Macbeth

Sir Ian McKellen tells us about some of his most famous roles: playing Macbeth opposite Dame Judi Dench, King Richard III with a screenplay he co-wrote, and Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings films.

What can Shakespeare say about the original sin of the United States, slavery? As two artists in the Civil War era thought, a lot. Two cartoons in the Folger’s collections, drawn around a decade apart, allude to Shakespeare’s Macbeth to…

Austin Tichenor draws comparisons between Kim Wexler and Lady Macbeth, unpacking Shakespearean themes in the "Better Call Saul" series.

Director Sam Gold shares what he loves most about Macbeth, why it stands out from other Shakespeare tragedies he's directed, and how his ideas about the play changed over time. His current Broadway production, starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga, runs through July 10.

Thanks to everyone who registered a guess for this month’s Crocodile Mystery and congratulations to those of you who answered correctly! As many of you pointed out, the oddity in the final disposition of characters is Macbeth’s full-bodied presence on…

While working on "The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry that Forged the Medieval World," Shelley Puhak stumbled across a connection between her subjects and Shakespeare. Her book is a dual biography of Brunhild and Fredegund, two queens who, as long-term regents for their underage male relatives, ruled over most of sixth-century Western Europe. Fredegund was born a slave; Brunhild was a Visigoth princess. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, they ended up as sisters-in-law and political rivals who negotiated with emperors and popes, revitalized cities, revamped tax policy, and conducted a decades-long civil war—against each other. Echoes of one conflict in that war, the 593 Battle of Droizy, have been preserved in Macbeth’s final act, when Birnam Wood arrives at Dunsinane.

Denzel Washington in The Tragedy of Macbeth, now streaming on Apple TV+ A movie that honors a play’s theatricality: That’s what director Joel Coen said he wanted for The Tragedy of Macbeth, his new adaptation of the Scottish play. The…

This January, new productions kick off at the Atlanta Shakespeare Company and Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. Plus, streaming productions of Macbeth, a podcast returns, and a new audio play.

How do Shakespeare's plays reflect a life filled with plague outbreaks, asks Austin Tichenor -- and do we see his plays in new ways now?

A spectacular 1936 Federal Theatre Project production of “Macbeth” in New York City employed hundreds of black actors and theater technicians. It was financed by the Federal Theatre Project, a controversial part of the federal government’s New Deal programs to provide jobs for Americans.

John Masefield has a burning question he needs answered. Literally. Writing from his home Hill Crest in Boar’s Hill, Oxford, the Poet Laureate asks theater production veteran Allan Wade a crucial question about staging his home theatrical production of Macbeth.1…

Folger Public Programs is pleased to present ENCORES, a weekly online series highlighting past performances and recalling the rich history of programming on the historic Folger stage. See our special feature ‘Blood Will Have Blood’ from Folger Theatre/Two River Theater’s 2008 production of ‘Macbeth.’