Facts about Macbeth
Macbeth appears stunned into silence, so again Banquo challenges them.
A large mythology has built up surrounding this superstition, with countless stories of accidents, misfortunes and even deaths, all mysteriously taking place during runs of Macbeth (or by actors who had uttered the name).
Macbeth's announcement that he has "murdered sleep" is figuratively mirrored in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking.
Despite his success, Macbeth remains uneasy regarding the prophecy that Banquo would be the progenitor of kings.
Kemble's Macbeth struck some critics as too mannered and polite for Shakespeare's text.
Macklin performed in Scottish dress, reversing an earlier tendency to dress Macbeth as an English brigadier; he also removed Garrick's death speech and further trimmed Lady Macduff's role.
The Macbeth of the next predominant London actor, William Charles Macready, provoked responses at least as mixed as those given Kean.
From the viewpoint of New Criticism, Macbeth had to be read as poetry before all else.
Charles Macklin, not otherwise recalled as a great Macbeth, is remembered for performances at the Covent Garden in 1773 at which riots broke out, related to Macklin's rivalries with Garrick and William Smith.
Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text.
Macbeth raises valid concerns about the regicide, but Lady Macbeth eventually persuades him to comply with their plan.
A fight ensues, which ends with Macduff beheading Macbeth offstage, thereby fulfilling the last of the prophecies.
Hence Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal banquet and discovers that Banquo and his young son, Fleance, will be riding that night.
When Duncan decides to stay at the Macbeth's castle at Inverness, Lady Macbeth hatches a plan to murder him and secure the throne for her husband.
The Kemble-Siddons performances were the first widely influential productions in which Lady Macbeth's villainy was presented as deeper and more powerful than Macbeth's.
Due to significant evidence of later revisions, Macbeth cannot be precisely dated.
Both Ian McKellen in the title role and Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth received exceptionally favorable reviews.
Laurentius Valla (1406–1457) said that, as they revived Latin, so was Roman architecture revived; for example, Rucellai's Palazzo built by Leone Battista Alberti (1404–1472) the all-round Renaissance man—a poet, linguist, architect, philosopher, and musician.
At the banquet, Banquo's ghost enters and sits in Macbeth's place.
At least since the days of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, analysis of the play has centered on the question of Macbeth's ambition, commonly seen as so dominant a trait that it defines his character.
The first hails Macbeth as "Thane of Glamis," the second as "Thane of Cawdor," while the third proclaims that he shall "be King hereafter."
Macbeth, the King's kinsman, is particularly praised for his bravery, and fighting prowess.
On the stage, Lady Macbeth is considered one of the more "commanding and challenging" roles in Shakespeare's work.
Johnson asserted that Macbeth, though esteemed for his military bravery, is wholly reviled.
The production was eventually moved to London (and ultimately filmed for television); it overshadowed Peter Hall's 1978 production with Albert Finney as Macbeth and Dorothy Tutin as Lady Macbeth.
Kean's Macbeth was not universally admired; William Hazlitt, for instance, complained that Kean's Macbeth was too like his Richard III.
Macbeth and Banquo enter in conversation, remarking on the weather and their win ("So foul and fair a day I have not seen").
The porter opens the gate and Macbeth leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff discovers Duncan's corpse.
Friends such as Bram Stoker defended his "psychological" reading, based on the supposition that Macbeth had dreamed of killing Duncan before the start of the play.
Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, as he cannot be killed by any man born of woman.
Macduff is immediately suspicious of Macbeth, but does not disclose his suspicions publicly.
After Garrick, the most celebrated Macbeth of the eighteenth century was John Philip Kemble; he performed the role most famously with his sister, Sarah Siddons, whose Lady Macbeth was widely regarded as unsurpassable.
Like Richard III, but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall.
Macbeth is an anomaly among Shakespeare's tragedies in certain critical ways.
Lady Macbeth eventually becomes racked with guilt from the crimes she and her husband have committed.
The rightful heirs' flight makes them suspect, and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a kinsman to the dead king.
Davenant's revision also enhanced the role of Lady Macduff, making her a thematic foil to Lady Macbeth.
The disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not limited to him, of course.
The two most prominent Macbeths of midcentury, Samuel Phelps and Charles Kean, were both received with critical ambivalence and popular success.
Inversion of normative gender roles is most famously associated with the witches and with Lady Macbeth as she appears in the first act.
The play opens amid thunder and lightning, with three Witches—the Weird Sisters—deciding that their next meeting shall be with a certain Macbeth.
Macbeth, now identified as a tyrant, sees many of his thanes defecting.
In an April 19, 1667 entry in his Diary, Samuel Pepys called Davenant's MacBeth "one of the best plays for a stage, and variety of dancing and music, that ever I saw."
Macbeth's generally accepted indebtedness to medieval tragedy is often seen as particularly significant in the play's treatment of moral order.
Only Macbeth can see the ghost; the rest of the guests begin to panic at what they see as Macbeth raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady Macbeth orders them to leave.
Macbeth is among the best known of William Shakespeare's plays, as well as his shortest surviving tragedy.
The most recent performance took place in the real Macbeth's home of Moray, produced by the National Theatre of Scotland to take place at Elgin Cathedral.
