloomsbury Academic, 3rd edition London 2015, ISBN 978-1-904271-41-3 .
English German
  • Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Macbeth. Bilingual edition. (Arden 1984) German paperback publisher. 8th edition, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-423-12484-3 .

literature

Didactic materials

  • Fritz W. Schulze: Shakespeare: Macbeth. Poetry and Reality. Ullstein, Berlin 1964.
  • Wolfgang Rudorff: William Shakespeare, Macbeth: Basics and thoughts for understanding the drama. Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1977. ISBN 3-425-06385-5 .
  • Iris Bünsch and Michael Hanke: William Shakespeare, Macbeth . Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 2004. ISBN 3-15-016043-X .
  • Rex Gibson (Ed.): Cambridge School Shakespeare: Macbeth. University Press, Cambridge 2005; in German distribution by Ernst Klett Verlag. ISBN 3-12-576237-5 .
  • Christoph Wurm: A Scottish Tarquin - the Roman roots of Shakespeare's Macbeth . In: Forum Classicum 3/2010, pp. 227-231.
  • Maria-Felicitas Herforth: Text analysis and interpretation of William Shakespeare Macbeth: all the information you need for the Abitur, Matura, exam and presentation plus Abitur exercises with possible solutions. (Vol. 117), C. Bange Verlag , Hollfeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-8044-1973-5 .

Web links

Commons : Macbeth  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Macbeth  Quotes
Wikisource: The Tragedy of Macbeth  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In a note from Simon Forman he writes that he saw the work on Thursday April 20, 1610; this year, however, the corresponding day was a Saturday. Forman probably mixed up the year. See Brooke, Nicholas, (Ed.) The Tragedy of Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008. p. 234.
  2. ↑ See Ulrich Suerbaum: Shakespeare's Dramas. UTB, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8252-1907-0 , pp. 129-134.
  3. ↑ See Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (ed.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5 . P. 288, Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor : William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987, ISBN 0-393-31667-X , p. 543, Jonathan Bate, Eric Rasmussen (Eds.): The Tragedy of Macbeth. In: William Shakespeare: Complete Works. The RSC Shakespeare. MacMillan, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-230-20095-1 , p. 1862, or detailed William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Nicholas Brooke. OUP 1990. ISBN 978-0-19-953583-5 , Introduction , pp. 51-55 and 57ff. and 64ff. Also in detail in Appendix 1, Part Two: The Folio Text and its Integrity. In: William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason. Bloomsbury Academic, 3rd Edition 2015, London et al., Pp. 321-336. See also Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 378, Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbuch. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , pp. 554f. and William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-68098-1 , Introduction , p. 271 ff. For the meaning of the "Weird Sisters" or "Weyard Sisters" cf. in the text edition of the Oxford Worlds Classics edited by Nicholas Brooke, the Introduction , pp. 2ff. and William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-68098-1 , Introduction , p. 29ff. In German, in addition to the translation as “uncanny sisters”, the term “fateful sisters” is also used, especially in older texts, see for example Louis Lewes: Shakespeares Frauengestalten . Salzwasser-Verlag GmbH, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-8460-9822-6 , p. 292 (first edition 1893).
  4. ↑ See Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , pp. 558f. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Nicholas Brooke. OUP 1990, Introduction p. 2ff. See also Stephan Orgel: Macbeth and the Antic Round (1999). In: Catherine MS Alexander and Terence Hawkes (Eds.): The Cambridge Library Volume II: Criticism. CUP 2003, pp. 336-345, here p. 339.
  5. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 374 and Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbuch. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, pp. 554f. and Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor : William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987, p. 287 and Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (Ed.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, p. 543. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Nicholas Brooke. OUP 1990, pp. 59 and 234ff. and Jonathan Bate, Eric Rasmussen (Eds.): The Tragedy of Macbeth. In: William Shakespeare: Complete Works. The RSC Shakespeare. MacMillan, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-230-20095-1 , pp. 1859-1862.
  6. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, p. 377f. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Nicholas Brooke. OUP 1990, p. 49ff. and Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (Eds.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, p. 543.
  7. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , pp. 554 f. and Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 377 f. See also Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (ed.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5 . P. 288, Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor : William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987, ISBN 0-393-31667-X , p. 543 and William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Nicholas Brooke. OUP 1990. ISBN 978-0-19-953583-5 , Introduction , p. 49ff. and Appendix 1, Part Two: The Folio Text and its Integrity. In: William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason. Bloomsbury Academic, 3rd Edition 2015, London et al., Pp. 321-336.
  8. ↑ As an additional indication of the acceptance of an abbreviated text version of the work in the folio edition of 1623, reference was made above all to the traditional report by the doctor and astronomer Simon Forman about a performance of the play in the Globe Theater that he attended in April 1611. Forman's detailed description of the performance deviates from the folio version in several places and with a certain probability allows well-founded conclusions to be drawn about various scenes that were omitted from the folio edition. However, there is no clear evidence of a shortened folio version of the piece; Ultimately, even the evaluation of Forman's report does not result in any compelling evidence; Furthermore, memory or perception errors cannot be ruled out with absolute certainty in his description of the performance. See in detail James Rigney (ed.): The Tragedie of Macbeth. Shakespearean Originals: First Editions. Routledge, London and New York 2014, ISBN 0-13-355439-2 , Introduction , p. 7 ff. And Textual History , p. 9 f.
  9. ↑ See Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 378. After the first printed edition by Macbeth in 1623, seven years after the poet's death, in Shakespeare's folio , all later texts and adaptations referred to this version. Since passages by a strange hand were obviously added to the texts, the authorship of Shakespeare for some scenes is disputed today. In particular, scenes III / 5 and IV / 1, which are stylistically quite different from the rest of the work and are insignificant for the plot of the piece, are attributed to Thomas Middleton , whose piece The Witch contains two witch songs from Macbeth . See also William C. Carroll: Two Truths are Told. Afterlives and Histories of Macbeth . In: Peter Holland: Macbeth and its afterlife . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, p. 69. Also in the above-mentioned description of a performance of The play in 1611 by Simon Forman, there are no references to the figure of Hecate or the cauldron; The “weird sisters” are not referred to by Forman as witches, but as nymphs, although this could also be due to Forman's subjective perception or interpretation of the piece seen. For more information, see James Rigney (Ed.): The Tragedie of Macbeth. Shakespearean Originals: First Editions. Routledge, London and New York 2014, ISBN 0-13-355439-2 , Introduction , p. 7 ff.
  10. ^ E-Text of the Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland
  11. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, pp. 555f. and Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, p. 376. See also Stephan Orgel: Macbeth and the Antic Round (1999). In: Catherine MS Alexander and Terence Hawkes (Eds.): The Cambridge Library Volume II: Criticism. CUP 2003, pp. 336-345, here pp. 339f. See also Stephan Orgel: Macbeth and the Antic Round (1999). In: Catherine MS Alexander and Terence Hawkes (Eds.): The Cambridge Library Volume II: Criticism. CUP 2003, pp. 336-345, here pp. 339ff.
  12. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, p. 376f. See also Ulrich Suerbaum: Shakespeare's dramas. UTB, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8252-1907-0 , p. 126ff.
  13. ↑ See Herbert R. Coursen: Macbeth: A Guide to the Play. Greenwood Press 1997, ISBN 0-313-30047-X , pp. 15-21. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Nicholas Brooke. OUP 1990, p. 67f.
  14. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, pp. 555f. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, Introduction p. 5ff. and Laura Shamas: "We Three": The Mythology of Shakespeare's Weird Sisters. Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York 2006, ISBN 978-08204-7933-0 , p. 13.
  15. ^ Marguerite A. Tassi: Women and revenge in Shakespeare: gender, genre, and ethics . Susquehanna University Press, Cranbury 2011, p. 63.
  16. ↑ Marc Bloch : The miraculous kings . CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 364.
  17. ↑ On this assumption, see above all Harold Bloom : Macbeth. Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages. Chelsea House, New York 2008, ISBN 978-07910-9842-4 , p. 41. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Annotated Shakespeare. Edited by Burton Raffel. Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2005, ISBN 0-300-10654-8 , Introduction, pp. XXIII ff.
  18. ↑ Stefan Zweig; Maria Stuart , Reichner Verlag, Vienna 1935, new edition Insel Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-458-35906-7 , p. 227 ff. Available online in the Gutenberg-DE project , identified as Chapter 14 at the corresponding point in the title : The way with no way out , but published in the chapter navigation there under Stefan Zweig: Maria Stuart - Kapitel 15
  19. ^ Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us . In: John Wain (Ed.): Shakespeare. Macbeth. A casebook . Bristol: Western Printing Services (1968), pp. 168-177
  20. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 378f. See also Horst Breuer : Macbeth. In: Interpretations - Shakespeare's Dramas. Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, pp. 343f.
  21. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 379f. and Stephen Orgel: The Authentic Shakespeare and other problems of the early modern stage. Routledge, New York and London 2002, pp. 165 ff. The quote from Pepys' diary is taken from this source (p. 166).
  22. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 380f.
  23. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 381. See also Ulrich Suerbaum: Shakespeares Dramen. UTB, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8252-1907-0 , p. 110f. and 126ff. and Horst Breuer : Macbeth. In: Interpretations - Shakespeare's Dramas. Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, p. 349ff.
  24. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 381f. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Nicholas Brooke. OUP 1990, Introduction p. 41ff. and William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, Introduction, p. 65f. See also Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 561.
  25. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 382. See also Ulrich Suerbaum: Shakespeares Dramen. UTB, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8252-1907-0 , p. 126ff.
  26. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 382. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Nicholas Brooke. OUP 1990, Introduction, pp. 8–22 and William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, Introduction pp. 45–55.
  27. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 384. See also Ulrich Suerbaum: Shakespeares Dramen. UTB, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8252-1907-0 , p. 115. Due to the overlapping of the socio-political and family structure, Suerbaum could, according to Suerbaum, choose the aspect appropriate to it at any time and either the aspect of family drama or that of political play understand as dominant.
  28. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 384. See also Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbuch. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , pp. 556ff. and Horst Breuer : Macbeth. In: Interpretations - Shakespeare's Dramas. Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, p. 366.
  29. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, p. 384f. See also Ulrich Suerbaum: Shakespeare's Dramas. UTB, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8252-1907-0 , pp. 110–117 and 138–141.
  30. ↑ See William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, Introduction p. 57 and Notes on the Text , p. 111.
  31. ^ Christian Ulmcke: Scottish play. In: Calendar sheet (broadcast on DLF ). April 20, 2011, accessed April 20, 2011 . . A comprehensive copy of Forman's report in the original English can also be found in the Introduction by William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, p. 57f. From various Shakespeare editors a previous performance in August 1606 at Hampton Court Palace on the occasion of the visit of the King of Denmark is considered very likely; however, such a performance is not fully documented. See James Rigney (Ed.): The Tragedie of Macbeth. Shakespearean Originals: First Editions. Routledge, London and New York 2014, ISBN 0-13-355439-2 , Introduction , p. 7, Textual History , p. 9. Rigney also refers in this context to the remarks by AW Pollard , RC Bald and WW Greg .
  32. ^ Bernice W. Kliman: Macbeth . Manchester University Press, Manchester 2004, p. 17 and Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbuch. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 561. See also Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (Ed.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, p. 292.
  33. ↑ Kalman A. Burnim: David Garrick, director . Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale 1973, p. 103.
  34. ↑ James Thomas Kirkman: Memoirs of the life of Charles Macklin: principally compiled from his own papers and memorandums; which contain his criticisms on, and characters and anecdotes of Betterton, Booth, Wilks, Cibber, Garrick, Barry, Mossop, Sheridan, Foote, Quin, and most of his contemporaries; together with his valuable observations on the drama, on the science of acting, and on various other subjects: the whole forming a comprehensive but succinct history of the stage, which includes a period of one hundred years . Volume 2, Lackington, Allen 1799, pp. 82 ff.
  35. ↑ Celestine Woo: Romantic actors and bardolatry: performing Shakespeare from Garrick to Kean . Peter Lang, New York a. a. 2008, p. 68.
  36. ↑ See Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 554 Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 561. See also the Introduction in William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, pp. 61–68 and Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (Ed.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, p. 292.
  37. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 561. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, Introduction , pp. 71 and 77ff.
  38. ^ Dennis Bartholomeusz: Macbeth and the Players . CUP Archives, Cambridge University Press 1978, p. 184.
  39. ^ John William Cole: The life and theatrical times of Charles Kean, FSA, including a summary of the English stage for the last fifty years. 2nd ed. R. Bentley, London 1859, p. 53.
  40. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 561. See also Michael Mullin: Macbeth in Modern Dress: Royal Court Theater, 1928. In: Educational Theater Journal , Vol. 30, No. 2, May 1978, pp. 176-185 and Robert Smallwood : Twentieth-century performance: The Stratford and London companies. In: Stanley Wells and Sarah Stanton (Eds.): The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage (Cambridge Companions to Literature). CUP 2002, ISBN 0-521-79295-9 , pp. 98-117, here p. 101.
  41. ↑ To compare the historical framework: Faith Nostbakken: Understanding Macbeth: a student casebook to issues, sources, and historical documents . Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport 1997, p. 205. See also Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbuch. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 561. and William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, Introduction , p. 82.
  42. ↑ On the ambivalent reaction: Richard France (ed.): Orson Welles on Shakespeare: the WPA and Mercury Theater playscripts . Routledge, London 2001, p. 15 f.
  43. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 561f. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, Introduction , p. 79 ff. And Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (Ed.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, pp. 291f.
  44. ↑ Macbeth
  45. ↑ On the embodiment of Macbeth by the aforementioned actors in comparison: Nicholas Rand Moschovakis: Macbeth: new critical essays . Routledge, London 2008, p. 304.
  46. ↑ Alexander Leggatt: William Shakespeare's Macbeth: a sourcebook . Taylor & Francis, New York 2006, p. 113 f.
  47. ↑ Nicholas Wapshott: Peter O'Toole: a biography . Beaufort Books 1984, pp. 197, 201 and 225
  48. ^ Bonnie Rowe McNeil: Lady Macbeth in performance: a comparative study of acting styles . University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1961, pp. 136 and 141.
  49. ↑ Harold Bloom: Macbeth - William Shakespeare . : Infobase Pub., New York 2010, p. 114.
  50. ^ John Russell Brown: Focus on MacBeth . Routledge, (1st ed. 1982), NA London 2005, p. 108. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, Introduction , p. 79ff. and Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (Eds.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, p. 292.
  51. ↑ See Sven Rank: Twentieth-Century Adaptations of "Macbeth": Writing between Influence, Intervention, and Cultural Transfer. Bayreuth contributions to literary studies, volume 33, Peter Lang Verlag 2010, ISBN 978-36316-0174-7 , pp. 203ff. and 234ff., as well as Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbuch. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 562. See also the background explanations on his Macbeth adaptation by Charles Marowitz: The Marowitz Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, and Measure for Measure. Marion Boyars Publishers, London 2000, ISBN 978-07145-2651-5 , pp. 70ff.
  52. ↑ See Naomi Conn Liebler (Ed.): The Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama. Palgrave New York 2002, ISBN 978-1-349-62150-7 , Introduction , p. 19. See also Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbuch. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 562.
  53. ↑ See Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells (eds.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5 , pp. 292f.
  54. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 562 as well as Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells (eds.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, pp. 292f. See also William Shakespeare: Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by AR Braunmuller. CUP, revised edition 2008, new edition 2010, Introduction , pp. 83–88.
  55. ↑ See Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells (Eds.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, Oxford 2015, p. 293. See also the review by Andreas Kilb : Once Shakespeare with everything. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 28, 2015, online at [1] . Retrieved July 22, 2018. See also the review by Oliver Kaever: "Macbeth" - Bearded men who look grim. In: Die Zeit from October 30, 2015, online at [2] . Accessed on July 22, 2018. See also Hannah Pilarczyk: "Macbeth" in the cinema - Will fate want him as king. In: Der Spiegel from October 31, 2015, online at [3] . Retrieved July 22, 2018.
  56. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 562. See also Melanie Krämer: The “Macbeth” operas by Giuseppe Verdi and Ernest Bloch. A textual and musical comparison. Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2000. ISBN 3-8288-8131-9 .
  57. ↑ Cf. Macbeth (Chélard, Hippolyte André Jean Baptiste) in the International Music Score Library Project . Retrieved July 22, 2018.
  58. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, p. 562. See also Martina Fuchs: 'Ledi Makbet Mcenskogo uezda': comparative analysis of NS Leskov's story and the opera of the same name by DD Šostakovič. Heidelberg: Groos 1992. (= Groos Collection; 45; Mannheimer contributions to Slavic philology; 4), ISBN 3-87276-661-9 . and as a PDF file online Notes for Such Sweet Thunder by Adrian Cho. Reproduced from the program notes for the “The Duke & The Bard,” Impressions in Jazz Orchestra, June 12, 2007 . Retrieved July 22, 2018.
  59. ↑ Bernd Feuchtner : The old and the new. In: Opernwelt Jahrbuch 2002, pp. 84–87.
  60. ↑ Michael Struck-Schloen: In the dead of night. Review of the world premiere of Macbeth Underworld. In: Opernwelt , November 2019, p. 16.
  61. ^ Literatur-Couch Medien GmbH & Co. KG: Jo Nesbø: Macbeth . In: Krimi-Couch.de . ( krimi-couch.de [accessed on October 22, 2018]).