Focus on Macbeth

Front Cover
John Russell Brown
Routledge, Sep 13, 2013 - Literary Criticism - 272 pages
First published in 1982.

Macbeth exercises a strange influence over readers and theatre audiences: the words of the text offer no easy clue to meaning or significance and in dramatic structure the play is very different from other Shakespearean tragedies. Many kinds of study are needed in order to understand the tragedy of Macbeth and this book provides a wide range of studies that respect the individuality of the text and examine it from different viewpoints.

Contents include: Themes and Structure; Characterization and Narrative, Visual Effects, Performance in the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries; Historical and Political Background; Role of Witchcraft; Game Theory.

Contributors include: John Russell Brown, Derek Russell Davis, Gareth Lloyd Evans, R A Foakes, Michael Goldman, Robin Grove, Peter Hall, Michael Hawkins, Brian Morris, D J Palmer, Marvin Rosenberg and Peter Stallybrass.

From inside the book

Contents

ambition in Macbeth
7
The kingdom the power and the glory
30
visual effects in Macbeth
54
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the eighteenth
73
194680 at StratforduponAvon
87
Multiplying villainies of nature
113
History politics and Macbeth
155
Macbeth and witchcraft
189
Hurt minds
210
Directing Macbeth
231
Afterword
249
Index
255
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John Russell Brown

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