A man consumed with ambition and self-doubt, Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most vital meditations on the dangerous corners of the human imagination. Macbeth is a distinguished warrior hero, who over the course of the play, transforms into a brutal, murderous villain and pays an extraordinary price for committing an evil act. From the ambitious and mad titular character to his devilish wife Lady Macbeth to the moral and noble Banquo to the mysterious Three Witches, Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read, performed in innovative productions set in a vast array of times and locations, from Nazi Germany to Revolutionary Cuba. (Apr.From the greatest Shakespeare scholar of our time, comes a portrait of Macbeth, one of William Shakespeare's most complex and compelling anti-heroes-the final volume in a series of five short books about the great playwright's most significant personalities: Falstaff, Cleopatra, Lear, Iago, Macbeth.
As he has so often done, Bloom will shift the reader’s perceptions of a literary classic. Even Lady Macbeth, as Bloom describes her, possesses a “negative exuberance of shuddering beauty,” though this diminishes after the play’s early scenes as the passion between her and her husband wanes and her own desires become frustrated. As the play progresses, Bloom finds Macbeth growing ever more frustrated by his failure to achieve his desires, and remarks that it is “difficult not to sympathize with a powerful representation of outrage,” causing the audience to identify with Macbeth despite his crimes. Referring to Macbeth’s vision of the bloody dagger, Bloom frames the character’s too-active imagination as a “dagger of the mind,” and his tragic flaw as the “fantasy-making power” that allows him to easily picture himself as king after hearing the witches’ prophecy. In a close, scene-by-scene reading, Bloom presents Macbeth as an ambitious visionary driven by a “prophetic imagination,” while leaving death and destruction in his wake. Acclaimed critic Bloom ( How to Read and Why) once again plumbs the depths of a Shakespeare play to reveal new insights, this time offering a richly detailed character sketch of Macbeth.
0 kommentar(er)
