Macbeth

This Guide provides a critical survey of the rich range of responses to Macbeth, as well as the key debates and developments from the seventeenth century to the present day. Leading the reader through material chronologically, the Guide summarizes, explains and assesses key interpretations, sets them in their intellectual and historical contexts, and supplies extracts from criticism which exemplify crucial critical positions.

NICOLAS TREDELL is Consultant Editor of the Palgrave Macmillan Readers' Guides and has produced five Guides for the series. He has published widely on literary criticism and theory - his previous publications include The Critical Decade (1993), Conversations with Critics (1994) and a history of film theory, Cinemas of the Mind (2002). For many years he has taught and convened Sussex University literature courses, most recently on Shakespeare.

Acknowledgements

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Notes on the Text

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Introduction Offers a range of observations on the overall impact of Macbeth and outlines the rest of the Guide.

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CHAPTER ONE The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Development of Macbeth Criticism

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Discusses the text of Macbeth and Simon Forman's account of a 1611 Globe performance;

the critical implications of Sir William D'Avenant's 1664 adaptation of Macbeth;

Nicholas Rowe's acknowledgement of Shakespeare's vulnerability to neoclassical criticism;

and Samuel Johnson's extensive comments on the language, plot and characters of the play.

Traces the development of character-based criticism in the later eighteenth century in the work of William Richardson, Thomas Whately, J.P. Kemble and Richard Cumberland.

CHAPTER TWO The Nineteenth Century: Romantic and Victorian Macbeth

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Considers William Hazlitt's vigorous attack on Samuel Johnson and Hazlitt's comments on the characters, structure, themes and language of the play;

Coleridge's general views on Macbeth and his penetrating explanation of the apparent change of Lady Macbeth's character;

Thomas de Quincey's celebrated exploration of the way in which the knocking at the gate marks the renewal of ordinary life after its murderous suspension;

Anna Jameson's account of Lady Macbeth in relation to notions of femininity and the portrayal of women in ancient Greek drama;

and Edward Dowden's late-Victorian interpretation of the characters of Macbeth and his wife.

CHAPTER THREE The Early Twentieth Century: Tragedy, Psychoanalysis and Imagery

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Explores A.C. Bradley's idea of Shakespearean tragedy and key elements of his interpretation of Macbeth;

Sigmund Freud's reading of Macbeth as a play about childlessness;

Caroline Spurgeon's widely disseminated analysis of recurrent images in the play;

G. Wilson Knight's 'spatial' approach to Shakespeare and his reading of Macbeth as a vision of evil;

L.C. Knights's famous attack on a character-based approach to Shakespeare, 'How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?';

and William Empson's ingenious close readings of key passages in the play.

CHAPTER FOUR The Mid-Twentieth Century: History, Nature and Evil

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Examines E.M.W. Tillyard's account of Macbeth as a history play;

Henry N. Paul's consideration of the play's relationship to contemporary historical events;

Eugene M. Waith's discussion of masculinity in Macbeth;

Cleanth Brooks's famous 'New Critical' analysis of the image of the naked babe and the clothed man in the play;

the ripostes to Brooks of Oscar James Campbell and Helen Gardner;

L.C. Knights's complex interpretation of Macbeth in relation to Shakespearean notions of 'nature';

Jan Kott's emphasis on the murderous, nihilistic aspects of the play;

and Wilbur Sanders's Nietzschean reading of Macbeth as exemplifying the energy of evil.

CHAPTER FIVE The Later Twentieth Century: Politics, Violence and Ideology

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Traces Harry Berger Jr's pioneering investigation of the paradoxes of the early scenes of Macbeth;

Michael Hawkins's thoughtful discussion of the links between the play and the political ideas of the time;

Peter Stallybrass's sharp examination of the relationships between witchcraft and political power in Macbeth and in society;

Stephen Booth's exploration of the indefiniteness of Macbeth in relation to a theory of tragedy;

James L. Calderwood's analysis of Macbeth as a counter-Hamlet, a tragedy about the nature of tragedy, and a study of culture and violence;

and Alan Sinfield's provocative account of the relationship of Macbeth to the contrasting ideologies of James I and George Buchanan.

CHAPTER SIX The Later Twentieth Century: Language, Subjectivity and Subversion

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Focuses on Catherine Belsey's close analysis of the split subjectivity of the soliloquies of Macbeth, drawing on the theories of Lacan and Benveniste;

'Terence' Eagleton's sober account of the play as about a man who rejects community and his later view, when writing as 'Terry' Eagleton, of the witches as heroic and subversive;

and Malcolm Evans's vivid consideration of the equivocal operations of language in the play, which prevent it from coming to rest in any one secure meaning.

CHAPTER SEVEN The Later Twentieth Century: Men, Women and Witches

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Investigates Coppélia Kahn's view of Macbeth as about the failure to attain a fully individuated masculine identity;

Marilyn French's argument that it is about the suppression of the feminine principle in an heroic, 'manly' culture;

Janet Adelman's analysis of its contradictory fantasies about maternal power;

Stephen Greenblatt's defence of Macbeth's treatment of witchcraft;

and Stephen Orgel's view of the witches as opening up a space for women in the play.

Conclusion: The Twenty-first Century and Future Directions

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Looks back over the Guide as a whole and outlines possible future directions for Macbeth criticism.

NOTES

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

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SELECT FILMOGRAPHY

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INDEX

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