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 features: 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 divides: 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.
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 features: 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 divides: 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.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on Text
Introduction: Macbeth and Mackbeth, the prequel
1 Political Macbeth
2 ‘The gracious Duncan’ and ‘our eldest, Malcolm’
3 The return of Fleance
4 Noir Macbeth
5 Recuperating Lady Macbeth
6 Novelizing Macbeth
7 Global and racial Macbeth
8 Macbeth, the musical
Epilogue: Macbeth 3.0
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Analyzing adaptations and tropes of interpretation of Macbeth since its first performance, this book argues that the centuries-long habit of ‘correcting’ Macbeth to fit a period’s political and aesthetic assumptions both misrepresents and domesticates the play’s strangeness, hybridity, and logical difficulties.
William C. Carroll is Professor of English Emeritus at Boston University, USA. He has edited five editions of early modern plays, including Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Arden Third Series, 2004), Love’s Labour’s Lost (2009) and Thomas Middleton, Four Plays (Methuen Drama, 2012), has authored three critical books and is the Co-General Editor of the New Mermaids series of plays.
This impeccably researched, detailed book has much to offer to
anyone studying, teaching, directing or taking part in what is
probably Shakespeare’s best known play.
*Ink Pellet*
Offers a rich compendium of examples, providing both a resource for
and an invitation to readers and researchers to explore further
themselves.
*Shakespeare Survey*
Carroll’s net is cast wide and there are chapters on the novel,
global and racial Macbeths, as well as musical versions. Stage and
cinematic adaptations figure throughout. Geographically, the range
is impressive—no fewer than thirty different countries are
mentioned … [Carroll] has a fluent grasp of this play’s
multitudinous reincarnations. This elegant study will surely become
a model of condensation and explication of the continuing cultural
presence of Shakespeare’s apparently immortal literary
artefacts.
*Adaptation*
Wonderfully readable, insightful, informative, generously open in
approach, and inspiring … Carroll makes the collective stories
associated with Macbeth feel richer than the single story,
important and powerful as it is, offered by Shakespeare.
*Shakespeare Studies*
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