History Theatre / Macbeth

The play takes place in the Scottish Highlands. Fresh from putting down a rebellion against King Duncan, Lord Macbeth meets three witches who hail him as the future king. [[LadyMacbeth His scheming and ambitious wife]] convinces him to make the prophecy come true by killing Duncan. They succeed, but the two of them spend the rest of the play [[MurderMakesYouCrazy slowly going insane from guilt]]; Lady Macbeth begins sleepwalking, [[ScrubbingOffTheTrauma scrubbing at imaginary bloodstains and hallucinating]], and [[DrivenToSuicide ultimately kills herself]]. Macbeth himself enters into [[TheParanoiac a paranoid frenzy]], [[HeKnowsTooMuch killing every potential rival]] in order to consolidate his power. The witches predict that "[[NoManOfWomanBorn none of woman born]]" shall slay him, which gives him some reassurance... until he meets Macduff, whose family he murdered, and who was "from his mother's womb untimely ripped" -- in other words, delivered via crude caesarean section from his mother's dead or dying body, [[ProphecyTwist not "born" as Elizabethans defined it]]. [[DidntSeeThatComing D'oh.]]

* A 2007 West End stage production with a SettingUpdate to a vaguely Socialist- Romania [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed esque]] or AlternateHistory setting, starring Creator/PatrickStewart as Macbeth as a Ceausescu . Transferred to Broadway in 2008, and adapted into a television production in 2010. Free to watch on [[http://video.pbs.org/video/1604122998/ PBS.com]].

* A 2007 West End stage production with a SettingUpdate to a vaguely Soviet-Russia-[[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed esque]] or AlternateHistory setting, starring Creator/PatrickStewart with UsefulNotes/JosephStalin's mustache. Transferred to Broadway in 2008, and adapted into a television production in 2010. Free to watch on [[http://video.pbs.org/video/1604122998/ PBS.com]].

** The Witches in the 1999 RSC version were three semi-feral young woman in grubby clothes, resembling homeless junkies, who scurried around like animals. Gregory Doran gave them secret rehearsals on their own so that when they first showed up in rehearsal, they creeped the hell out of everyone.

* Gregory Doran’s 2000 RSC production, starring Antony Sher and Harriet Walter (and with a young Creator/RichardArmitage in a minor role.) Notable for its claustrophobic intensity, the chemistry between the two leads and its dark humour; often regarded as one of the finest contemporary productions. Filmed without an audience using hand-held cameras and commercially released in 2001.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are often portrayed as having a loving relationship and are great ones for entertaining their guests. Unfortunately, Gruoch urges her husband to "look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it", and accuses her husband of wimping out under the pretence of false courage when he sent his first report and convinces him to let the guards take the rap for Duncan's murder.

** Initially, Macbeth shows more scruples/hesitancy about killing Duncan than does his wife, and she pushes him into doing it. Afterward, however, Lady Macbeth suppresses any feelings of guilt, and constantly tells Macbeth to stop fretting, whereas Macbeth is haunted by his feelings of guilt—-''until'' her repressed guilt comes back in her sleep and drives her to suicide, while he becomes more and villainous and slowly loses all his remaining scruples about killing. Her death takes away the only other person he cared about, and by the end of the play he’s a shell of himself.

** Initially, Macbeth shows more scruples/hesitancy to kill Duncan than does his wife, and she pushes him into doing it. Afterward, however, while Lady Macbeth goes increasingly mad from guilt, Macbeth's reaction to guilt is to seemingly lose all emotion and scruples and he far surpasses his wife in villainy.

** And Macbeth's supposed invulnerability, given that he can be defeated by no man of woman born. A pity then that Macduff was born via caesarian section.

* ExactWords: Macduff's family is well at peace. Resting in peace, that is.

* Gregory Doran’s 2001 RSC production, starring Antony Sher and Harriet Walter (and with a young Creator/RichardArmitage in a minor role.) Notable for its claustrophobic intensity, the chemistry between the two leads and its dark humour; often regarded as one of the finest contemporary productions. Filmed without an audience using hand-held cameras and commercially released in 2001.

* KlingonPromotion: How Macbeth becomes thane of Cawdor, and later king.

* ScrubbingOffTheTrauma: The famous sleepwalking scene, where Lady Macbeth, guilt-ridden over Duncan's death, dreams that she has a bloodstain on her hand that she cannot get out by any means.

** The murderers who killed Banquo are never heard from again after reporting his death to Macbeth.

* A 2007 West End stage production with a SettingUpdate to a vaguely Soviet-Russia-[[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed esque]] or AlternateHistory setting, starring Creator/PatrickStewart. Transferred to Broadway in 2008, and adapted into a television production in 2010. Free to watch on [[http://video.pbs.org/video/1604122998/ PBS.com]].

* BloodyHallucinationsOfGuilt: Lady Macbeth hallucinates blood on her hands in her last scene.

The play takes place in the Scottish Highlands. Fresh from putting down a rebellion against King Duncan, Lord Macbeth meets three witches who hail him as the future king. [[LadyMacbeth His scheming and ambitious wife]] convinces him to make the prophecy come true by killing Duncan. They succeed, but the two of them spend the rest of the play [[MurderMakesYouCrazy slowly going insane from guilt]]; Lady Macbeth begins sleepwalking, [[OutDamnedSpot scrubbing at imaginary bloodstains and hallucinating]], and [[DrivenToSuicide ultimately kills herself]]. Macbeth himself enters into [[TheParanoiac a paranoid frenzy]], [[HeKnowsTooMuch killing every potential rival]] in order to consolidate his power. The witches predict that "[[NoManOfWomanBorn none of woman born]]" shall slay him, which gives him some reassurance... until he meets Macduff, whose family he murdered, and who was "from his mother's womb untimely ripped" -- in other words, delivered via crude caesarean section from his mother's dead or dying body, [[ProphecyTwist not "born" as Elizabethans defined it]]. [[DidntSeeThatComing D'oh.]]

* OutDamnedSpot: The TropeNamer. The famous sleepwalking scene, where Lady Macbeth, guilt-ridden over Duncan's death, dreams that she has a bloodstain on her hand that she cannot get out by any means.

* DecompositeCharacter: In the 2015 film, the Doctor and Gentlewoman who attend Lady Macbeth are present for the scene in which her death is announced but are absent for the OutDamnedSpot scene. She instead gives this speech to an apparition of her dead son.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Lady Macbeth in the sleepwalking scene.

* NiceJobBreakingItHerod: The murderers successfully kill Banquo, but Fleance escapes, which makes the Witches' prophecy to Banquo that "he shall get kings, though thou be none" more ominous when Macbeth asks if Banquo's descendants will ever reign, followed by a train of ghosts whose appearances resemble Banquo's future descendants.

Many of the inconsistencies in ''Macbeth'' come from the fact that Macbeth was a real person who was featured in ''Holinshed's Chronicles'', a best-selling popular history of Shakespeare's time. Holinshed played fast and light with the facts in many cases, though -- for instance, he includes legendary or wholly fictional characters such as Fleance, who was supposedly an ancestor of the Scottish royal family. (In the play as produced now, Fleance disappears in Act Three: in the original 1606 presentation, he was brought back on stage after the play in a "dumb show" that explained he was the ancestor of the [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfStuart Stuarts]].) Holinshead also refers to Lady Macbeth as "burning with an unquenchable desire to bear the name of a queen". In reality he had no historical justification for this -- the only thing that's actually known about Lady Macbeth is that she existed (and that her first name was Gruoch, and that Macbeth was her second husband) -- but Shakespeare turned that one sentence into one of his best-known female characters.

* CoitusEnsues: In the 2006 film, out of nowhere, Macbeth ends up having a foursome with the witches while they discuss his future.

* SuperOCD: Freud compared Lady Macbeth's obsession with bloodstains with mysophobia, a typical trait of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.