Macbeth in Modern European Culture: : Shakespeare and Adaptation Juan F. Cerdá The Arden Shakespeare

Macbeth in Modern European Culture

Description

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 Continental 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.

Introduction: Adapting Macbeth in Modernity: European Rhizomes and Nomadic War Machines (Juan F. Cerdá, University of Murcia, Spain)

Part 1: The Age of Extremes
1. Bertolt Brecht: The Three Macbeths (William C Carroll, Boston University, USA)
2. Arendt, Jaspers, Auden: Macbeth and the Banality of Evil (Erica Sheen, University of York, UK)
3. Macbeth in Stalin's Russia: Allusion and Performance (Natalia Khomenko, York University, Canada)

Part 2: The Edges of Europe
4. Shakespeare at the Edge of Europe: Surveying Macbeth and Turkish Culture (Anna Carleton Forrester, University of Georgia Press, USA)
5. Macbeth and the Catalan Independence Movement (Laura Campillo Arnaiz, University of Murcia, Spain)
6. Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter (1982) and Scotland's Place in Europe (Lisa Hopkins, Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
7. Ingmar Bergman, Macbeth and the Royal Dramatic Theatre: A Chronology of Directors, Actors and Stories of the Death of Kings (Kiki Lindell Tersmeden, Lund University, Sweden)

Part 3: Absurdisms and Avant-Gardes
8. Late Modern Macbeths on the Spanish Stage (2000-2020): Gendering Scotland and Galician Regionalism (Juan F. Cerdá, Universidad de Murcia, Spain)
9. Scenes from a Marriage: Macbeth as Domestic Drama in Czech and Slovak Culture (Eva Kyselová, Academy of Performing Arts in Prague DAMU, Czech Republic)
10. 'Strange matters': Silviu Purcarete's absurdist Macbett (2007, 2021) (Nicoleta Cinpoes, University of Worcester, UK)

Part 4: Birnam Woods
11. 'Who can impress the forest': Orchestrating the Birnam Woods in the Post-Holocaust Poetry of Roman Brandstaetter (1906–1987) (Przemyslaw Pozar, University of Warsaw, Poland)
12. 'I look'd toward Birnam': Managing Shakespeare Heritage in Contemporary Scotland (Toria Johnson, University of Birmingham, UK)
13. The Birnam Wood Motif in Spanish and Catalan Culture (Vanessa Palomo Berjaga, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Part 5: Surveys and Future Directions
14. 'Had I three ears…': Macbeth on French radio (Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry, France)
15. Th' Usurper's Cursèd Head: Public Discourse and Politics, Macbeth's decade on the Hungarian stages (Veronika Schandl, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary)
16. Revision and Gender in the Memoirs of Johanne Luise Heiberg (1812-1890) (Anne-Sophie Refskou, Aarhus University, Denmark)
17. 'Fit to govern?' Macbeth and the Vicissitudes of Its Bulgarian Stage Life
(Boika Sokolova, University of Notre Dame, USA, and Kirilka Stavreva, Cornell College, USA)

References
Index

Product details

Published	19 Mar 2026
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	304
ISBN	9781350427518
Imprint	The Arden Shakespeare
Dimensions	216 x 138 mm
Series	Shakespeare and Adaptation
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing