Shakespeare - Macbeth

"Too much death."


"If Shakespeare never signed any of his works how do we know he wrote them? A lot of information we think we know about Shakespeare is off of gossip. Aren’t we taught not to always believe the gossip we hear? I did know that some people question whether William Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him. I am one of those people. I think it is very important whether William Shakespeare wrote the plays, because everyone in the world is giving his name the credit!"


"I don’t like the way they talk and all the fancy words."


"As I am not really a writer of plays or scripts Shakespeare has always been hard for me to read."


"It's interesting about how Macbeth wrote this in answer to King James I giving him praise and societal position etc"


"I took into account that this was written in a different time, that there was a different kind of demand or expectation from those who went to watch the plays, but there are still some serious problems with the writing. Even considering that Shakespeare used asides as a way of conveying the thoughts of a character, and this was an acceptable practice in play writing, it was always very distracting and in some cases disturbing when a character would suddenly just start rambling on about whatever they were thinking or feeling at the time. If such a devise was used today, the audience was most likely mistake the aside for a character becoming literally insane and would be confused when the other characters in the performance do not begin to come to the same conclusion. It certainly wasn't something done in real life during Shakespeare's time, and so I
don't really understand why he did it when a much preferable method of expressing the emotions and thoughts of a character would be through dialogue with another close character. For example, when Macbeth is talking to his wife, instead of suddenly looking away and talking to himself for an extended period of time, he could have told his wife what he was thinking briefly and asked her for her opinion, chunking one person's thoughts between another's (but then Shakespeare was in too chauvinistic of a time for that to be acceptable anyway)."


"this book was kind of hard for me when i was reading because i dont really like reading gibberish"


"This book sucks. I dont like none of Shakespeares plays. They are too confusing."


"One beef I have with Shakespeare is his Ancient Rome fetish ... Macbeth in particular did not strike my fancy."


"The story itself, I thought was meh. But I guess that's what happens when someone writes a great play that ends up getting rewritten and redone in multitudinous ways for over 100 years. The nerdy part of me me was fascinated to find phrases that are so commonly heard now (i.e. 'Double, double toil and trouble' and 'One fell swoop.') and wonder how long exactly these sayings have been around and if Shakespeare coined these phrases. Dorky, I know."


"I didn't care much for Macbeth. I am the kind of person who likes metaphors and symbols and this wasn't one of Shakespeare's best in presenting that."


"It's so hard to read plays!"


"I DID NOT ENJOY READING THE BOOK AS MUCH I LIKED OTHER SHAKESPEARE'S BOOK"


"Ok, pretty much, this book sucked. I mean, this was probably Shakespeare's worst failure ever.
First of all, the cover was a put-down. Not only does it have ink sketches of ugly people, its a weird white/tan/moldy whipped cream color.
Second, the book doesn't start out with Macbeth. It starts out with a stuffy literary analysis. Which also gives away the ending. Which became pretty obvious by Act 3, but yeah. Another put-down.
Third, I think Shakespeare has some verboseness issues. For example, a messenger tells Lady Macduff to escape. Then she's like 'OMG' for the next 7 lines. Then, like all good murderers with perfect timing, a murderer comes in and stabs Lady Macduff's son. And then what does the son say? 'He has killed me, mother.' Well, DUH. Or do people usually not die when they get stabbed? Then Lady Macduff flees from the stage with the murderers chasing after her. Serves you right, Lady Macduff, for running your mouth when you should have been getting away! Although, I suppose this killing gives Macduff an incentive to kill Macbeth, even though Macduff already hated him enough.
Fourth, Shakespeare did not do a good job wrapping things up. Which was sooo annoying! You wouldn't even believe it. Like, Malcolm in the last act. 'Just so you know, I'm a greedy man whore.' Macduff: 'Dang it. Now we don't have a new ruler to take over.' 'Heh, just kidding. I was testing you.' 'Wha-?' 'Let's go kill Macbeth!' 'Ok!' I mean, really? How unnecessary was that? You can't take someone's word that they're not greedy and promiscuous. What if it turned out that he WAS greedy and promiscuous? Then you killed Macbeth for nothing! You might as well have let Macbeth live out his life as king. With his suicidal wife. :P You know what else irked me? The fact that Macbeth was so cocky. 'I can't be beaten until Burnam wood comes to Dursinane.' Well, too bad. You ended up being killed anyway. Plus, you never find out if Banquo's sons become king. All you see is Malcom becoming king. Which totally wasn't supposed to happen.
Fifth, in Act 4, Ross says that Macduff's wife and kids were at peace when he left them, then like 3 pages later he's like, 'OH, btw, Macbeth had them killed' and I'm like 'I thought you said they were fine.' Doesn't make sense at all."