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Adapting Macbeth: A Cultural History
In this study, William C. Carroll analyses a wide range of adaptations and appropriations of Macbeth across different media to consider what it is about the play that compels our desire to reshape it. Arguing that many of these adaptations attempt to 'improve' or 'correct' the play's perceived political or aesthetic flaws, Carroll traces how Macbeth 's popularity and adaptability stems from several of its formal its openly political nature; its inclusion of supernatural elements; its parable of the dangers of ambition; its violence; its brevity; and its domestic focus on a husband and wife.
The study ranges across elite and popular culture from Sir William Davenant's adaptation for the Restoration stage (1663–4), an early 18th-century novel, The Secret History of Mackbeth and Verdi's Macbeth, through to 20th- and 21st-century adaptations for stage and screen, as well as contemporary novelizations, young adult literature and commercial appropriations that testify to the play's absorption into contemporary culture.
The study ranges across elite and popular culture from Sir William Davenant's adaptation for the Restoration stage (1663–4), an early 18th-century novel, The Secret History of Mackbeth and Verdi's Macbeth, through to 20th- and 21st-century adaptations for stage and screen, as well as contemporary novelizations, young adult literature and commercial appropriations that testify to the play's absorption into contemporary culture.
- GenresShakespeare
284 pages, Hardcover
Published February 24, 2022
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December 29, 2024
A totally fascinating read: Macbeth, probably as much as Hamlet, despite only having one incomplete text as opposed to three complete ones, has been interpreted and rejigged more or less since its authorship.
This book looks at the origins of the Macbeth story, how Shakespeare was using a combination of at least three extant versions of the history (by Buchanan, "Holinshed" and Boece), all of which he combined and altered, and kept cropping up the next 150 years or so, depending on how popular the Stuarts were (with Macbeth sometimes the Stuarts - and then the Hanovers -and sometimes their opponents). There is also an early (post-Shakespeare?) version where Macbeth is the seducer-rapist of Banquo's family (daughter, sister), which Shakespeare may have known, but we don't know.
He then looks at all the ways the play has been rewritten: is Duncan a good or bad King? Will Malcolm be a tyrant or a saviour? Is Lady M suffering, sexy or asexual?
Dealing with non-English adaptations, I am glad he includes Ken Campbell's MaKbed, which I saw live, though his "Musical Macbeths" chapter excludes both John Cale's song and the brilliant Lesbian Laundry, which I saw twenty years ago (Macbeth relocated to a Lesbian Laundry, with seventies songs craftily rewritten as Macbeth power-ballads).
If you think you know Macbeth, this book makes you realise that everything you think about the play, however radical it may be, somewhere, someone has already done it, and probably more extreme.
This book looks at the origins of the Macbeth story, how Shakespeare was using a combination of at least three extant versions of the history (by Buchanan, "Holinshed" and Boece), all of which he combined and altered, and kept cropping up the next 150 years or so, depending on how popular the Stuarts were (with Macbeth sometimes the Stuarts - and then the Hanovers -and sometimes their opponents). There is also an early (post-Shakespeare?) version where Macbeth is the seducer-rapist of Banquo's family (daughter, sister), which Shakespeare may have known, but we don't know.
He then looks at all the ways the play has been rewritten: is Duncan a good or bad King? Will Malcolm be a tyrant or a saviour? Is Lady M suffering, sexy or asexual?
Dealing with non-English adaptations, I am glad he includes Ken Campbell's MaKbed, which I saw live, though his "Musical Macbeths" chapter excludes both John Cale's song and the brilliant Lesbian Laundry, which I saw twenty years ago (Macbeth relocated to a Lesbian Laundry, with seventies songs craftily rewritten as Macbeth power-ballads).
If you think you know Macbeth, this book makes you realise that everything you think about the play, however radical it may be, somewhere, someone has already done it, and probably more extreme.
Displaying 1 of 1 review