macbeth newspaper article assignment

404 Not found

• International
• Schools directory
• Resources Jobs Schools directory News Search

Macbeth: Newspaper Article Activity Template

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

20 January 2015

• Share through email
• Share through twitter
• Share through linkedin
• Share through facebook
• Share through pinterest

Creative Commons "Sharealike"

Your rating is required to reflect your happiness.

It's good to leave some feedback.

Something went wrong, please try again later.

commanderata

Umm could u add some examples of some finished ones? Really in dire need of ur help.<br />

sorry i no longer work as an english teacher

Empty reply does not make any sense for the end user

Report this resource to let us know if it violates our terms and conditions. Our customer service team will review your report and will be in touch.

Not quite what you were looking for? Search by keyword to find the right resource:

If you download or print anything from this site, please consider making at least a $ 10.00 donation through PayPal. I can maintain and expand this website only with your help.

Other titles are well worth exploring.

From Orson Welles to Michael Fassbender : More than a dozen versions of “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” (V,v). Patrick Stewart all by himself in clip from PBS version.

Shakespeare Uncovered has a series of video clips wherein Ethan Hawke explores the character and the play. Very much a performance approach to the play. Sometimes difficult to get access to through PBS.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth films , Paul Duncan presents a history of film versions in his 18-minute review. Serves as a good introduction to the play. Definitely full of spoilers.

Trailers are also useful for introducing a play:

• Welles (1948)
• Polanski (1971)
• Wright (2006)
• Goold PBS (2010)
• Royal Shakespeare Company (2011)
• Branaugh (2013)
• Fassbinder (2015)
• Cohen (2021)

Cliff Notes and SparkNotes each have a short overview/review.

Macbeth Rap by Flocabulary is surprisingly catchy.

TED Talk: “Why Should You Read Macbeth ?” -- great overview.

John Green offers Part I: Free Will, Witches, Murder and Macbeth and Part 2: Gender, Guilt and Fate

Thug Notes is one of those sites you love or you hate. Language may be inappropriate, but analysis is excellent.

Theater Guides

Teacher Guides developed by various Theater companies offer a different approach to the play. Many include excellent background material, as well as performance-oriented discussion and analyses. Even the interviews with actors and how they perceived their character and prepared for the performance can offer unique insights.

• Acting Company of America
• American Players Theater
• Atlanta Shakespeare Company
• Chicago Shakespeare Theater
• Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theater
• Guthrie Theater
• Hartford Stage Company
• Lincoln Center
• National Arts Center
• New Jersey Shakespeare Society
• Oregon Festival
• Royal Shakespeare Society
• Stratford Festival
• Utah Shakespeare Festival
• The Young Company

Films / Videos

Shakespeare’s Macbeth Films by Wordsmith -- An introduction to the play and an historical overview of several major film versions (Welles, Polanski, Kurosawa, Kurzel, etc.).

Roman Polanski (1971) is famous for his adaptation’s copious amounts of bloody gore, expert use of location settings, and Lady Macbeth’s nude sleepwalking scene. Despite those warnings, students find it interesting. It would be wise to screen it before you show it.

Royal Shakespeare Company’s Macbeth (1979) stars Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen. Acting is excellent but staging is bare bones and the pace is slow.

Macbeth (2006) uses a modern-day Melbourne gangster setting, and the actors deliver the dialogue in Australian accents, but it largely maintains the language of the original play. Young actors and dark settings interest kids, but it is sometimes very hard to find. A major Australian version with dedicated teacher guide .

Macbeth (2010) presents Patrick Stewart’s compelling performance as the ambitious general, with Kate Fleetwood as his coldly scheming, seductive wife. Modernized setting includes some really gruesome images.Kids love it. PBS broadcast the entire play, with an excellent teacher guide . Select scenes available for free. Entire play available on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+. New York Times review of performance.

MacBird by Barbara Johnson is more for teachers, and older ones at that. MacBird is a 1967 political satire that superimposed the transferral of power following the Kennedy assassination onto the plot of Shakespeare’s Macbeth . This counter culture work depicted President Lyndon Johnson as Macbeth, and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as Lady Macbeth. Obviously controversial. (Note: If you have a new pristine copy, it could sell for $843 on Amazon.)

Adaptations

Giuseppe Verdi’s Opera is accessible to students, available in many different versions. My favorite is Macbeth (2005) by the Glyndebourne Opera, which is readily available. Several complete operas are also available on YouTube, including this one with English subtitles . Four operatic houses have provided extraordinarily detailed and rich teaching guides: Michigan Opera ,  Minnesota Opera House ,    Pacific Opera . and  The Metropolitan . English translation of Verdi .

Yes, there is a Simpsons version called MacHomer . Just a clip .

MacHomer has evolved (or devolved) into a short play, with a dedicated website, videos and and study materials. Kidtoons Video Stories , each less than five minutes, introduce Shakespeare and explain the play. Each Teacher Guide is 10+ pages of activities and handouts for younger students, but which are really fun, regardless of the student’s age.

• Introducing Shakespeare • The Language of Shakespeare -- Teacher Guide • Shakespeare Out Loud • Why Study Shakespeare? -- Teacher Guide • The Power of Words -- Teacher Guide
• Shakespeare’s Time • Going to the Theater -- Teacher Guide • Being an Actor -- Teacher Guide • About William Shakespeare -- Teacher Guid e
• Shakespeare’s Macbeth • About Macbeth the Play - - Teacher Guide • About Macbeth the King -- Teacher Guide • The Curse of Macbeth

This frequently-performed play has inspired powerful posters. Some of these were designed for theater performances, identified by theater; others for films, identified by director; a few are art projects, identified by artist. Write an art analysis of your favorite, focusing on what the poster reveals about the play itself. (Click each poster to see a larger image). Remember: What is the effect of the poster and how is that effect produced?

If you download or print anything from this site, please consider making at least a $10.00 donation through PayPal. I can maintain and expand this website only with your help.

Back to Assignments or Home . Updated 23 February 2024.

Website navigation

A Modern Perspective: Macbeth

By Susan Snyder

Coleridge pronounced Macbeth to be “wholly tragic.” Rejecting the drunken Porter of Act 2, scene 3 as “an interpolation of the actors,” and perceiving no wordplay in the rest of the text (he was wrong on both counts), he declared that the play had no comic admixture at all. More acutely, though still in support of this sense of the play as unadulterated tragedy, he noted the absence in Macbeth of a process characteristic of other Shakespearean tragedies, the “reasonings of equivocal morality.” 1

Indeed, as Macbeth ponders his decisive tragic act of killing the king, he is not deceived about its moral nature. To kill anyone to whom he is tied by obligations of social and political loyalty as well as kinship is, he knows, deeply wrong:

         He’s here in double trust:

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

Who should against his murderer shut the door,

Not bear the knife myself.                  ( 1.7.12 –16)

And to kill Duncan, who has been “so clear in his great office” (that is, so free from corruption as a ruler), is to compound the iniquity. In adapting the story of Macbeth from Holinshed’s Chronicles of Scotland, Shakespeare created a stark black-white moral opposition by omitting from his story Duncan’s weakness as a monarch while retaining his gentle, virtuous nature. Unlike his prototype in Holinshed’s history, Macbeth kills not an ineffective leader but a saint whose benevolent presence blesses Scotland. In the same vein of polarized morality, Shakespeare departs from the Holinshed account in which Macbeth is joined in regicide by Banquo and others; instead, he has Macbeth act alone against Duncan. While it might be good politics to distance Banquo from guilt (he was an ancestor of James I, the current king of England and patron of Shakespeare’s acting company), excluding the other thanes as well suggests that the playwright had decided to focus on private, purely moral issues uncomplicated by the gray shades of political expediency.

Duncan has done nothing, then, to deserve violent death. Unlike such tragic heroes as Brutus and Othello, who are enmeshed in “equivocal morality,” Macbeth cannot justify his actions by the perceived misdeeds of his victim. “I have no spur,” he admits, “To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition” ( 1.7.25 –27). This ambition is portrayed indirectly rather than directly. But it is surely no accident that the Weïrd Sisters accost him and crystallize his secret thoughts of the crown into objective possibility just when he has hit new heights of success captaining Duncan’s armies and defeating Duncan’s enemies. The element of displacement and substitution here—Macbeth leading the fight for Scotland while the titular leader waits behind the lines for the outcome—reinforces our sense that, whatever mysterious timetable the Sisters work by, this is the psychologically right moment to confront Macbeth with their predictions of greatness. Hailed as thane of Glamis, thane of Cawdor, and king, he is initially curious and disbelieving. Though his first fearful reaction ( 1.3.54 ) is left unexplained, for us to fill in as we will, surely one way to read his fear is that the word “king” touches a buried nerve of desire. When Ross and Angus immediately arrive to announce that Macbeth is now Cawdor as well as Glamis, the balance of skepticism tilts precipitously toward belief. The nerve vibrates intensely. Two-thirds of the prophecy is already accomplished. The remaining prediction, “king hereafter,” is suddenly isolated and highlighted; and because of the Sisters’ now proven powers of foreknowledge, it seems to call out for its parallel, inevitable fulfillment.

The Weïrd Sisters present nouns rather than verbs. They put titles on Macbeth without telling what actions he must carry out to attain those titles. It is Lady Macbeth who supplies the verbs. Understanding that her husband is torn between the now-articulated object of desire and the fearful deed that must achieve it (“wouldst not play false / And yet wouldst wrongly win,” 1.5.22 –23), she persuades him by harping relentlessly on manly action. That very gap between noun and verb, the desired prize and the doing necessary to win it, becomes a way of taunting him as a coward: “Art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valor / As thou art in desire?” ( 1.7.43 –45). A man is one who closes this gap by strong action, by taking what he wants; whatever inhibits that action is unmanly fear. And a man is one who does what he has sworn to do, no matter what. We never see Macbeth vow to kill Duncan, but in Lady Macbeth’s mind just his broaching the subject has become a commitment. With graphic horror she fantasizes how she would tear her nursing baby from her breast and dash its brains out if she had sworn as she says her husband did. She would, that is, violate her deepest nature as a woman and sever violently the closest tie of kinship and dependence. Till now, Macbeth has resisted such violation, clinging to a more humane definition of “man” that accepts fidelity and obligation as necessary limits on his prowess. Now, in danger of being bested by his wife in this contest of fierce determinations, he accepts her simpler, more primitive equation of manhood with killing: he commits himself to destroying Duncan. It is significant for the lack of “equivocal morality” that even Lady Macbeth in this crucial scene of persuasion doesn’t try to manipulate or blur the polarized moral scheme. Adopting instead a warrior ethic apart from social morality, she presents the murder not as good but as heroic.

Moral clarity informs not only the decisions and actions of Macbeth but the stage of nature on which they are played out. The natural universe revealed in the play is essentially attuned to the good, so that it reacts to the unambiguously evil act of killing Duncan with disruptions that are equally easy to read. There are wild winds, an earthquake, “strange screams of death” ( 2.3.61 –69). And beyond such general upheaval there is a series of unnatural acts that distortedly mirror Macbeth’s. Duncan’s horses overthrow natural order and devour each other, like Macbeth turning on his king and cousin. “A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place”—the monarch of birds at its highest pitch—is killed by a mousing owl, a lesser bird who ordinarily preys on insignificant creatures ( 2.4.15 –16). Most ominous of all, on the morning following the king’s death, is the absence of the sun: like the falcon a symbol of monarchy, but expanding that to suggest the source of all life. In a general sense, the sunless day shows the heavens “troubled with man’s act” ( 2.4.7 ), but the following grim metaphor points to a closer and more sinister connection: “dark night strangles the traveling lamp” ( 2.4.9 ). The daylight has been murdered like Duncan. Scotland’s moral darkness lasts till the end of Macbeth’s reign. The major scenes take place at night or in the atmosphere of the “black, and midnight hags” ( 4.1.48 ), and there is no mention of light or sunshine except in England ( 4.3.1 ).

Later in the play, nature finds equally fitting forms for its revenge against Macbeth. Despite his violations of the natural order, he nevertheless expects the laws of nature to work for him in the usual way. But the next victim, Banquo, though his murderer has left him “safe in a ditch” ( 3.4.28 ), refuses to stay safely still and out of sight. In Macbeth’s horrified response to this restless corpse, we may hear not only panic but outrage at the breakdown of the laws of motion:

                           The time has been

That, when the brains were out, the man would die,

And there an end. But now they rise again

With twenty mortal murders on their crowns

And push us from our stools. This is more strange

Than such a murder is.                           ( 3.4.94 –99)

His word choice is odd: “ they rise,” a plural where we would expect “he rises,” and the loaded word “crowns” for heads. Macbeth seems to be haunted by his last victim, King Duncan, as well as the present one. And by his outraged comparison at the end—the violent death and the ghostly appearance compete in strangeness—Macbeth suggests, without consciously intending to, that Banquo’s walking in death answers to, or even is caused by, the murder that cut him off so prematurely. The unnatural murder generates unnatural movement in the dead. Lady Macbeth, too, walks when she should be immobile in sleep, “a great perturbation in nature” ( 5.1.10 ).

It is through this same ironic trust in natural law that Macbeth draws strength from the Sisters’ later prophecy: if he is safe until Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, he must be safe forever:

Who can impress the forest, bid the tree

Unfix his earthbound root? Sweet bodements, good!

Rebellious dead, rise never till the Wood

Of Birnam rise . . .                  ( 4.1.109 –12)

His security is ironic because for Macbeth, of all people, there can be no dependence on predictable natural processes. The “rebellious dead” have already unnaturally risen once; fixed trees can move against him as well. And so, in time, they do. Outraged nature keeps matching the Macbeths’ transgressions, undoing and expelling their perversities with its own.

In tragedies where right and wrong are rendered problematic, the dramatic focus is likely to be on the complications of choice. Macbeth, on the contrary, is preoccupied less with the protagonist’s initial choice of a relatively unambiguous wrong action than with the moral decline that follows. H. B. Charlton noted that one could see in Richard III as well as Macbeth the biblical axiom that “the wages of sin is death”; but where the history play assumes the principle, Macbeth demonstrates why it has to be that way. 2 The necessity is not so much theological as psychological: we watch in Macbeth the hardening and distortion that follows on self-violation. The need to suppress part of himself in order to kill Duncan becomes a refusal to acknowledge his deed (“I am afraid to think what I have done. / Look on ’t again I dare not”: 2.2.66 –67). His later murders are all done by proxy, in an attempt to create still more distance between the destruction he wills and full psychic awareness of his responsibility. At the same time, murder becomes a necessary activity, the verb now a compulsion almost without regard to the object: plotted after he has seen the Weïrd Sisters’ apparitions, Macbeth’s attack on Macduff’s “line” ( 4.1.174 ) is an insane double displacement, of fear of Macduff himself and fury at the vision of the line of kings fathered by Banquo.

Yet the moral universe of Macbeth is not as uncomplicated as some critics have imagined. To see in the play’s human and physical nature only a straightforward pattern of sin and punishment is to gloss over the questions it raises obliquely, the moral complexities and mysteries it opens up. The Weïrd Sisters, for example, remain undefined. Where do they come from? Where do they go when they disappear from the action in Act 4? What is their place in a moral universe that ostensibly recoils against sin and punishes it? Are they human witches, or supernatural beings? Labeling them “evil” seems not so much incorrect as inadequate. Do they cause men to commit crimes, or do they only present the possibility to them? Macbeth responds to his prophecy by killing his king, but Banquo after hearing the one directed at him is not impelled to act at all. Do we take this difference as demonstrating that the Sisters have in themselves no power beyond suggestion? Or should we rather find it somewhat sinister later on when Banquo, ancestor of James I or not, sees reason in Macbeth’s success to look forward to his own—yet feels it necessary to conceal his hopes ( 3.1.1 –10)?

Even what we most take for granted becomes problematic when scrutinized. Does Macbeth really desire to be king? Lady Macbeth says he does, but what comes through in 1.5 and 1.7 is more her desire than his. Apart from one brief reference to ambition when he is ruling out other motives to kill Duncan, Macbeth himself is strangely silent about any longing for royal power and position. Instead of an obsession that fills his personal horizon, we find in Macbeth something of a motivational void. Why does he feel obligated, or compelled, to bring about an advance in station that the prophecy seems to render inevitable anyway? A. C. Bradley put his finger on this absence of positive desire when he observed that Macbeth commits his crime as if it were “an appalling duty.” 3

Recent lines of critical inquiry also call old certainties into question. Duncan’s saintly status would seem assured, yet sociological critics are disquieted by the way we are introduced to him, as he receives news of the battle in 1.2. On the one hand we hear reports of horrifying savagery in the fighting, savagery in which the loyal thanes participate as much as the rebels and invaders—more so, in fact, when Macbeth and Banquo are likened to the crucifiers of Christ (“or memorize another Golgotha,” 1.2.44 ). In response we see Duncan exulting not only in the victory but in the bloodshed, equating honor with wounds. It is not that he bears any particular guilt. Yet the mild paternal king is nevertheless implicated here in his society’s violent warrior ethic, its predicating of manly worth on prowess in killing. 4 But isn’t this just what we condemn in Lady Macbeth? Cultural analysis tends to blur the sharp demarcations, even between two such figures apparently totally opposed, and to draw them together as participants in and products of the same constellation of social values.

Lady Macbeth and Duncan meet in a more particular way, positioned as they are on the same side of Scotland’s basic division between warriors and those protected by warriors. The king is too old and fragile to fight; the lady is neither, but she is barred from battle by traditional gender conventions that assign her instead the functions of following her husband’s commands and nurturing her young. In fact, of course, Lady Macbeth’s actions and outlook thoroughly subvert this ideology, as she forcefully takes the lead in planning the murder and shames her husband into joining in by her willingness to slaughter her own nurseling. It is easy to call Lady Macbeth “evil,” but the label tends to close down analysis exactly where we ought to probe more deeply. Macbeth’s wife is restless in a social role that in spite of her formidable courage and energy offers no chance of independent action and heroic achievement. It is almost inevitable that she turn to achievement at second hand, through and for her husband. Standing perforce on the sidelines, like Duncan once again, she promotes and cheers the killing.

Other situations, too, may be more complex than at first they seem. Lady Macduff, unlike Lady Macbeth, accepts her womanly function of caring for her children and her nonwarrior status of being protected. But she is not protected. The ideology of gender seems just as destructive from the submissive side as from the rebellious, when Macduff deserts her in order to pursue his political cause against Macbeth in England and there is no husband to stand in the way of the murderers sent by Macbeth. The obedient wife dies, with her cherished son, just as the rebellious, murderous lady will die who consigned her own nursing baby to death. The moral universe of Macbeth has room for massive injustice. Traditional critics find Lady Macbeth “unnatural,” and even those who do not accept the equation of gender ideology with nature can agree with the condemnation in view of her determined suppression of all bonds of human sympathy. Clear enough. But we get more blurring and crossovers when Macduff’s wife calls him unnatural. In leaving his family defenseless in Macbeth’s dangerous Scotland, he too seems to discount human bonds. His own wife complains bitterly that “he wants the natural touch”; where even the tiny wren will fight for her young against the owl, his flight seems to signify fear rather than natural love ( 4.2.8 –16). Ross’s reply, “cruel are the times,” while it doesn’t console Lady Macduff and certainly doesn’t save her, strives to relocate the moral ambiguity of Macduff’s conduct in the situation created by Macbeth’s tyrannical rule. The very political crisis that pulls Macduff away from his family on public business puts his private life in jeopardy through the same act of desertion. But while acknowledging the peculiar tensions raised by a tyrant-king, we may also see in the Macduff family’s disaster a tragic version of a more familiar conflict: the contest between public and private commitments that can rack conventional marriages, with the wife confined to a private role while the husband is supposed to balance obligations in both spheres.

Malcolm is allied with Duncan by lineage and with Macduff by their shared role of redemptive champion in the final movement of the play. He, too, is not allowed to travel through the action unsullied. After a long absence from the scene following the murder of Duncan, he reappears in England to be sought by Macduff in the crusade against Macbeth. Malcolm is cautious and reserved, and when he does start speaking more freely, what we hear is an astonishing catalogue of self-accusations. He calls himself lustful, avaricious, guilty of every crime and totally lacking in kingly virtues:

                Nay, had I power, I should

Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,

Uproar the universal peace, confound

All unity on earth.                  ( 4.3.113 –16)

Before people became so familiar with Shakespeare’s play, I suspect many audiences believed what Malcolm says of himself. Students on first reading still do. Why shouldn’t they? He has been absent from the stage for some time, and his only significant action in the early part of the play was to run away after his father’s murder. When this essentially unknown prince lists his vices in lengthy speeches of self-loathing, there is no indication—except an exaggeration easily ascribable to his youth—that he is not sincere. And if we do believe, we cannot help joining in Macduff’s distress. Malcolm, the last hope for redeeming Scotland from the tyrant, has let us down. Duncan’s son is more corrupt than Macbeth. He even sounds like Macbeth, whose own milk of human kindness ( 1.5.17 ) was curdled by his wife; who threatened to destroy the whole natural order, “though the treasure / Of nature’s germens tumble all together / Even till destruction sicken” ( 4.1.60 –63). In due course, Malcolm takes it all back; but his words once spoken cannot simply be canceled, erased as if they were on paper. We have already, on hearing them, mentally and emotionally processed the false “facts,” absorbed them experientially. Perhaps they continue to color indirectly our sense of the next king of Scotland.

Viewed through various lenses, then, the black and white of Macbeth may fade toward shades of gray. The play is an open system, offering some fixed markers with which to take one’s basic bearings but also, in closer scrutiny, offering provocative questions and moral ambiguities.

• “Notes for a Lecture on Macbeth ” [c. 1813], in Coleridge’s Writings on Shakespeare , ed. Terence Hawkes (New York: Capricorn, 1959), p. 188.
• H. B. Charlton, Shakespearian Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), p. 141.
• A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Macmillan, 1904), p. 358.
• James L. Calderwood, If It Were Done: “Macbeth” and Tragic Action (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), pp. 77–89.

Stay connected

Find out what’s on, read our latest stories, and learn how you can get involved.

article macbeth

All Formats

Resource types, all resource types.

• Rating Count
• Price (Ascending)
• Price (Descending)
• Most Recent

Article macbeth

Macbeth - Article /Poetry Pairings with Choice Prompts for Each Act

• Google Drive™ folder

Macbeth Background Article and Three Level Guide Questions

• Word Document File

Macbeth Newspaper Article Assignment

MACBETH [UNIT DOCUMENTS & ARTICLES ]

Macbeth Newspaper Article

Macbeth Scavenger Hunt: Making Real World Thematic Connections

Macbeth Choice-board Project: Interactive Instructions for Digital Learners!

• Google Slides™

Interactive Introduction to Shakespeare and Macbeth (Key included)

• Internet Activities

MACBETH [BUNDLE]

AP Literature Macbeth | Research Activity | Stations/Jigsaw | No Prep

Violence in Shakespeare's Plays Informational Text Article with Questions

• Google Apps™

"William Shakespeare" - Article , Power Point, Activities, Assessments (DL) (EA)

• Easel Assessment

Macbeth - Complete Unit- Social Justice Perspective

Macbeth , Acts I - V with Links to Assessments created in Google Forms

Macbeth Mental Health Essay

Macbeth Character Gallery Walk

Macbeth Tic-Tac-Toe Choice Board

Modern Macbeth Research Assignment and Presentation

• Google Docs™

Introduction to Macbeth and Shakespeare Activity Pack Worksheets DIGITAL & PRINT

Macbeth Notes, Quizzes, Projects

Macbeth Unit Study Activities

Macbeth & Dr. Who "The Shakespeare Code" Annotated Bibliography Assignment

Macbeth Introduction

The Role of Fate vs. Free Will in Macbeth

• We're hiring
• Help & FAQ
• Privacy policy
• Student privacy
• Terms of service
• Tell us what you think

Sample details

• William Shakespeare,

Related Topics

• Titus Andronicus
• Taming of The Shrew
• Role Of Media
• As You Like It
• Influence Of Media
• Romeo And Juliet
• The Merchant of Venice

Macbeth newspaper article

The article reports on the chaos that occurred at Macbeth’s castle during a celebration banquet in Scotland. Macbeth’s behavior was unusual and caused concern among guests, including the king. Lady Macbeth tried to dismiss the situation, but many people are now speculating if something bad has happened to Banquo or if the monarchy is in jeopardy. The article ends with the confirmation that the incident will be reviewed and the king’s medical status will be monitored closely.

The all about the big world we live in exclusive News today. Last night in Scotland, chaos erupted at the Macbeths castle during what was supposed to be a peaceful celebration banquet. Macbeth’s behavior was strange and uncharacteristic. A guest at the party, Lennox, said he had never seen Macbeth act in such distraught manner and thought something must have been terribly wrong. Lady Macbeth tried to soothe party guests by saying “Sit down, worthy friends. My husband is down in an empty seat and explained

to his guests often like this, and he has been since he was a child. ” that he could not because the seats were all filled. Many lords are wondering at this point if Even the king himself told his guests that he has a Macbeth is up for the task at hand of ruling this strange disorder and they should not be alarmed by Kingdom after such a display of inappropriate his behavior. behavior. When questioned by Macbeth’s cousin Ross, Lady Perhaps Macbeth was confused by the absence Macbeth dismissed the

entire party claiming her of h is friend Banquo. As he said “We would husband was unwell and needed to get some rest. have all the nobility of Scotland gathered under one roof, if only Banquo were here. I hope it Many insiders reported that the early dismissal turns out that he’s late out of rudeness, and not seamed suspicious and are now wondering if in fact because something bad has happened to him. ” the monarchy is in jeopardy. A party guest who wished to remain At this point there is no further

information anonymous claimed that the king was confirming the incident, however, there will be a hallucinating when Macbeth refused to sit further review of the situation and close monitoring of down in an empty seat and explained to his the kings medical status. Scotland Times Banquo does not show up for the Banquet and Macbeth’s behavior was really strange. Lady Macbeth had to send everyone home early Macbeth Was Not Himself During His Banquet guests that he could not because the seats were all filled.

Cite this page

https://graduateway.com/macbeth-newspaper-article/

You can get a custom paper by one of our expert writers

• Midsummer Night's Dream
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Electronic And Print Media
• The Tempest
• Social Networking

Check more samples on your topics

Analysis of a newspaper article.

Human migration

Introduction In May 5, 2008, it was published in the BBC UK News that the UK Border Agency plans to increase places in immigration detention centers by 60% or about 1,300 to 1,500 additional places. Brook House near Gatwick Airport, New Wings at Harmondsworth, Dover and Oakington are present places of immigration detention centers. With the

To Kill a Mockingbird Newspaper Article

To Kill A Mockingbird

The Maycomb Dayhome The Maycomb Dayhome Freezing Weather Met With Raging Fire Freezing Weather Met With Raging Fire Residents of Maycomb County were warmed up on the cold night of December, with a burning house fire. Residents of Maycomb County were warmed up on the cold night of December, with a burning house fire. By:

Newspaper Article Assignment Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

Yesterday around noon, Rome witnessed the fall of a mighty leader named Julius Caesar. The conspirators involved in this murder were witnessed by the names of Cassius, Casca, Cinna, Trebonius, Ligarius, Decius Brutus, Metellus Cimber and Brutus. It was supposed to be an ordinary gathering like any other at the Capitol on March 15th, 44

Newspaper Article Assignment Julius Caesar Sample

Gaius Julius Caesar was killed from 20 stab lesions during a Senate meeting in Pompey’s Theater yesterday forenoon. He was stabbed largely on the dorsum and on his thorax. One of the most fatal lesions was one stopping point to his bosom. which contributed to his immediate decease. He fell down and breathed his last

Impact of Internet on the Newspaper industry

The world today is in the middle of a technological revolution that has transformed how things are done. Of the recent technological advancements, Internet has had the greatest impact of how communication, which is at the core of the development of business, is conveyed. The working of most businesses has either been affected positively or

Compare and Contrast TV and Newspaper

In the ages of information technology, television and newspaper have emerged as two types of popular mass media. These two types of media have become more and more essential in our modern life. Although they share common in updating information and diversifying in classification, there are different from the way people created them to the

Readership Trends of English Newspaper in Singapore

            The Nielsen Media Research reported an increase in the readership of English language newspapers in Singapore. It also reported a very small, almost insignificant increase on the readership of Malay and Tamil language newspapers. Chinese language newspaper readership has some inconsistencies, but the over-all trend is increasing. The survey reported the initial year in

Town Tattle Newspaper (Great Gatsby)

Great Gatsby

Jay Gatsby has been the host from the greatest and wildest parties during the summer. The parties are said to last for hours, and some of them even continue to the next days. Gatsby’s house is not under dry law, actually it is the opposite. Drinks are on the house there and there are thousands

A Programme to Automatically Extract Newspaper Headlines

AbstractionHeadlines are the most of import elements in the newspaper since they inform the reader of what the article is about. Headlines are frequently scanned by most readers without reading the articles. The characteristics of the headline like big bold type and its extension over two or more columns to be easy seen assisting to

Hi, my name is Amy 👋

In case you can't find a relevant example, our professional writers are ready to help you write a unique paper. Just talk to our smart assistant Amy and she'll connect you with the best match.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Player Kings’ Review: Ian McKellen’s Juicy Assignment as Falstaff

In Robert Icke’s adaptation of Parts 1 and 2 of “Henry IV,” the veteran stage actor’s performance belies his age.

By Matt Wolf

The critic Matt Wolf saw the show in London.

There are two shows for the price of one at “ Player Kings ,” in which the director Robert Icke has combined both of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” history plays into a self-contained whole.

The production offers a compressed version of the royal accession story that, in this version, runs nearly four hours. It is an opportunity to experience Ian McKellen’s unbridled love of performance. At 84, the production’s leading man possesses an energy and vigor that belie his years.

“ Player Kings ” — which runs at the Noël Coward Theater through June 22, before touring England — is the latest in a wave of recent high-profile Shakespeare productions in London. Uniquely among the other great British theater actors of his generation, McKellen still returns year after year to the stage, recently tackling Lear for a second time and playing an octogenarian Hamlet .

Perhaps inevitably, there’s a feeling of the star vehicle to this production. In the “sweet creature of bombast” that is this play’s John Falstaff, McKellen has an especially juicy assignment — an outsized character whose appetite for life matches the actor’s own gusto. We’re told that the ample Falstaff hasn’t seen his own knees in years, and when he sits, it looks as if he may never stand up. His mouth, however, seems always in motion, as if chewing food for constant fuel.

He’s also a necessary soul mate to the carousing, drug-using Prince Hal (the excellent Toheeb Jimoh, an Emmy nominee for “ Ted Lasso ”), whose coming-of-age story — becoming, as he puts it, “more myself” — connects these two “Henry IV” plays. But the roustabout Hal’s dawning maturity costs him the companion he once held dear.

“Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world,” says a wary Falstaff in the production’s second half, instructions Hal follows in one of the most ruthless of all Shakespeare’s scenes. And Jimoh — who played a notable Romeo last year at the Almeida — once again shows a fluency with Renaissance language that bodes well for his own Shakespearean future.

Icke hasn’t directed Shakespeare in London since 2017, when Andrew Scott was his Hamlet . Like that show, “Player Kings” uses modern dress, but it forsakes video and hand-held cameras for a comparatively straightforward approach; Icke’s directorial hand is less obvious in this production. Captions appear now and again above the stage to tell us where we are, and Hildegard Bechtler’s brick wall set features curtains pulled across the breadth of the stage to change locations.

Contemporary resonances are inescapable. Watching the party boy Hal of the earlier scenes, whose devil-may-care recklessness will fall away with time, you can’t help but think of Britain’s own Prince Harry, and his onetime reputation as a royal bad boy.

The aging King Henry (an ashen Richard Coyle) is a fretful, anxious figure who might send any child into the contrastingly exuberant embrace of Falstaff, who is a far more pleasing father figure. (Referencing the vilifications of “base news-mongers,” Hal, too, could well be admonishing today’s tabloid press.)

Icke’s adaptation never lets us forget that war is raging in the background. Rebellion, battle and bloodshed are rarely far from view, and there’s a disturbing moment — not to be revealed — in which Falstaff’s capacity for cruelty comes to the fore.

Part 2, as written, is the longer of the plays and can be the more satisfying: more poetic and reflective, less of a rowdy action movie in embryo. That isn’t the case on this occasion, where cuts suggest a desire to speed through to the ending, and the female characters — Doll Tearsheet (Tafline Steen) and Mistress Quickly (Clare Perkins) — seem sidelined in particular.

You come to miss, too, the feral presence of Hotspur (Samuel Edward-Cook), Hal’s rival whose death brings Part 1 to its climax. (The charismatic Edward-Cook doubles as Falstaff’s swaggering sidekick, Pistol.)

These shortfalls are unlikely to matter much to playgoers drawn by the above-the-title star, who has waited a lifetime to play Falstaff after playing two other roles in Part 2 during his student days: Indeed, McKellen’s biography in the playbill cites only his Shakespeare credits — a singularly impressive list.

McKellen revels at every moment in the language that pours luxuriantly forth from Falstaff, whose fondness for verbal embellishment and exaggeration is part of his charm. But you equally feel the neediness that propels Falstaff to savor every experience, carnal ones included.

Why not, then, hand this role over to a life force of the English theater? “You bear your years very well,” Justice Shallow (Robin Soans) says in greeting the wild-haired Falstaff midway through Part 2. His audience would surely drink to that.

Player Kings

Through June 22 at the Noël Coward Theater in London, then touring; playerkingstheplay.co.uk .

Arts and Culture Across Europe

A reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, the long forgotten silent movie star who descends into madness, was the big winner at this year’s Olivier Awards .

New productions of “Macbeth” and “Hamlet” in Paris follow a French tradition of adapting familiar works . The results are innovative, and sometimes cryptic.

The internet latched on to 16-year-old Felicia Dawkins’ performance as The Unknown at a shambolic Willy Wonka-inspired event . Now she’s heading to a bigger and scarier stage in London.

When activists urged Tate Britain in London to take an offensive artwork off its walls, the institution commissioned Keith Piper  to create a response instead. The result recently went on display.

The new National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam has been in the works for almost 20 years. It is the first institution to tell the full story  of the persecution of Dutch Jews during World War II.

At a retrospective of John Singer Sargent’s portraits in London, where the American expatriate fled after creating a scandal in Paris, clothes offer both armor and self-expression .