Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)

This is another good book from the Folger library, and it is the perfect book for your personal or school study of Macbeth. The insightful comments and illustrations help to make Shakespeare's wording more clear and understandable. I also enjoyed the larger pages because it left more room for comments and notes on the side. Highlights within the book also did not largely bleed through the page, which is useful for someone who likes to highlight a lot in books and mark certain important phrases. This is a great book for someone who loves to analyze and understand Shakespeare! (the plot is quite entertaining as well)

This is the trade paperback version of the Folger Shakespeare Library's edition of Macbeth. It is bigger than the mass market paperback (including a larger font size) and the paper is better quality, which is why it's more expensive, but in my opinion it's very much worth it. The Folger's edition includes notes and illustrations, uses the full name of each character in every occurrence, has the act and scene number at the top of each page, and gives line numbers. All these features make this the best edition to use when studying Shakespeare, in my opinion.

I taught Macbeth to honors 10th graders who had never read Shakespeare. This was a great resource. For one thing, the play had the same page numbers as the school-issued Folger version but it was larger and had crisp white pages perfect for writing notes in the margins. The DVD that came with it was great for students. It followed the play well and I think it was important for the students to see it on stage with an audience. The one scene where it strayed a bit from the text was the porter scene but I thought the changes stuck with Shakespeare's intent of comic relief. It also sparked a great discussion with my students on why the director changed it (and on the origin of knock-knock jokes- they loved that fun fact!). The DVD also has some interesting special features that go into stage combat, stage magic, and costuming that I thought really depicted Macbeth as a PLAY not a BOOK. If you're planning on teaching Macbeth, you'll get a lot out of this edition.

I really liked this book. I recommend it.

This review will focus on the enclosed DVD of the 2008 Folger Theatre production directed by Aaron Posner and Teller, since that's the real reason why I bought this product. I found the decision to package it with the Folger paperback edition of Macbeth somewhat odd, since I suspect most people who would be interested in the DVD already own at least one copy of the play. That said, the bundled edition is a great choice for a newcomer to Shakespeare; like all of the Folger editions, the book is very user-friendly, with facing-page notes and a running plot summary. As one might expect, this production provides plenty of illusion and spectacle: witches vanish, air-drawn daggers hover, and by the end of the sleepwalking scene Lady Macbeth is drenched with blood that seems to come from nowhere. The central idea is that the audience sees what Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are seeing. This is a fast-paced, action-driven Macbeth, and I found it an interesting contrast to the dark, minimalist 1979 version with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench , in which nearly everything is left to the imagination. I recommend seeing both; the acting in the McKellen / Dench version is stronger, but I liked the energy, momentum, and inventive staging of the Folger production, and Ian Merrill Peakes is an excellent, unexpectedly sympathetic, Macbeth. He's a soldier, a bit inarticulate (his fumbling for words provides a touch of comedy in the early scenes), and clearly over his head in the tangled web of prophecy and murder in which he finds himself; his "She should have died hereafter" speech, addressed to a frightened, teenaged Seyton, is particularly powerful. Kate Eastwood Norris's performance as Lady Macbeth is more uneven, and some of the minor characters are rather weak, but on the whole it's well worth seeing. I have a soft spot for stage productions filmed in front of a live audience, and the actors and audience at the Folger are clearly enjoying themselves hugely. This production takes a freehand approach to Shakespeare's text. Some scenes overlap or are spliced together; Lady Macduff appears in some of the early scenes and is given a couple of her husband's lines; the Porter scene is rewritten with bonus knock-knock jokes; and there are a number of cuts. For the most part, these changes work, but there are a few missteps; e.g., Macbeth's vision of Banquo's descendants in 4.1 is cut, leaving the reason for his anger at the witches and increasing paranoia unclear. This is one place where the characterization seems to be sacrificed to the production's focus on visual spectacle, although these elements are generally well balanced.

The DVD in this text is my favorite production of the Scottish play. My grade 12 students study an act, watch the act, then perform excerpts. Students get into the sword play and humor and actually "get it" AND enjoy it. It creates chatter about The Bard in the hallways, too. Toss out the BBC version that makes even Shakespeare lovers comatose in less than 30 seconds. Finally, this nice big text is perfect for a teacher and teacher's notes--yet the smaller version that I purchased for my students had THE SAME PAGINATION! Yes, it's a miracle. And, Penn & Teller fans, Teller does the magic for this production! This production reminds us--and shows students that Shakespeare was the Quentin Tarantino of his day. As well as the James Cameron, the Steven Spielberg, and the Rob Reiner AND, even better, the Noral Ephron and the Kathryn Bigelow.

I think society has already determined that Shakespeare and Macbeth get 5 stars, so I won't add much there. The print is clear and the page quality is fine. This was for my high school daughter to read for her literature class. This edition is as good as any other I've seen.

Excellent value for money...Nice edition of the play and one of the best productions of Macbeth I have seen

Eu acho que vv deveriam procurar e importar mais destes livros acompanhados de dvds. porque o dvd vindo dentro do livro para imposto como livro, que ou não paga ou paga pouco imposto, e não como dvd, que paga muito imposto.

Well worth the effort to read. I bought it because I wanted to watch the Denzil Washington movie on Apple. Highly recommended. Some times I read a few scenes then watch the same scenes, for me it makes it easier to follow and understand the language.

Muy buen libro, me llegó con una postal de regalo !

Excellent!