Macbeth by William Shakespeare – 7/10
July 14, 2009
So I’m ashamed to admit that because of my transfer from Regents to AP I missed reading this one in high school. Thus, while I was able to get through the language of the play there were definitely great stretches of it that escaped me and I took that element of it out when considering my rating of th play since that’s entirely my deficiency.
Despite the fact that I’ve never read this one I come to it with prior knowledge (as I imagine everyone comes to all of Shakespeare’s major plays with prior knowledge) of how Macbeth is super ambitious and kills Duncan and gets killed because of the prophecy the weird sisters give him. I should actually be doubly ashamed that I haven’t read this particular play because it’s the one that’s most strongly connected to HP. But I’ve got say, I was kind of unenthused.
It’s (and I realize how this is going to sound) too much talking. Even prior to killing Duncan Macbeth has doubts about doing it and then immediately after he’s wracked with guilt, goes on to kill Banquo and then is immediately guilty about that. There’s no real time to see him as anything other than a really guilty guy except in the very last act where he gets extremely cocksure and starts quoting the prediction right and left. That’s where the play was really awesome for me. Lady Macbeth was what I thought Macbeth was going to be: conniving and wonderfully evil. But then she got a super lame death. Off-stage. What the fuck, Will?
Yeah, yeah, yeah I realize I’m getting pearls here, about how ambition is just terrible and whatnot, but I want to be satisfied, goddammit. I know the Macbeths are going to die, at least make it awesome. Like the weird sister scenes. Those were creepy and terrific.
It’s actually kind of hard for me to retain much of what happened in the play except for the weird sister scenes and Macbeth’s guilt and that last scene. When the play was good it was good, but otherwise it was way too much guilt-tripping.
