Macbeth

By: William Shakespeare

Narrated by: Stephen Dillane, Fiona Shaw, full cast

By the time Shakespeare came to write Macbeth - almost certainly in 1605/1606 - he had already completed three of the great tragedies with which modern audiences are so familiar: Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603), and King Lear (1605). Each of those plays gives us an eponymous hero who is in some significant way flawed, but for whom we also inevitably feel deep sympathy, whatever his errors or crimes. But in MacBeth, Shakespeare has chosen for his tragic hero a man guilty of the most terrible crime imaginable to a Jacobean audience, that of regicide - the murder of a king.

Part of the writer's triumph is to succeed in making Macbeth, whose crime we must detest, a man in whom we must also see something of our own darker side, our own potential for evil, so that Malcolm's final judgment on him as a mere "butcher" seems wholly inadequate, the verdict of someone who does not share the audience's insight into Macbeth's anguished inner world.

Now sit back and enjoy this lively performance, featuring the voices of award-winning actors Stephen Dillane (Macbeth) and Fiona Shaw (Lady Macbeth), accompanied by a full cast.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)1998 Naxos Audiobooks

mixed results

The dynamics of the sound in this recording are dismal. The performance of Lady MacBeth is superb! The performance of MacBeth himself is extremely uneven, to say it as politely as possible.

Good version; Sound quality so-so

I enjoyed this version of Macbeth. I saw the play a couple of years ago, and I generally thought that this audio version was more effective than that live version. Voices are very expressive, allowing the listener to capture the subtext easily. My biggest complaint is that the sound quality of the Weird Sisters was horrid. Unlike a prior reviewer, I found it incredibly distracting, as the Witches are essential to the development of the play's major themes. It almost put me off from listening to the rest of the play from the first moments of the play. Their famous "fair is foul, and foul is fair" was nearly unintelligible.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Too many bells and whistles. The quality of ambience should not be so strained. The relentless thematic use of water noise - dripping, decanting, gurgling, splashing, washing, raining - threatened to drown the very strut and fret of this finest of plays.

Great cast!

Great audio dramatization of one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. Phenomenal cast, especially Stephen Dillane

Hard to understand

This is the first time I read or heard Macbeth didn't know anything about the story, except that is is from Shakespeare and it was really hard to understand what was going on.

Solid

This definitely helped my students. There was weird breathing through, but not a bad performance.

Over-produced

Good performers. Poor production, with music and effects often too loud to hear words clearly.

good reading

I chose this version because I thought it would be just a reading no a performance since it was not marked that way. One of the witches was completely obscured by what sounded like they recorded it in a parking garage. background noises are distracting more so then helpfully in an audio presentation.

Hoping for Enhanced Format

If this title becomes available in the enhanced format, it will probably dispel the concerns many have expressed about the sound quality. I've listened to this on the original CDs and as an Audible format 4 download, and the difference in clarity is an eye-opener. The third witch, as several people have commented, is inaudible in the download; it has something to do with the conversion of a complex stereo design to mono. In stereo, all witches are clearly audible and the background noises and music are clearly separated from the voices.

It's a particular shame with this title, because Fiona Shaw's vision of Macbeth (she directed it, as well as playing Lady Macbeth) is haunting, almost hallucinatory. It is by far one of the most ambitious and brilliantly-realized audiobooks of a Shakespeare play available. If it does become available as an enhanced-format download, I would urge anyone who tried it before, and rejected it, to give it another try.

Review

What made the experience of listening to Macbeth the most enjoyable?

U G L Y YOU AIN'T GOT NO ALIBI YOU UGLY! On a serious note it was utter sh*te.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Macbeth?

ending

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

nothing, nothing at all. no pictures

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

pictures inclueded

Any additional comments?

doin' a poo.