Word: playfulness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This is not to imply that I consider Macbeth Shakespeare's greatest work. Othello is his greatest play (Macaulay went so far as to call it "the greatest work in the world"), or at least his grandest; it is his most masterfully constructed, and for once the quality of the writing never sags from the very highest level. King Lear is the most broadly scaled, intense, and heart-rending. Hamlet is the most ingenious, kaleidoscopic, and--as no one ever tires of saying--inexhaustible...
...relatively corrupt and possibly incomplete (only the extremely early Comedy of Errors is shorter; and Hamlet is nearly twice as long). If I were a better critic I might perhaps be able to verbalize this power. Those who want the most keen, profound, and sometimes conflicting discussions of this play (and the other great tragedies) should turn to the writings of A.C. Bradley and G. Wilson Knight...
...take possession of one's whole being; Shakespeare here reaches in us the three states he has plumbed so deeply in his characters: the conscious, the sub-conscious, and the unconscious. The last two are states that we today really understand little better than do the characters in the play; the people in Macbeth are constantly baffled (what other play contains such a large proportion of questions?), and so are we. Much of the fantastic effect of Macbeth is due to the uncanny atmosphere of fear the Bard created--and this is a play about fear much more than about...
...great deal of the play's aura of horror is captured in the current Cambridge Drama Festival production, directed by Jose Quintero. This is young Mr. Quintero's first Shakespearean assignment, although he has wrought several nearmiracles with modern American works. And he has attacked Macbeth with freshness and, at times, audacity. He has given us a sufficiently fast-moving production of Shakespeare's fastest-moving play. The theatre quivers with excitement as characters swirl about the set, and race up and down the aisles to envelop the audience in the action (though this is carried somewhat to excess...
...inspired and effective as I have seen in a long time (and it contributes so much that I urge you to attend an evening rather than a daytime performance). Hays is not afraid to keep many of his light levels low, which is right since so much of the play takes place either at night or under dark clouds. Macbeth's hallucinatory ghosts at the banquet are effected entirely by lighting: this is also a wise decision, for Banquo (and then Duncan?) should no more walk in and sit down at the table here than should an actual dagger...