Still excellent, though maybe I liked Hamlet a wee bit better. So much murder. Witches with riddles are maybe the highlight. ( )

One of those books that I didn't want to read, but wanted to *have* read. Well, now I've read it. My first and only Shakespeare play to actually read. It was sitting on my shelf calling to me since I've been reading Scottish history recently. There was plenty of grisly drama and a few famous lines and, though a bit of a slog, it mostly kept my attention. Now I feel more educated. Which is good. But for my next Shakespeare adventure, I'll probably watch the play, as his works were intended. ( )

Book 279 - William Shakespeare - MacBeth

Probably among the most famous plays he wrote and one that takes me all the way back to my O Level days. I had never really thought about the themes of betrayal…isolation…murder…

One of Shakespeare’s greatest skills in his writings was for murders to be committed offstage….but the affects to be shown on. The best example I think is in describing the blood that cover MacBeth’s hands after he murders the King.

“Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red” - Macbeth (Act II, Sc. II).

Imagine what MacBeth must have actually done to have his hands thot red…wow.

Don’t let anyone tell you that Shakespeare is for the elite…astonishingly brilliant. ( )

For me, the flaw in Macbeth (the play, not the character) is that he jumps to the murderous conclusion too quickly. Lady Macbeth pushes him forward, but he doesn't take a lot of pushing, as he considers it as soon as he hears the witches prophecy. Lady Macbeth is really compelling, but dies too soon for me, I'd like to have seen another scene with her earlier. Those are minor of course; this is Shakespeare, and there are lines after lines, and book titles after book titles embedded in the text.

The Kindle edition I read this time had a modern English "translation" for each speech or bit of dialog in the play. This is handy; sometimes it's hard to get everything. I really read every speech and tried to make sure I understood it well before I read the translation. Sometimes the translations were really bad and really unnecessary. Rather than a translation, or maybe along with it, I would have liked to see an explication of some of the puns and rhymes that miss us these days.

Still, reading Macbeth was fun, though not as much fun -- or as much of a challenge! -- as reading Hamlet was a few years ago. I keep meaning to hit Much Ado About Nothing, or another play. Maybe soon. ( )

This was not a highly evocative read for me; however, it was not a tedious one either. Something about the plot line kept my mind interested even when my heart felt nothing. ( )