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40 unusual facts about Macbeth


Andrew Blackman

Andrew Blackman is Artistic Director of Complete Works Theatre Company, directing and producing Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Man for All Seasons, Cosi and The Crucible, Phat Poetry and Monkey Fights the Water Dragon.

Ayodele Awojobi

It was during this period that he earned the nickname, "Macbeth": William Shakespeare’s famous play, Macbeth, was to be staged in the school.

Beatrice Straight

Most of her theatre work was in the classics, including Twelfth Night (1941), Macbeth, and The Crucible (1953), for which she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

Birnam Oak

Sometimes known as Macbeth's oak, as it is a relic of Birnam Wood, mentioned in William Shakespeare's play, the tree is found in a strip of woodland on the south bank of the River Tay.

Branko Gavella

He also translated a number of plays and librettos into Croatian (including works such as Shakespeare's Macbeth, which he translated for his 1957 production of the play).

Claude Barma

In the early 1960s, he adapted three Shakespeare plays: Macbeth in 1959, Hamlet in 1960 and Othello in 1962 .

Dana Ivey

She made her Broadway debut playing two small roles in a 1981 production of Macbeth; the following year she was cast in a major supporting role in a revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter, for which she received the Clarence Derwent Award as Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play.

Dean Cochran

Cochran has performed the lead roles in a number of plays written by William Shakespeare, including Macbeth, Henry V, Hamlet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as well as A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Burn This.

Franklyn Seales

Born on the island of St. Vincent, Seales attended Juilliard before appearing in various television productions of Shakespearean plays including Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew where he played the role of Petruchio.

Funeral for a Fiend

While gloating, Bob incorrectly quotes a phrase from Macbeth and Lisa corrects him.

George Russell French

The first part consisted of an identification of the dramatis personae in Shakespeare's historical plays, from King John to Henry VIII, accompanied with observations on characters in Macbeth and Hamlet, and notes on persons and places belonging to Warwickshire alluded to in several plays.

Godfrey Tearle

He became a Shakespearean actor of note, appearing on stage in the title roles of Othello, Macbeth, and Henry V.

Herbert Rudley

He also appeared in stage productions of The Threepenny Opera, Abe Lincoln in Illinois and Macbeth.

Holinshed's Chronicles

Shakespeare used the revised second edition of the Chronicles (published in 1587) as the source for most of his history plays, the plot of Macbeth, and for portions of King Lear and Cymbeline.

Jag Panzer

Jag Panzer sought to tackle more ambitious territory for their next album, with Thane to the Throne, a concept album about William Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Jeremy Jarmon

A budding actor, Jarmon portrayed a lead role in two theatrical productions; Macduff in Shakespeare's Macbeth and Colonel Jessep (the Jack Nicholson role) in “A Few Good Men”.

John Laurie

A prolific Shakespearean actor, Laurie spent much of the time between 1922 and 1939 playing Shakespearean parts, including in Hamlet, Richard III, and Macbeth at the Old Vic or Stratford-upon-Avon.

Joseph Fuqua

He has directed the Youth Intern production of: This is Our Youth, and the Summer Youth productions of: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bard On A Wire, Macbeth, and The Life and Death of King John.

Josh Braaten

He graduated in 1999 from Winona State University where he performed on stage in productions such as Shakespeare's Macbeth, playing the titular character opposite of Anthony Rydberg, Samantha Sweeney, and The Reverend Adam Posegate.

Leslie Silva

She began her professional acting career in 1995 in an off-Broadway production of Macbeth in Washington, D.C..

Lester Rawlins

Born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, Rawlins appeared in off-Broadway productions of Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, Winterset, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, and Nightride, for which he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance.

Maureen Anderman

She remained active on Broadway throughout the 1980s appearing in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1980), Macbeth (1981), Einstein and the Polar Bear (1981), You Can't Take It With You (1983–1984), Benefactors (1985–1986), and Social Security (1987).

Nano Riantiarno

His credits with Teater Popular include Shakespeare's Macbeth, Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, Karel Čapek's The White Disease, and his own Doa Natal (Christmas Prayer).

Ophthalamia

Almost all songs written by the band are connected in some way to this fantasy-world, until their last album, which was inspired by Macbeth.

Oscar James

Roles for black actors were sparse during James' early career, but he persevered to become the fourth black actor to join the Royal Shakespeare Company and the first black actor to play Macbeth.

Passing Through Gethsemane

This is similar to the reference in Macbeth to how the character of Macduff is not "of woman born".

Paul Jerricho

Other theatre work includes The Biko Inquest at the Riverside Studios with Albert Finney; Manningham in Gaslight at Salisbury Playhouse; Dionysus in The Bacchae at Bristol Old Vic; Banquo in Macbeth and Hortensio in The Taming of the Shrew.

Paul Parris

They have staged several productions to date including Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Our Day Out.

Peter Michael Goetz

Additional New York City theatre credits include Beyond Therapy, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Government Inspector, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Macbeth, and the off-Broadway productions The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs and Alan Ayckbourn's Comic Potential.

Philip Anglim

He performed Macbeth on Broadway in 1981 (in which he was replaced by Kelsey Grammer) and again on TV in 1982.

Other notable roles include Macbeth on Broadway and Dane O'Neill, the ill-fated love child who grew up to follow in his unknown father's footsteps on the path to the priesthood, in the television mini-series The Thorn Birds.

Ray Bellew

He was in CBC Toronto's production of Macbeth with Sean Connery, before the actor was to star in his first James Bond film.

Richard Schechner

With The Performance Group Schechner directed many productions including Dionysus in 69 based on Euripides' The Bacchae (1968), Makbeth based on Shakespeare's Macbeth (1969), Commune group devised piece (1970), Sam Shepard's The Tooth of Crime (1972), Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children (1975), David Gaard's The Marilyn Project (1975), Seneca's Oedipus (1977), Terry Curtis Fox's Cops (1978), and Jean Genet's The Balcony (1979).

Robert C. Schnitzer

While a young actor in New York City, Schnitzer appeared in or helped manage The Brothers Karamazov, Hamlet, An Enemy of the People, Richelieu, Henry V, Richard III, Caponsacchi, Macbeth, and Cyrano de Bergerac.

Robert Taber

At the time of his divorce he was appearing in London, where, among other roles, he played Macduff in Macbeth at the Lyceum Theatre in 1898, opposite Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Mrs. Patrick Campbell.

Sarah Snook

While studying at NIDA, she performed in stage productions of Macbeth and Gallipoli, and since graduating appeared in King Lear performed by the State Theatre Company of South Australia.

Sturla Berg-Johansen

He has also performed in the theater on several occasions, playing in Shakespeare's Macbeth among others.

The Bellero Shield

There are several similarities in the story's theme, plot, and structure to Shakespeare's Macbeth, and many critics agree it was the series' take on that play.

The Filth and the Fury

The title of The Daily Mirror article was itself inspired by William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury which was in turn taken from a line in Shakespeare's Macbeth

We Work Again

We Work Again has gained considerable attention because it includes the only known footage of the famous all-black version of Macbeth staged by Orson Welles in 1936.


1606 in literature

August 7 – Possible first performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth amongst a series of plays presented by the King's Men before Kings James I of England and Christian IV of Denmark (his brother-in-law) at Hampton Court Palace in England.

A Witch's Tangled Hare

The cartoon makes many references to various plays by William Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and As You Like It).

Aleksandr Domogarov

He started to participate in many plays including Macbeth, but his greatest stage success came with the role of Vaslav Nijinsky in Nijinsky, Clown of God.

Andrew Ranken

He contributed to the music soundtrack of "Macbeth", a Puppet Theatre Barge production, with a drumming improvisation.

Asadata Dafora

His drumming also appeared in a 1936 stage success, Orson Welles's all-black Macbeth performed in Harlem, on Broadway and on tour.

Bridget Walters

Bridget Walters is an Australian actress and veteran member of the State Theatre Company of South Australia where she has performed in productions of Macbeth, Noises Off, Uncle Vanya and The Cripple of Inishmaan.

Buxton Opera House

After the Second World War, the theatre continued to serve primarily as a cinema, although the Literary and Dramatic Societies of local schools Buxton College and Cavendish Grammar School staged annual performances of either Shakespeare, such as Hamlet (1966), Coriolanus (1968) and Macbeth (1970), or modern works, such as Bertold Brecht's Life of Galileo (1967) and Dylan Thomas's The Doctor & the Devils (1969).

Christopher Bowen

Other theatre credits include the title role in "Macbeth" at the Southwark Playhouse, Laertes in "Hamlet" at the Young Vic, Veit Kunz in "Franziska" at the Gate Theatre, Oberon in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for the City of London Festival, Maecenas in "Antony and Cleopatra" at the Haymarket Theatre.

Christopher McCann

His television credits include Law & Order, Numb3rs, Now and Again, and Miami Vice, while his film credits include American Violet, Acts of Worship, The Repair Shop, and Macbeth in Manhattan.

Clara Jacobo

In 1938, she sang there, the Lady Macbeth in "Macbeth" by Verdi, also 1938, Abigail in Nabucco at the Festival in the Arena of Verona.

Emily Bissell

For example, instead on having Ophelia as his wife, Hamlet would have been much better served by the more forceful Lady Macbeth, while Macbeth himself would have been better served by Portia.

Femi Euba

A Lagosian by birth, he studied acting at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, earning a diploma in 1965, after which he appeared in many shows on the London Stage, including the Royal Court Theatre production of Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel, and Shakespeare's Macbeth, with the late Sir Alec Guinness as Macbeth and the late Simone Signoret as Lady Macbeth.

Hermann V. von Holst

In the period 1904-1906, von Holst created summer countryside estate architecture in the White Mountains of New Hampshire for socially prominent and wealthy clients, including Pittsburgh glassmaking millionaire George A. Macbeth and International Harvester partner John Glessner, whose Chicago Glessner House was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson.

Jan Kott

Reportedly, Peter Brook's film King Lear and Roman Polanski's Macbeth (both made in 1971) were influenced by Kott's view of Shakespearean high tragedy in relation to the 20th-century "nightmare of history".

Jesse Macbeth

Macbeth's form DD-214, "Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty" record shows he entered U.S. Army service May 1, 2003 and separated from the Army June 13, 2003, without completing basic training, and with no authorization for decorations, medals, badges, citations or campaign ribbons with no service whatsoever in Iraq.

Jonathan Slinger

In 2011, he appeared again with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the title role of Macbeth, a new production by Michael Boyd which was the first Shakespeare play to appear in the revamped Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Lawrence Barrett

Among his many and varied parts may be mentioned Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Shylock, Richard III, Wolsey, Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Richelieu, David Garrick, Hernani, Alfred Evelyn, Lanciotto in George Henry Bokers (1823–1890) Francesca da Rimini, and Janies Harebell in The Man o' Airlie.

Leon Major

Among the productions he has directed are: Macbeth, Falstaff, Intermezzo, Volpone, Don Pasquale, Don Carlos, Resurrection, Aida, Don Giovanni, Roméo et Juliette, La traviata, L'elisir d'amore, Carmen (on Boston Common) Eugene Onegin, The Aspern Papers, Cosi fan tutte, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Peter Grimes.

Lilian Baylis

After a long illness, Baylis died of a heart attack on 25 November 1937, aged 63, the night before the Old Vic was to open a production of Macbeth starring Laurence Olivier and Judith Anderson.

Lisa Klein

Lady Macbeth's Daughter came next, with Klein creating the character of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's daughter as the main character.

On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth

On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth is an essay in Shakespearean criticism by the English author Thomas De Quincey, first published in the October 1823 edition of The London Magazine.

Panasonic Globe Theatre

Guest companies and artists have included the British Royal National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Ingmar Bergman, Peter Brook, Barry Kyle and Robert Lepage, as well as such Kabuki stars as Bando Tamasaburo (Lady Macbeth), and Ichikawa Somegoro (Kabuki Hamlet).

Robert Walker Macbeth

His father was the portrait painter Norman Macbeth and his niece Ann Macbeth.

Macbeth studied in London, producing realistic everyday scenes and working for The Graphic magazine.

Siward

Siward, Earl of Northumbria (d. 1055), Anglo-Scandinavian earl of Northumbria (also portrayed as a character in Shakespeare's Macbeth)

Stewarton

The most famous of these non-historical references concerns the legend of Máel Coluim III the son of Donnchad I of Scotland who appears as a character in William Shakespeare's play Macbeth.

Sunny Ozell

Ozell met Stewart in early 2008 when he appeared in a production of Macbeth at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon

MacCrimmon initially accepts, but is persuaded to renegotiate, the result of which is the title contest: his team, composed of himself and three close friends, against the Devil's rink, including MacBeth, Judas Iscariot and Guy Fawkes.

The Faction Theatre Company

Jamie Maclachlan played the title character, with Leipacher as Lady Macbeth, Fordred, Guiney and Austin Hardiman as the Witches and Delaney as The Porter.