MACBETH: Amazon.ca: William Shakespeare: Books

Product Description

Ingram

A completely re-edited edition of the classic tragedy contains full explanatory notes on pages facing the text of the play; an introduction to Shakespeare's language; and an essay by a Shakespeare scholar.

Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
When shall we three meet again? Read the first page

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Concordance

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

44 Reviews

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.2 out of 5 stars (44 customer reviews)

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4.0 out of 5 stars An amazing play, July 21 2003

By

K. Bentley "amateur critic" (Stratford, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: MACBETH (Mass Market Paperback)

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's finest accomplishments. It is a good vs evil tale about a man, Macbeth, who apparently sees three witches, who are said to be prophets. He starts out as noble, serving the King of Scotland, and a brave and ruthless warrior ("unsealed him from the nave to the chops"). Repeated meetings w/ the three witches would have a profound effect on Macbeth, and his wife, Lady Macbeth. He slowly becomes deranged and hungry for power, and the entire play showcases his manipulative rise to the top, all the way to the point where he becomes the King of Scotland, and his eventual decline (also predicted accurately by the witches). It is full of awesome motifs, moral and interesting themes, great dialogue, action, and believable characters. The only reason I gave this 4 stars is because I had to read this my sophmore year of high school, and I had to analyze this book page by page, line by line, and the student teacher who taught it to us was obsessed with symbolism (like my sophmore teacher already was), and it diminished the appeal of the book to me, albeit slightly. Forget my past encounters in reading this book, because chances are they will not be helpful, but Macbeth is worth reading and analyzing, and it is easily one of Shakespeare's best plays.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A must read..., July 17 2003

By

J. D Philipson "Joemomma17" (Rochester, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: MACBETH (Mass Market Paperback)

This book truly is my favorite book by Shakespear...

Forget Romeo & Juliet...That's for sissies, this book has, witches, blood, death, plots to kill the kings, war, crazy house wives, and did I mention ghosts? If you want a good read, or just want to tuck it under your arm and walk around looking smart, then this is a good book for you...

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5.0 out of 5 stars And let the frame of things disjoint!, July 14 2003

By

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: MACBETH (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is very difficult to read, not just because of the play's main theme -murder- as because of the main characters' stupidity, that baffles me. Blood and murder reign everywhere, as much as stupidity does. Nietzsche wanted to interpret Macbeth's evil as positive rebelliousness. But Nietzsche was too concerned to prove his rather boring Dyonisiac view of human nature to care about grasping the ironies of Shakespeare's genius. Rather than a celebration of ambition and evil, Macbeth is a play about the foolishness of a foolish couple who place too much faith in prophecy and turn to crime in desperation since, despite their love and lust for one another, Macbeth can't have children.
This is why it is Lady Macbeth who, because of her own unfulfilled motherhood, tries to lead her husband to murder somebody else's child, so as to restore his manliness to her eyes. And so she says to him: "Art thou afeard/ To be the same in thy own act and valour,/ As thou art in desire?"

The logic of Lady Macbeth is rather simple: "if you wish to do evil, how are you not "man" enough to do it?" Of course Macbeth does not want to look like a loser in front of his sexy wife, and, simply because of this vanity and his little intelligence, he leads himself into the hellish spiral of crime and murder that means the end of them both.
That Lady Macbeth is a hysterical woman with unsatisfied lustful desires is obvious when she becomes mad. That Macbeth is a fool is obvious in that he becomes a murderer for the only reason that he does not want to admit to himself that he is unfertile and that his wife is unsatisfied because of this.

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Most recent customer reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Bad story, but......
'Macbeth' is a bad story, but is has one of the greatest passages in English literature history. The speech Macbeth gives at the end is simply mindblowing. Read more

Published on July 4 2003 by Dhaval Vyas

5.0 out of 5 stars A journey into the macabre
A dark and grim tale of murder and deceit, Macbeth emerges as perhaps Shakespeare's bloodiest and most demonstrably macabre of his tragedies. Read more

Published on Mar 31 2003 by Chris Salzer