Macbeth in Modern European Culture

This book explores the crucial role Shakespeare’s play has performed in European culture in the long 20th century.

The story of regicide, ambition, civil war and tyranny has resonated across a continent ravaged by armed conflict and riven by competing political and ideological systems. Equally, the play’s acute explorations of gender dynamics, mental breakdown, guilt and suicide have spoken to the psychological and interpersonal pressures of European life in the ’Age of Extremes’.

This unique book gathers expert contributors from across the continent to explore adaptations of the play from 1870-2020. Each chapter explores the fascination Macbeth has exerted in a remarkable variety of places and contexts, from Stalin’s Russia to contemporary Catalonia, from the Scottish tourist industry to the French radio airwaves. Throughout, we see how European adaptors have been liberated from the demands of fidelity to the original Anglophone text. From a European perspective, Macbeth offers a powerful myth that is both flawed and somehow indispensable. It demands to be re-told but it also requires fixing through adaptation.

This collection is distinctive in the sheer range of adaptations it considers: while the stage is represented throughout, we also learn about Macbeth on radio, in novels, in poetry, in graphic art and photography, adapted for local political and personal resonances in private such as letters and diaries, but also in the public spheres of newspaper columns and high-profile court cases. Anyone who reads this book will never see the play in the same way again.

Juan F. Cerdá is Lecturer in English at the University of Murcia, Spain. He has published articles in Shakespeare, Cahiers Élisabéthains, Borrowers and Lenders, has contributed to Shakespeare and Conflict: A European Perspective (2013), Shakespeare Beyond English: A Global Experiment (2013), The Taming of the Shrew: The State of Play (Arden, 2021) and he has co-edited Shakespeare in Spain. An Annotated Bilingual Bibliography (, 2015) and Romeo and Juliet in European Cultures (2017).

Paul Prescott is Professor of English and Theatre at the University of California, Merced, USA. He has published multiple books including four with the Arden Shakespeare. In addition to this current proposal, he is contracted to co-author a fifth title, Shakespeare, Ecology, Adaptation: A Practical Guide, also in the Arden Shakespeare and Adaptation series. He is also active in theatre production and has adapted Macbeth for the National Theatre’s 2018 production starring Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff.