MacBeth

by William Shakespeare

A fully dramatised recording

Get other William Shakespeare plays on Audio CD click here

Get Other Classic Audio Books CD click here

MacBeth by William Shakespeare - Unabridged Audio CD

Brand New :  Unabridged 2 Audio CDs 2.1 Hours

The first act of the play opens amidst thunder and lightning, with the Three Witches deciding that their next meeting shall be with Macbeth. In the following scene, a wounded sergeant reports to King Duncan of Scotland that his generals Macbeth, who is the Thane of Glamis, and Banquo, have just defeated the allied forces of Norway and Ireland, who were led by the rebel Macdonwald. Macbeth, the King's kinsman, is praised for his bravery and fighting prowess. The scene changes. Macbeth and Banquo enter, discussing the weather and their victory ("So foul and fair a day I have not seen"). As they wander onto a heath, the three Witches, who have been waiting, greet them with prophecies. Even though it is Banquo who first challenges them, they address Macbeth. The first hails Macbeth as "Thane of Glamis", the second as "Thane of Cawdor", and the third proclaims that he shall "be King hereafter". Macbeth appears to be stunned to silence, so again Banquo challenges them. The Witches inform Banquo he shall father a line of kings, though he himself will not be one. While the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the Witches vanish, and another Thane, Ross, a messenger from the King, arrives and informs Macbeth of his newly bestowed title—Thane of Cawdor. The first prophecy is thus fulfilled. Immediately, Macbeth begins to harbour ambitions of becoming king.

Macbeth writes to his wife about the Witches' prophecies. When Duncan decides to stay at the Macbeths' castle at Inverness, Lady Macbeth hatches a plan to murder him and secure the throne for her husband. Although Macbeth raises concerns about the regicide, Lady Macbeth eventually persuades him, by challenging his manhood, to follow her plan. On the night of the king's visit, Macbeth kills Duncan. The deed is not seen by the audience, but it leaves Macbeth so shaken that Lady Macbeth has to take charge. In accordance with her plan, she frames Duncan's sleeping servants for the murder by planting bloody daggers on them. Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish nobleman, and Macduff, the loyal Thane of Fife, arrive.[1] The drunken porter opens the gate and Macbeth leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff discovers Duncan's corpse. In a feigned fit of anger, Macbeth murders the guards before they can protest their innocence. Macduff is immediately suspicious of Macbeth, but does not reveal his suspicions publicly. Fearing for their lives, Duncan's sons flee, Malcolm to England and his brother Donalbain to Ireland. The rightful heirs' flight makes them suspects and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king.
Macbeth seeing the Ghost of Banquo by Théodore Chassériau.

Despite his success, Macbeth remains uneasy about the prophecy about Banquo. So Macbeth invites him to a royal banquet and discovers that Banquo and his young son, Fleance, will be riding out that night. He hires two men to kill them. A third murderer appears mysteriously in the park before the murder. While the assassins kill Banquo, Fleance escapes. At the banquet, Banquo's ghost enters and sits in Macbeth's place. Only Macbeth can see the spectre; the rest panic at the sight of Macbeth raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady Macbeth orders them to leave. Macbeth, disturbed, goes to the Witches once more. They conjure up three spirits with three further warnings and prophecies, which tell him to "beware Macduff", but also that "none of woman born shall harm Macbeth" and he will "never vanquish'd be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him". Since Macduff is in exile in England, Macbeth assumes that he is safe; so he puts to death everyone in Macduff's castle, including Macduff's wife and their young children.

Lady Macbeth becomes racked with guilt from the crimes she and her husband have committed. In a famous scene, she sleepwalks and tries to wash imaginary bloodstains from her hands, all the while speaking of the terrible things she knows. In England, Malcolm and Macduff are informed by Ross that "your castle is surprised, your wives and babes savagely slaughtered." Macbeth, now viewed as a tyrant, sees many of his thanes defecting. Malcolm leads an army, along with Macduff and Englishmen Siward (the Elder), the Earl of Northumberland, against Dunsinane Castle. While encamped in Birnam Wood, the soldiers are ordered to cut down and carry tree limbs to camouflage their numbers, thus fulfilling the Witches' third prophecy. Meanwhile, Macbeth delivers a famous soliloquy ("Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow") upon his learning of Lady Macbeth's death (the cause is undisclosed, and it is assumed by some that she committed suicide, as Malcolm's final reference to her reveals "'tis thought, by self and violent hands / took off her life").

A battle culminates in the slaying of the young Siward and Macduff's confrontation with Macbeth. Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, for he cannot be killed by any man born of woman. Macduff declares that he was "from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd" (i.e., born by Caesarean section) and was therefore not "of woman born". Macbeth realizes, too late, the Witches have misled him. Macduff beheads Macbeth off stage and thereby fulfills the last of the prophecies. Although Malcolm is placed on the throne and not Fleance, the witches' prophecy concerning Banquo, "Thou shalt [be]get kings", was known to the audience of Shakespeare's time to be true, for James I of England was supposedly a descendant of Banquo.

About the Author William Shakespeare

(baptised April 26 1564 - died April 23 1616)
William Shakespeare (also spelled Shakspere, Shaksper, Shaxper, and Shake-speare, due to the fact that spelling in Elizabethan times was not fixed and absolute[8]) was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman from Snitterfield, and of Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry. His birth is assumed to have occurred at the family house on Henley Street. Shakespeare's christening record dates to April 26 of that year. Because christenings were performed within a few days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday. This date provides a convenient symmetry because Shakespeare died on the same day, April 23 (May 3 on the Gregorian calendar), in 1616.

Shakespeare probably attended King Edward VI Grammar School in central Stratford. While the quality of Elizabethan-era grammar schools was uneven, the school probably would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and literature. It is presumed that the young Shakespeare attended this school, since as the son of a prominent town official he was entitled to do so for free (although his attendance cannot be confirmed because the school's records have not survived). At the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, who was twenty-six, on November 28, 1582. One document identified her as being "of Temple Grafton," near Stratford, and the marriage may have taken place there. Two neighbours of Anne posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. There appears to have been some haste in arranging the ceremony, presumably because Anne was three months pregnant.

After his marriage, Shakespeare left few traces in the historical record until he appeared on the London theatrical scene. Indeed, the late 1580s are known as Shakespeare's "lost years" because no evidence has survived to show exactly where he was or why he left Stratford for London. On May 26, 1583, Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was baptised at Stratford. Twin children, a son, Hamnet, and a daughter, Judith, were baptised on February 2, 1585. Hamnet died in 1596.

London and theatrical career

By 1592 Shakespeare was a playwright in London; he had enough of a reputation for Robert Greene to denounce him as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey." (The italicised line parodies the phrase, "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" which Shakespeare wrote in Henry VI, part 3.)

By late 1594 Shakespeare was an actor, writer and part-owner of a playing company, known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men - the company took its name, like others of the period, from its aristocratic sponsor, in this case the Lord Chamberlain. The group became popular enough that after the death of Elizabeth I and the coronation of James I (1603), the new monarch adopted the company and it became known as the King's Men. Shakespeare's writing shows him to indeed be an actor, with many phrases, words, and references to acting, but there isn't an academic approach to the art of theatre that might be expected.

By 1596 Shakespeare had moved to the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and by 1598 he appeared at the top of a list of actors in Every Man in His Humour written by Ben Jonson. Also by 1598 his name began to appear on the title pages of his plays, presumably as a selling point.

There is a tradition that Shakespeare, in addition to writing many of the plays his company enacted, and being concerned as part-owner of the company with business and financial details, continued to act in various parts such as the ghost of Hamlet's father, Adam in ""As You Like It"", and as the Chorus in ""Henry V"".

He appears to have moved across the Thames River to Southwark sometime around 1599. By 1604, he had moved again, north of the river, where he lodged just north of St Paul's Cathedral with a Huguenot family named Mountjoy. His residence there is worth noting because he helped arrange a marriage between the Mountjoys' daughter and their apprentice Stephen Bellott. Bellott later sued his father-in-law for defaulting on part of the promised dowry, and Shakespeare was called as a witness.

Various documents recording legal affairs and commercial transactions show that Shakespeare grew rich enough during his stay in London to buy a property in Blackfriars, London and own the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place.

Later years

Shakespeare's last two plays were written in 1613, after which he appears to have retired to Stratford. He died on April 23 1616, at the age of fifty-two, on the same date (though not same day for England was still functioning under the Julian calendar) as Spanish writer and poet Miguel de Cervantes. He also died on his birthday, if the speculation that he was born on April 23 is correct. He was married to Anne until his death and was survived by his two daughters, Susanna and Judith. Susanna married Dr John Hall, but there are no direct descendants of the poet and playwright alive today.

Shakespeare is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the honour of burial in the chancel not on account of his fame as a playwright but for purchasing a share of the tithe of the church for £440 (a considerable sum of money at the time). A monument placed by his family on the wall nearest his grave features a bust of him posed in the act of writing. Each year on his claimed birthday, a new quill pen is placed in the writing hand of the bust.

He is believed to have written the epitaph on his tombstone:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
But cursed be he that moves my bones. 

MacBeth by William Shakespeare - Unabridged Audio CD