The tragic play Macbeth by William Shakespeare has appeared and been reinterpreted in many forms of art and culture since it was written in the early 17th century.
Plays The following list of plays including references to Macbeth is ordered alphabetically.
Wale Ogunyemi's adaptation, A'are Akogun, was first performed in Nigeria in 1968 and mixed the English and Yoruba languages.Banham (2002, 292) Eugène Ionesco's Macbett satirized Macbeth as a meaningless succession of treachery and slaughter.Hortmann (2002, 219) Erica Schmidt's Mac Beth tells the story of seven schoolgirls who perform Macbeth in their free time, which leads to their murder of a classmate. Macbitches by Sophie McIntosh examines female ambition through the lens of college students surprised at the casting of a freshman as Lady Macbeth. Joe de Graft adapted Macbeth as a battle to take over a powerful corporation in Ghana in his 1972 Mambo or Let's Play Games, My Husband.Banham (2002, 296) In 2000, Chuck Mike and the Nigerian Performance Studio Workshop produced Mukbutu as a direct commentary on the fragile nature of Nigerian democracy at the time.Banham (2002, 297) Peerless, a 2022 play written by Jiehae Park, reimagines Macbeth from the perspective of twin Asian-American students competing for admission at a top college. Maurice Baring's 1911 The Rehearsal fictionalizes Shakespeare's company's inept rehearsals for Macbeths premiere.Lanier (2002, 119) Sleep No More is an immersive theater experience that loosely adapts Macbeth in a 1930s setting, with additional inspiration taken from the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the 1697 Paisley witch trials. Welcome Msomi's 1970 play Umabatha adapts Macbeth to Zulu culture, and was said by The Independent to be "more authentic than any modern Macbeth" in presenting a world in which a man's fighting ability is central to his identity.Banham (2002, 286–287), citing The Independent 8 August 1997 Gu Wuwei's 1916 play The Usurper of State Power adapted both Macbeth and Hamlet as a parody of contemporary events in China.Gillies (2002, 267) Dev Virahsawmy's Zeneral Macbeff, first performed in 1982, adapted the story to the local Creole and to the Mauritian political situation.Banham (2002, 289–292) He later translated Macbeth itself into Mauritian creole, as Trazedji Makbess.Banham (2002, 289)
Film Joe MacBeth (Ken Hughes, 1955) established the tradition of resetting the Macbeth story among 20th-century gangsters.Rosenthal (2007, 100–102) Others to do so include Men of Respect (William Reilly, 1991),Rosenthal (2007, 110–111) Maqbool (Vishal Bhardwaj, 2003)Rosenthal (2007, 123–124) and Geoffrey Wright's Australian 2006 Macbeth.Rosenthal (2007, 127–128)
In 1957, Akira Kurosawa used the Macbeth story as the basis for the "universally acclaimed"Guntner (2000, 125) Kumunosu-jo (in English known as Throne of Blood or (the literal translation of its title) Spiderweb Castle).Rosenthal (2007, 103) The film is a Japanese period-piece (jidai-geki), drawing upon elements of Noh theatre, especially in its depiction of the evil spirit who takes the part of Shakespeare's witches, and of Asaji, the Lady Macbeth character, played by Isuzu Yamada,Rosenthal (2007, 103–104) and upon Kabuki Theatre in its depiction of Washizu, the Macbeth character, played by Toshiro Mifune.Howard (2003, 617) In a twist on Shakespeare's ending, the tyrant (having witnessed Spiderweb Forest come to Spiderweb Castle) is killed by volleys of arrows from his own archers after they come to the realization he also lied about the identity of their former master's murderer.Rosenthal (2007, 105)
In 1971, a movie adaptation by Roman Polanski came out, with music from Third Ear Band.
William Reilly's 1991 Men of Respect, another film to set the Macbeth story among gangsters, has been praised for its accuracy in depicting Mafia rituals, said to be more authentic than those in The Godfather or GoodFellas. However the film failed to please audiences or critics: Leonard Maltin found it "pretentious" and "unintentionally comic" and Daniel Rosenthal describes it as "providing the most risible chunks of modernised Shakespeare in screen history."Brode (2001, 193); Rosenthal (2007, 110) In 1992 S4C produced a cel-animated Macbeth for the series Shakespeare: The Animated Tales,Holland (2007, 43) and in 1997 Jeremy Freeston directed Jason Connery and Helen Baxendale in a low budget, fairly full-text, version.Rosenthal (2007, 112–113)
Twenty-first century Twenty-first-century cinema has re-interpreted Macbeth, relocating "Scotland" elsewhere: Maqbool to Mumbai, Scotland, PA to Pennsylvania, Geoffrey Wright's Macbeth to Melbourne, and Allison L. LiCalsi's 2001 Macbeth: The Comedy to a location only differentiated from the reality of New Jersey, where it was filmed, through signifiers such as tartan, Scottish flags and bagpipes.Jess-Cooke (2006, 174–175) Alexander Abela's 2001 Makibefo was set among, and starred, residents of Faux Cap, a remote fishing community in Madagascar.Rosenthal (2007, 114–117) Leonardo Henriquez' 2000 Sangrador (in English: Bleeder) set the story among Venezuelan bandits and presented a shockingly visualised horror version.Rosenthal (2007, 118–120)
Billy Morrissette's Scotland, PA reframes the Macbeth story as a comedy-thriller set in a 1975 fast-food restaurant, and features James LeGros in the Macbeth role and Maura Tierney as Pat, the Lady Macbeth character: "We're not bad people, Mac. We're just under-achievers who have to make up for lost time." Christopher Walken plays vegetarian detective Ernie McDuff who (in the words of Daniel Rosenthal) "[applies] his uniquely offbeat menacing delivery to innocuous lines."Rosenthal (2007, 121–122) Scotland, PAs conceit of resetting the Macbeth story at a restaurant was followed in BBC Television's 2005 ShakespeaRe-Told adaptation.Rosenthal (2007, 122)
Vishal Bhardwaj's 2003 Maqbool, filmed in Hindi and Urdu and set in the Mumbai underworld, was produced in the Bollywood tradition, but heavily influenced by Macbeth, by Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 The Godfather and by Luc Besson's 1994 Léon.Jess-Cooke (2006, 177–178) It deviates from the Macbeth story in making the Macbeth character (Miyan Maqbool, played by Irfan Khan) a single man, lusting after the mistress (Nimmi, played by Tabbu) of the Duncan character (Jahangir Khan, known as Abbaji, played by Pankaj Kapoor). Another deviation is the comparative delay in the murder: Shakespeare's protagonists murder Duncan early in the play, but more than half of the film has passed by the time Nimmi and Miyan kill Abbaji.Rosenthal (2007, 124)
In 2006, Geoffrey Wright directed a Shakespearean-language, extremely violent Macbeth set in the Melbourne underworld. Sam Worthington played Macbeth. Victoria Hill played Lady Macbeth and shared the screenplay credits with Wright. The director considered her portrayal of Lady Macbeth to be the most sympathetic he had ever seen.Interview with Geoffrey Wright in "Making of Documentary" on DVD of Macbeth (2006 film) In spite of the high level of violence and nudity (Macbeth has sex with the three naked schoolgirl witches as they prophesy his fate), intended to appeal to the young audiences that had flocked to Romeo + Juliet, the film flopped at the box office.Rosenthal (2007, 127)
The 2011 short film Born Villain, directed by Shia LaBeouf and starring Marilyn Manson, was inspired by Macbeth and features multiple scenes where characters quote from it.
In 2014, Classic Alice wove a 10-episode arc placing its characters in the world of Macbeth. The adaptation uses students and a modern-day setting to loosely parallel Shakespeare's play. It starred Kate Hackett, Chris O'Brien, Elise Cantu and Tony Noto and embarked on an LGBTQ plotline.
The 2015 American black and white film, Thane of East County, features actors in a production of Macbeth who mimic the characters they portray.
Also in 2015, Brazilian film A Floresta que se Move (The Moving Forest) premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival. Directed by Vinícius Coimbra and starred by Gabriel Braga Nunes and Ana Paula Arósio, the film uses a modern-day setting, replacing the throne of Scotland with the presidency of a high-ranked bank.
The 2016 Malayalam-language film Veeram directed by Jayaraj is an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, while the 2021 Malayalam-language film Joji directed by Dileesh Pothan is a loose adaptation.
The 2021 Bengali web-series Mandaar on Hoichoi, directed by Anirban Bhattacharya and starring Debasish Mondal and Sohini Sarkar, is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth.
The 2023 satire Hemet, or the Landlady Don't Drink Tea is described as a contemporary Shakespeare that draws from the Henriad titles and Macbeth.
Literature There have been numerous literary adaptations and spin-offs from Macbeth. Russian novelist Nikolay Leskov told a variation of the story from Lady Macbeth's point of view in Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which itself became a number of filmsBrode (2001, 192) and an opera by Shostakovich.Sanders (2007, 156) The play has been used as a background for detective fiction (as in Marvin Kaye's 1976 Bullets for Macbeth)Osborne (2007, 129) and, in the case of Ngaio Marsh's last detective novel Light Thickens, the play takes centre stage as the rehearsal, production and run of a 'flawless' production is described in absorbing detail (so much so that her biographer describes the novel as effectively Marsh's third production of the play).Margaret Lewis 'Ngaio March: A Life' But the play was also used as the basis of James Thurber's parody of the whodunit genre The Macbeth Murder Mystery, in which the protagonist reads Macbeth applying the conventions of detective stories, and concludes that it must have been Macduff who murdered Duncan.Lanier (2002, 85) Comics and graphic novels have utilised the play, or have dramatised the circumstances of its inception: Superman himself wrote the play for Shakespeare in the course of one night, in the 1947 Shakespeare's Ghost Writer.Lanier (2002, 136–137) A cyberpunk version of Macbeth titled Mac appears in the collection Sound & Fury: Shakespeare Goes Punk.Sound & Fury: Shakespeare Goes Punk Terry Pratchett reimagined Macbeth in the Discworld novel Wyrd Sisters (1988). In this story 3 witches, led by Granny Weatherwax, attempt to put a murdered king's heir on the throne. In 2018, Jo Nesbø wrote Macbeth, a retelling of the play as a thriller. The novel was part of Hogarth Shakespeare.
Lines from the play have inspired titles of many works of literature, for example Agatha Christie's By the Pricking of My Thumbs. The title of the book comes from Act 4, Scene 1 of Macbeth, when the second witch says:
By the pricking of my thumbs,Something wicked this way comes.Macbeth is relevantly mentioned in Jorge Luis Borges' short story Theme of the Traitor and the Hero. It is repeatedly alluded to and parodied in Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.
In Tripp Ainsworth's novel Six Pistols and a Dagger, Smokepit Fairytales Part VI, the events of Macbeth are meshed with those of Blackbeard as the wife of a feared space pirate initiates his downfall.
Eleanor Catton's 2023 novel Birnam Wood takes its title from the play. In the context of the novel, Birnam Wood refers to a "guerrilla gardening collective that... cultivates wherever it can."
Music and audio
Macbeth is, with The Tempest, one of the two most-performed Shakespeare plays on BBC Radio, with over 20 productions between 1923 and 2022,Greenhalgh (2007, 186 and footnote 39 on 197) the 2022 production starring David Tennant. Other BBC Radio productions include: 1934 – Charles Laughton 1944 – Leslie Banks 1947 – Howard Marion-Crawford 1956 – Michael Hordern 1966 – Paul Scofield 1971 – Joss Ackland 1984 – Denis Quilley 1991 – Ian Holm 1991 – Tim McInnerny 1995 – Steven Berkoff 2000 – Ken Stott 2015 – Neil Dudgeon