A Series of Questions about 'Macbeth'
If we want to understand Shakespeare’s Macbeth as a play, there are a series of questions that we can ask which take us deeply into both...
The Ups and Downs of Characters
If we go back to mythology and folklore, the hero of a story can have superhuman qualities and is often semi-divine in origin - in...
The Sorrowful State of the Villain
Purely virtuous heroes are hard for us to feel much affinity for. What’s interesting, though, is that as we move away from the complete...
Teaching 'Macbeth'
In the early 2000s, while teaching English Literature to a group of 14 year olds, I performed an experiment in two parts. Firstly, using...