Macbeth takes place in Scotland. Macbeth is the leader of an army and is very good at his killing job. When these witches (Weird Sisters) appear to him and to his buddy Banquo, he learns that he is the new Thane of Cawdor and will someday be king. He's skeptical, but as soon as he learns that he is actually the new Thane of Cawdor, he becomes hopeful for kingship and plots to kill the King.
Knowledge of the future drives him to madness and Macbeth takes desperate measures causing a full-blown civil war that can only lead to doom.
Now you know why I look at the descriptions on the dust jacket or on GoodReads. I'm just not good at summarizing without giving anything away.
I finally got the chance to read Macbeth last semester for my Shakespeare class. I had seen a production of Macbeth performed at the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis, MN) years before, so it was nice to finally gain an understanding of what the heck is going on in this play. Luckily, my professor is something of a Shakespeare scholar.
I don't know why, but I thoroughly enjoy stories like this that have just a little too much violence and where the important characters fall into madness. People go mad over guilt, revenge, and greed. Lady Macbeth was an excellent character to read about because of her sleepwalking scene. It looks like she's guilty, but no one specifically says if she's guilty of something or not. I love that Shakespeare leaves certain things up for interpretation. That's why a lot of the time when you see a production or a film of a Shakespeare play, they'll be slightly different from each other, switching the setting, emphasizing different parts of the original script, picking up on or ignoring some of the implications that Shakespeare included in his original script.
I love this play so much. Go read it or see a production of it. You won't regret it.
I give 'Macbeth':
--Jude
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