“Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?” Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most memorable female characters, but what is it that motivates this murderess in the Scottish Play? Ava Reid uses this Shakespearean drama as loose inspiration for her gritty medieval fantasy tale Lady Macbeth, which came out last month. Continue reading Review of Lady Macbeth—A Grimdark Reimagining
Tag: Macbeth
Back to School Reading List: Drama Edition
Around this time every year, I put together a mini syllabus of Gothic works commonly read in schools. If you missed them in the past, be sure to go back and check out my original Back to School Reading List and my Back to School Reading List: Short Story Edition. This time, I wanted to tackle some theater! Check out the five plays below that bring the Gothic to the stage:
1) Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Though Shakespeare was writing a good few centuries before the Gothic literary movement of the late 1700s, several of his works can be considered proto-Gothics—particularly Macbeth. I’ve discussed this in more detail during my post on The Gothic in Shakespeare, but Macbeth displays many motifs that would later become core tropes of the Gothic novel. For example, one of its main settings is a medieval castle; it features ghosts that have returned to address past wrongs; there are witches with ominous prophecies; and Lady Macbeth prefigures later female villains, both of the femme fatale variety and the Madwoman in the Attic. Many later Gothic writers were strongly influenced by Macbeth, including the author of the very first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole. Continue reading Back to School Reading List: Drama Edition
The Witch Literary Canon
I’ve been thinking lately about a certain iconic character that crops up again and again in gothic literature: the witch. Witches embody the greatest fears of the societies they belong to, from devil worship to the idea of women wielding power. They are some of literature’s most controversial figures, and some of my favorite to read about. Thus, I felt they deserved their own literary canon. (Click here to see the other literary canon lists I’ve done.) Below are a few of the central texts in the body of witchy literature: Continue reading The Witch Literary Canon
The Gothic in Shakespeare
Yesterday, April 23, was Shakespeare’s birthday—and also his death day! In honor of the Bard, I figured I would take this opportunity to discuss his connection with the Gothic tradition. William Shakespeare was writing his plays and poems two centuries before the advent of the Gothic novel. However, his influence on the genre has been much attested, and proto-Gothic elements can be seen in a number of his plays. In this post, I will highlight these aspects in three of his darkest plays:
