Rating: 
Summary: The lust for illegitimate power
Review: This is one of Shakespeare's plays I have liked best so far (I still have several ones left to read), along with Hamlet, King Lear and Julius Caesar. It is the tragedy of ambition and delusion, and the fatal results of those two vices combined. It is also one of Shakespeare's plays in which the supernatural has a greater participation. Just as Hamlet is driven to revenge by a ghost -his father's- Macbeth is driven to desperate ambition for power by three witches who tell him he is destined to occupy the throne of Scotland (way back in the Middle Ages). Though Macbeth is not a very resolute man and so has many doubts, his inescrupulous wife jumps in on the prophecy and pushes him all along. She must be one of the dreariest women to have appeared in fiction ever. You can imagine her truly as the mother in law from hell. Together, the Macbeths perpetrate a series of treasons and horrible murders, and even start up a war, all for the throne they will, of course, never enjoy. As always with Ol' Billy, the dialogues are incredibly strong and magnificent, full of passion and energy. The scene where the ghost of Banquo appears in the middle of a dinner is more than spooky, horrifying. This play is pure evil, violence, disaster and remorse, and the final transformation of Macbeth is necessarily too late, but worth contemplating.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, beyond words, lives forever in your mind
Review: This play is great! I've always liked Shakespearean comedy and tragic romance, and I didn't want to read this play at first, but when I did--it got me.For those who want to read a play full of word play, appearance and reality in the world and for you, irony and Christian innuendoes, Macbeth is for you. The word play, especially the surprising comparison of murder with "Tarquin's ravishing", and the really effective ones like ambition with drunkeness, will make you read it again and again. There is a haunting soliloquy in Act 5 that Macbeth gives about life--it's famous and most would have heard of it, but nothing beats reading it together with the play. Behind every successful man there is a woman, and behind every tragic hero there should be a tragic heroine. Lady Macbeth will repulse you and gain your pity. Don't despise her, folks, she just squashed her femininity thinking it was the best thing to do. She wouldn't have to ask evil forces to take away her human compassion if she didn't have any to begin with. A must-read, and must-savour.
Rating:
Summary: Lay on, Macduff!
Review: While I was basically familiar with Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth, I have only recently actually read the bard's brilliant play. The drama is quite dark and moody, but this atmosphere serves Shakespeare's purposes well. In Macbeth, we delve deeply into the heart of a true fiend, a man who would betray the king, who showers honors upon him, in a vainglorious snatch at power. Yet Macbeth is not 100% evil, nor is he a truly brave soul. He waxes and wanes over the execution of his nefarious plans, and he thereafter finds himself haunted by the blood on his own hands and by the ethereal spirits of the innocent men he has had murdered. On his own, Macbeth is much too cowardly to act so traitorously to his kind and his country. The source of true evil in these pages is the cold and calculating Lady Macbeth; it is she who plots the ultimate betrayal, forcefully pushes her husband to perform the dreadful acts, and cleans up after him when he loses his nerve. This extraordinary woman is the lynchpin of man's eternal fascination with this drama. I find her behavior a little hard to account for in the closing act, but she looms over every single male character we meet here, be he king, loyalist, nobleman, courtier, or soldier. Lady Macbeth is one of the most complicated, fascinating, unforgettable female characters in all of literature. The plot does not seem to move along as well as Shakespeare's other most popular dramas, but I believe this is a result of the writer's intense focus on the human heart rather than the secondary activity that surrounds the related royal events. It is fascinating if sometimes rather disjointed reading. One problem I had with this play in particular was one of keeping up with each of the many characters that appear in the tale; the English of Shakespeare's time makes it difficult for me to form lasting impressions of the secondary characters, of whom there are many. Overall, though, Macbeth has just about everything a great drama needs: evil deeds, betrayal, murder, fighting, ghosts, omens, cowardice, heroism, love, and, as a delightful bonus, mysterious witches. Very many of Shakespeare's more famous quotes are also to be found in these pages, making it an important cultural resource for literary types. The play doesn't grab your attention and absorb you into its world the way Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet does, but this voyage deep into the heart of evil, jealousy, selfishness, and pride forces you to consider the state of your own deep-seated wishes and dreams, and for that reason there are as many interpretations of the essence of the tragedy as there are readers of this Shakespearean masterpiece. No man's fall can rival that of Macbeth's, and there is a great object lesson to be found in this drama. You cannot analyze Macbeth without analyzing yourself to some degree, and that goes a long way toward accounting for the Tragedy of Macbeth's literary importance and longevity.
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