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Macbeth

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. When three witches prophesy that Macbeth will be king one day, he is not prepared to wait and almost the next day he murders King Duncan as he sleeps, a guest at Macbeth’s castle. From there we explore their brutal world where few boundaries are distinct – between safe and unsafe, friend and foe, real and unreal, man and beast – until Macbeth too is slaughtered.

The image above shows Nicol Williamson as Macbeth in a 1983 Â鶹ԼÅÄ TV adaptation.

With:

Emma Smith
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford

Kiernan Ryan
Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London

And

David Schalkwyk,
Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of Global Shakespeare at Queen Mary, University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Available now

52 minutes

Last on

Thu 1 Oct 2020 21:30
Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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LINKS AND FURTHER READING












READING LIST:

Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (Fourth Estate, 1999), especially chapter 26: Macbeth

A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth (first published 1904; Penguin Books, 1991)

Thomas de Quincey, Autobiographical Sketches (Dodo Press, 2008), particularly ‘On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth’ (first published in The London Magazine in 1823)

John Drakakis and Dale Townshend (eds.), Macbeth: A Critical Reader (Bloomsbury, 2013)

David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare After Theory (Routledge, 1999), especially the chapter ‘Macbeth and the 'Name of the King’

William Shakespeare (ed. Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason), Macbeth (The Arden Shakespeare: Bloomsbury, 2015)

James Shapiro, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear (Faber & Faber, 2015)

Alan Sinfield (ed.), Macbeth: Contemporary Critical Essays (Macmillan, 1992)

Emma Smith, Macbeth: Language and Writing (The Arden Shakespeare: Bloomsbury, 2013)

John Wain (ed.), Macbeth: A Selection of Critical Essays (Macmillan, 1968)

Harriet Walter, Actors on Shakespeare: Macbeth (Faber & Faber, 2002)


Broadcasts

  • Thu 1 Oct 2020 09:00
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4
  • Thu 1 Oct 2020 21:30
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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