Lady Macbeth© Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved.literature and Culture • THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH
Shakespeare in Performance
A play on the page is only half a drama. The script is a recipe for a
performance—incomplete until it is staged in a theater, reconstructed in
the mind of the reader, or captured on film. When a play is staged, actors
and directors bring the words to life through their interpretations. Decisions
about scenery, costumes, props, timing, and casting, as well as ideas about a
character’s gestures, movement, expressions, and motivations, can call forth
different meanings from even the most familiar play.Questions and Interpretations
Shakespeare’s plays have been produced for more than four hundred
years and have been brought to life in countless performances and
reinterpretations. The best interpretations of his plays shed new light by
asking imaginative questions and finding answers in the texts themselves.
The following is a tiny sampling of some of the questions asked and
answered by landmark Shakespearean productions.What is the source of Lady Macbeth’s evil? Shakespeare’s Lady
Macbeth conspires with her husband to murder their king, leading
generations of actresses to ask and attempt to answer this question.
• She is just an inhuman monster. Sarah Siddons, who played the
role of Lady Macbeth more than two hundred years ago, portrayed the
character as a driven woman in whom “the passion of ambition has
almost obliterated all the characteristics of human nature.”
• She is an evil beauty. Vivien Leigh, the actress who is most famous for
her role as Scarlett O’Hara in the film adaptation of Gone with the Wind,
found in Lady Macbeth an evil beauty who gives a goodnight kiss to the
man she is plotting to murder later that evening.
• She is more than a monster. In the 2015 film adaptation of Macbeth,
French actress Marion Cotillard plays Lady Macbeth as a mother who is
grief-stricken by the death of her infant son. Her actions in the play are
driven by grief and hopelessness as well as greed and ambition.252 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PASTLIT17_SE12_U03_A1C_WC.indd 252 3/21/16 1:51 PMTEACHING
Shakespeare in Performance
Lead a discussion with students about theater
and performance spaces they may have visited,
including movie theaters, school auditoriums,
concert halls, or performance halls for live theater.
Guide them to focus on the physical details that
affect their experiences as an audience member,
such as seating, view of the stage or screen,
sound quality, and the design of the venue itself.
Then have students read the text about Theater in
Elizabethan England.
Point out that Shakespeare did not have
the technology of modern theaters to draw
on—electric lights, amplification systems for
actors’ voices, video projections, and so on. Even
so, some of the greatest plays in the English
language were produced in sixteenth-century
England.252 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST
LIT17_TE12_U03_A1C_WC.indd 252 4/9/16 10:07 AM