Customer Reviews

Macbeth (The Pelican Shakespeare)

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Virtually all editions of Macbeth will have at least some annotations. Rummaging through five different editions, I preferred the Yale University Press version, edited by Burton Raffel, as having the most comprehensive and comprehensible notes, as well as an excellent introduction to Shakespeare's play. Raffel not only explains the meanings of obscure words, but also gives brief notes pertaining to relevant history, geography, stage directions, etc, that are rarely addressed as fully by other editors. In addition, Raffel frequently gives the proper way to stress the syllables in a line when reading it aloud, which can be extremely helpful. (However, in most places these stresses need to be very subtle, so that you don't sound like "taDUM taDUM taDUM".) And Yale's page layout is among the clearest that I've seen.

(To find this edition: at Avanced Search, enter ISBN 0300106548; or, enter Macbeth as title, and either Raffel as author or Yale as publisher.)

As a bonus, this edition includes at the back a long essay on the play by Harold Bloom. This is not an uninteresting commentary, but Bloom desperately needs a good editor. His essay is not only at least three times longer than it should be, but is startlingly repetitious. Yale would have been wise to have asked Bloom for a rewrite.

Macbeth boasts Shakespeare's most terrifying villain in that Macbeth is the Shakespearean villain that most reminds us of ourselves! Macbeth makes that first mistake, the murder of his king, and then he slides down the slippery slope killing more and more in order to cover up his original deed. What makes Macbeth so horrible is that he has guilt about his actions, unlike Shakespeare's other villains. However, he finds himself so ensnared in the web of murder and deceit that he can't ever get out. His murderous tentacles stretch out to engulf his best friend, an innocent women and her children, and others. It is in that terrifying feeling of a guilty conscience and no escape that we all can share, and thus Macbeth is truly frightening! We recognize him!
This play, while one of Shakespeare's shortest, boast two of his finest creations in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The couple sizzles with sexuality, unlike most Shakespearean marriages, and the scenes where Lady Macbeth drives along her husband's weakening ambitions are as exciting as they come.
The supporting cast in this play is rather one note (with a few exceptions, the Porter chief among them) and I think Shakespeare intended it that way. This is an intimate study in evil, and its power over decent individuals, and the supporting cast is meant to merely back up these assertions about the leading couple, not distract from them.
Lady Macbeth tells her husband that if he "screws his courage to the sticking place, we will not fail." Bad advice, but we the reader get to go along for the nihilistic ride that follows.
A note on the Pelican edition...its opening essay by Stephen Orgel is a quick read, and an illuminating one. I have always preferred these editions to other Shakespeare editions. Nicely priced and well researched.

As it has been a while since I've read Macbeth I'm glad that I read this edition. It was compact but easy to read. The material at the beginning of the book was excellent and helped put the play in context. And of course, as one of Shakespeare's works this is not just one of the most well-known but one of the easiest reads as well. Tragic, but worth reading.