No dramatist has ever seen with more frightening clarity intothe heart and mind of a murderer than has Shakespeare in thiscompelling tragedy of evil. Taunted into asserting his“masculinity” by his ambitious wife, Macbeth chooses to embrace theWeird Sisters’ prophecy and kill his king–and thus, seals his owndoom. Fast-moving and bloody, this drama has the extraordinaryenergy that derives from a brilliant plot replete with treacheryand murder, and from Shakespeare’s compelling portrait of theultimate battle between a mind and its own guilt.
【作者简介】
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April1564, and his birth is traditionally celebrated on April 23. Thefacts of his life, known from surviving documents, are sparse. Hewas one of eight children born to John Shakespeare, a merchant ofsome standing in his community. William probably went to the King’sNew School in Stratford, but he had no university education. InNovember 1582, at the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway,eight years his senior, who was pregnant with their first child,Susanna. She was born on May 26, 1583. Twins, a boy, Hamnet ( whowould die at age eleven), and a girl, Judith, were born in 1585. By1592 Shakespeare had gone to London working as an actor and alreadyknown as a playwright. A rival dramatist, Robert Greene, referredto him as “an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers.”Shakespeare became a principal shareholder and playwright of thesuccessful acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later underJames I, called the King’s Men). In 1599 the Lord Chamberlain’s Menbuilt and occupied the Globe Theater in Southwark near the ThamesRiver. Here many of Shakespeare’s plays were performed by the mostfamous actors of his time, including Richard Burbage, Will Kempe,and Robert Armin. In addition to his 37 plays, Shakespeare had ahand in others, including Sir Thomas More and The Two NobleKinsmen, and he wrote poems, including Venus and Adonis and TheRape of Lucrece. His 154 sonnets were published, probably withouthis authorization, in 1609. In 1611 or 1612 he gave up his lodgingsin London and devoted more and more time to retirement inStratford, though he continued writing such plays as The Tempestand Henry VII until about 1613. He died on April 23 1616, and wasburied in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. No collected edition ofhis plays was published during his life-time, but in 1623 twomembers of his acting company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, puttogether the great collection now called the First Folio.
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