Macbeth Resources

According to this website, Shakespeare besmirched the reputation of an (almost) innocent man. Compare and contrast the real with the fictional Macbeth here.

Cawdor Castle actually exists. And you can stay there! Shmoop summer camp, anyone?

Some developers are tossing around the idea of making Macbeth into a video game. Is the world ready?

Orson Welles directs an adaptation (1948) with Jeanette Nolan, Roddy McDowall, and Dan O'Herlihy.

In the 1955 Joe MacBeth, Lily MacBeth encourages her husband Joe to take over Chicago's underworld.

Akira Kurosawa's masterful 1957 adaptation, Throne of Blood, sets Macbeth in Feudal Japan.

Trevor Nunn's 1979 A Performance of Macbeth stars dream team Ian McKellen (a.k.a. Gandalf or Magneto) and Judi Dench.

And then there's Scotland, Pa., a 2001 re-make of Macbeth set in a hamburger stand in 1975 in Pennsylvania. This one aired at Sundance.

Go global with 2003's Maqbool, a Hindi adaptation set in the Mumbai underworld, starring Irfan Khan and Tabu.

In Geoffrey Wright's 2006 Macbeth, the events play out in Melbourne, Australia amidst gang warfare.

Watch the entire 2:41:52 long PBS version here, with Captain Picard staring as the Thane of Cawdor.

A condensed version of the play featuring Scottish sock puppets. Enough said.

Check out Flocabulary’s “Sound and Fury” Macbeth rap from the Shakespeare is Hip-Hop album. It’s cooler than it sounds.

The BBC’s hilarious Bitesize summary tells the story of Macbeth in under eight minutes.

Shakespeare meets sketch comedy in this abbreviated performance of the play.

Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. London: Jaggard, 1623. Opening page of Macbeth.

Henry Fuseli painted Macbeth consulting the vision of the armed head in 1793.

A 1827 painting by Alexandre-Marie Colin.

You're going to need them to tackle Freud's complex but fascinating analysis that explores the downfall of Lady Macbeth, and the historical context of the Elizabethan transition to James I of Scotland, son of Elizabeth's cousin Mary. Freud highlights the father-son relations in the play, and touches upon the idea of Elizabeth's own childlessness, and the tangle for the throne that ensues, to explain Shakespeare's special treatment of this otherwise well-known story.

In Jane Avrich’s hilarious short story, Lady Macbeth marries a young fruit mogul (we’re not kidding) and baffles everyone with her eccentric behavior. Read it on Google Books.

Leave the Complete Works of Shakespeare at home and read this on your iThing.