Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)

Bennie's recommendation 👍

This is my favorite Shakespearean play! I love the fantastic element that, at the time, would have been considered much more of a reality than today. I love the characters. MacBeth feels more like a hero than Hamlet (who's a bit of a whiner). I love that it's set in Scotland. The description of guilt that centers around the famous "Out, damned spot!" line really resonated with me. New to Shakespeare? Start with MacBeth and you'll get the bug. Highly recommended!

“Screw your courage to the sticking place!”

Ahhh, Lady Macbeth remains my favorite character after all these years. She’s complex and corrupt and has the power to corrupt her husband. Yet she’s haunted by the deeds that follow and can’t escape the knowledge that her nudging pushed Macbeth over the edge. In my opinion, she could be held to blame for the entire tragedy of Macbeth; though the meaning could be deeper yet - in that ambition itself is to blame. Or the underlying message that power corrupts, and even the ambition for power corrupts.

Still my favorite Shakespeare tragedy.

Maybe, "the Scottish play" is the most meaningful, it's very powerful and intense as a play. You can feel the character's emotions in your own "flesh and blood" (also a phrase commonly attributed to Shakespeare). It's all about ambition, and the desire to have power and rule the world. And it's also about the consequences of that. All the scenery is dark, gothic, medieval. Here you have witches, and madness, and castles, and desire and ambition, and killings and deaths, and ghosts and battles, and Lady Macbeth, who is probably one of the strongest women I've seen on a Shakespearean play. She delivers a lot of fantastic lines too. In short, a magnetic play, from beginning to end. But is better if you call it "The Scottish play" other ways, has a fame of carrying bad luck.

loved all my ap lit reads