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Murder, madness and marching trees, encounters with witches and narrow escapes, dark prophecies, a ghost, madness, death in various shapes and forms, a battle and a coronation – Macbeth has it all. This course will give you an opportunity to engage in a close reading of this play. We shall consider historical and cultural contexts as well as questions relating to the staging of the play, both in Shakespeare’s time and today. We shall also look at works of art (mainly paintings) inspired by Macbeth and cinematic adaptations, including a Japanese and a Bollywood version.
Please buy a good current critical edition of Macbeth (i.e. in either in the Arden Shakespeare series or the Oxford World’s Classics series) and read the play before the beginning of the semester. No other editions please – do not waste your money on texts without substantial annotations as these would be useless for the purposes of this course.
Requirements: thorough preparation for each session, active participation, and written work according to your particular Studienordnung. You should have read the whole of the play by the beginning of the semester. As always: think, enjoy (!!), annotate (!) and look things up if necessary. |
