Shakespeare
Short History Of...
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Shakespeare's Macbeth
Shakespeare wrote Macbeth just a year after Catholic conspirators tried to blow up the houses of Parliament and kill the King. In real life, the gunpowder plot involving Guy Fawkes is thwarted, and the plot is a hung, drawn and quartered. Many actors are suspicious about saying Macbeth to this day, referring to it instead as the Scottish play. Scholars argue that his masterpiece Macbeth reveals Shakespeare's position on political events through the prism of fiction. And when he writes, double, double, toil and trouble, fire, burn and cauldron bubble, he is echoing his patron King James' dark obsession with witchcraft.
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