Adapting Macbeth: A Cultural History

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Description

In this study, William C. Carroll analyses a wide range of adaptations and appropriations of Macbeth across different media to consider what it is about the play that compels our desire to reshape it. Arguing that many of these adaptations attempt to improve or correct the plays perceived political or aesthetic flaws, Carroll traces how Macbeths popularity and adaptability stems from several of its formal features: its openly political nature; its inclusion of supernatural elements; its parable of the dangers of ambition; its violence; its brevity; and its domestic focus on a husband and wife. The study ranges across elite and popular culture divides: from Sir William Davenants adaptation for the Restoration stage (16634), an early 18th-century novel, The Secret History of Mackbeth and Verdi's Macbeth, through to 20th- and 21st-century adaptations for stage and screen, as well as contemporary novelizations, young adult literature and commercial appropriations that testify to the play's absorption into contemporary culture.

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Carrolls net is cast wide and there are chapters on the novel, global and racial Macbeths, as well as musical versions. Stage and cinematic adaptations figure throughout. Geographically, the range is impressiveno fewer than thirty different countries are mentioned [Carroll] has a fluent grasp of this plays multitudinous reincarnations. This elegant study will surely become a model of condensation and explication of the continuing cultural presence of Shakespeares apparently immortal literary artefacts. * Adaptation *

Author Bio

William C. Carroll is Professor of English Emeritus at Boston University, USA. He has edited five editions of early modern plays, including Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Arden Third Series, 2004), Loves Labours Lost (2009) and Thomas Middleton, Four Plays (Methuen Drama, 2012), has authored three critical books and is the Co-General Editor of the New Mermaids series of plays.