What You’ll Love about… Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Macbeth demonstrates the perils of ambition and the emptiness of pursuing power.

Johann Heinrich Füssli, “The Three Witches Appearing to Macbeth and Banquo.” Public domain courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Based on my own experience, Macbeth seems to be one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays today. That might be because of its grim subject matter, or the fact that it’s one of his shortest plays, or the fact that it has supernatural/occult elements. People seem to love those. It’s also super quotable, whether it’s the fantastic image of Macbeth’s sword, which “smoked with bloody execution” or his wife’s command to “screw your courage to the sticking place” or Macduff’s heartbreaking description of his murdered children as his “pretty chickens.” There’s something extraordinary about how the language of the play can stick with us.

You may know lines from Macbeth without even knowing they’re from the play, and people will sometimes whip out Macbeth quotes unexpectedly. I remember that a sergeant I served with in Korea was fond of quoting Macbeth’s famous lines delivered upon learning of his wife’s death:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts…