Macbeth Reflection

Opinion on the Macbeth Unit

In my opinion, Macbeth was a well developed story with an interesting plot. With that being said Macbeth was written for King James as a play in seventeenth century England. Because Macbeth was written as a play there isn’t a lot of character descriptions or development, many characters are only seen a few times so it is difficult to get a sense of where they fit into the plot. Also much of the play happens extremely fast, there isn’t much space between plot changing events and the whole thing seems rather rushed. For example, Lady Macbeth dies, an army is defeated and Macbeth dies all in a matter of a few scenes with little description of how it actually happened. We don’t know for certain whether Lady Macbeth kills herself, we don’t how the battle unfolded in detail, and we don’t know if Macbeth dies from a fatal blow to the stomach or if he was first weakened by a gash to the leg. I think that the story of Macbeth is a good one that has important themes and messages but as book study I don’t think it has enough content. I don’t believe that when Shakespeare wrote his plays he meant them to be studied. Macbeth is meant to be a performance, in the same sense if you wanted to read the story of Narnia you’d get a better understanding and vision of the story by reading the novel instead of the theatrical script. Without the descriptions found in regular novels it is difficult to envision what Shakespeare imagined. The story of Macbeth is sound but I don’t think that it is the best choice as a book study.