Film (1961. Starring Sean Connery)
About Shakespeare: Shakespeare in Love
Although now Shakespeare is a central focus for
scholars, who generally regard him as the greatest artist in world literature, he
seemed to have very little interest in a glorious posterity. He thought only in
the playhouse audience, as a means of making money. Perhaps his sonnets are the
only trace that he dreamt once of being in the Parnassus, but he wasn’t a
lyrical poet at all. He didn’t attend university, provoking thus the envy of a
lot of writers who did go but didn’t get his success.
Charles Lamb was born
1775 and died in 1834 in London.
His father was a lawyer’s clerk. Mary Lamb, his older sister (eleven
years his senior) taught him to read when he was a child, after which he got
lessons from a governess, and later he went to a charity
boarding school. There, pupils usually suffered violence from their teachers,
but Lamb seemed to avoid this brutality.
He was a stutterer, so this hindrance disqualified him
for the clerical career and he didn’t attend university. He looked for a job
and found a situation as a clerk, a job he kept throughout his life.
He fell in love twice. The first time was rejected by
the girl’s father because he was only his employee, and the second time was
rejected by the girl herself. He died a bachelor.
A tragic event marked the Lamb family: when he was twenty,
his sister Mary, in a fit of insanity, killed their mother with a kitchen
knife. As a result, Mary spent several periods of her life in different
asylums. Charles took care of her, although he suffered episodes of depression.
Nevertheless, Charles and Mary could form a literary salon,
or club, called The Lambs, in their house, where people like Coleridge,
Wordsworth, Hazlitt, etc, used to meet and discuss books and art, and perform
plays.
In 1807, he and his sister adapted several Shakespeare
plays for children and entitled the book Tales from Shakespeare. He
wrote the tragedies, and Mary the comedies. A year later, he went on with this
project by writing The Adventures of Ulysses.
However, what literary critics praised most were his Essays
for Elia, where he could display his subtle and humorous candour.
SUMMARY
Macbeth is a tragedy about boundless ambition
and desire for power.
Macbeth is a thane (that is, a Scottish
nobleman) loyal to his king and has just returned from defeating the enemies allied with the Norwegian army. He is strong, brave and violent. On his
way home, he meets three witches who prophesy that he will become thane of
Cawdor and eventually king. When the first prophesy comes true, Macbeth thinks
that the other prophesy will also come true. In order to help to fulfil the
prediction, and encouraged by his wife, he murders the King while he’s Macbeth’s
guest, and seizes the throne.
Once king, he tries to prevent another prophesy that
said Banquo’s son would be king, killing Banquo and his heir, although he
was his best friend. Banquo dies, but his son escapes, so from then on, Macbeth
doesn’t feel safe. His wife begins to have remorse, and Macbeth suffers fits of
madness.
Worried about his situation, Macbeth asks the witches
again and receives confusing prophesies that make him believe he is invincible
(for example, that a forest will move to attack him, or that a man “not born of
woman” will kill him). However, these predictions come true in unexpected ways:
the king’s son leads an army camouflaged as a forest against Macbeth, and, in
the final battle, Macbeth is killed by Macduff, a man “not born of woman”
in the usual way. Malcolm, the King’s son, is crowned king, restoring the
previous order.
QUESTIONS
-To what extent is ambition healthy, according to your
opinion?
-Do you believe in seers, or in predictions, or in psychics,
or in astrologers? Are their predictions always false?
-“Where those birds (martlet, swallow) most breed and
haunt, the air is observed to be delicate.” What natural indicators tell us
about the air / water quality?
-“[She] could look like the innocent flower, while she
was indeed the serpent under it.” Give examples from fiction (or from real
life!).
-“She would not have undertaken a deed so abhorrent to
her sex.” Are women naturally less violent or cruel than men? Or is it
something they learn in their education?
-“[She] began to pour in at his ears words which
infused a portion of her own spirit into his mind.” In this case, according to
you, who is guiltier, the woman who pours or the man who listens and does what
she asks from him?
VOCABULARY
Meek, thane, kinsman, heath, swallow, withal, ply,
foul, shrink, defiled, rankled, beset, chide, unmanned, sow, gibbet, throbs,
recruits, levies, averred, avouches, hell-hound, rabble
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