Macbeth Resources

Macbeth, directed by, and starring, Orson Welles, with Jeanette Nolan, Roddy McDowall, and Dan O'Herlihy.

Joe Macbeth, a film noir set in Chicago as a gang war story.

Throne of Blood, a retelling of Macbeth directed by Akira Kurosawa and set in Feudal Japan, starring Toshiro Mifune.

A Performance of Macbeth, 1979 film directed by Trevor Nunn, starring Ian McKellen (a.k.a. Gandalf or Magneto) and Judi Dench.

Men of Respect, a retelling of Macbeth set in New York as a Mafia power struggle and performed in modern English.

Macbeth, a film directed by Jeremy Freeston and Brian Blessed, with Jason Connery as Macbeth and Helen Baxendale as Lady Macbeth.

Scotland, Pa. , a modern re-make of Macbeth set in a hamburger stand in 1975 in Pennsylvania.

Maqbool, a Hindi adaptation set in the Mumbai underworld, starring Irfan Khan and Tabu.

Macbeth, an independent film directed by Bryan Enk; set in a surrealistic modern United States. Moira Stone is Lady Macbeth, and Peter B. Brown is Macbeth.

Macbeth, a film directed by Geoffrey Wright and set in Melbourn, Australia amidst gang warfare.

The banquet scene from the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1979 production of Macbeth, taped for television, with a young Ian McKellen and a grave Judi Dench masterfully portraying Macbeth and his Lady.

Watch Macbeth ruin a perfectly good banquet in Polanski’s 1971 film.

A news reel clip containing information about Orson Welles's 1936 production of Macbeth for the Federal Theater Project at Harlem's Lafayette Theater. The final scene battle scene is included.

A condensed version of the play featuring Scottish sock puppets. Enough said.

Check out Flocabulary’s “Sound and Fury” Macbeth rap from the Shakespeare is Hip-Hop album. It’s educational and surprisingly cool.

A great resource. Dramatic reenactments of the scenes, interviews the characters on a talk show, songs about the plot, and silly commercials that are Macbeth related.

The BBC’s hilarious Bitesize summary tells the story of Macbeth in under eight minutes.

Shakespeare meets sketch comedy in this abbreviated performance of the play.

Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. London: Jaggard, 1623. Opening page of Macbeth.

Henry Fuseli. Macbeth consulting the vision of the armed head. Oil on canvas with original inscribed frame, 1793.

A 1827 painting by Alexandre-Marie Colin.

This is a psychological analysis that explores the downfall of Lady Macbeth, and the historical context of the Elizabethan transition to James I of Scotland, son of Elizabeth's cousin Mary. Freud highlights the father-son relations in the play, and touches upon the idea of Elizabeth's own childlessness, and the tangle for the throne that ensues, to explain Shakespeare's special treatment of this otherwise well-known story.

In Jane Avrich’s hilarious short story, Lady Macbeth marries a young fruit mogul (we’re not kidding) and baffles everyone with her eccentric behavior. Read it on Google Books.

A full text version of the play with links to some definitions and a concise summary following each scene.

An interesting article on the historical context of Macbeth with relation to the reign of King James I and then-contemporary law about witchcraft. Shakespeare knew of King James's intense interest in all things supernatural, as he published a tract in 1597 entitled Daemonologie, a detailed and scholarly inspection of the subject. Some scholars contend that the scenes of witches and Hecate in the play were included to please the new king.