4.6 • 978 Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2020
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. When three witches prophesy that Macbeth will be king one day, he is not prepared to wait and almost the next day he murders King Duncan as he sleeps, a guest at Macbeth’s castle. From there we explore their brutal world where few boundaries are distinct – between safe and unsafe, friend and foe, real and unreal, man and beast – until Macbeth too is slaughtered.
The image above shows Nicol Williamson as Macbeth in a 1983 BBC TV adaptation.
With:
Emma Smith Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford
Kiernan Ryan Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London
And
David Schalkwyk, Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of Global Shakespeare at Queen Mary, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
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0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
0:04.6 | Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. |
0:07.2 | There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our |
0:10.8 | programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in our time. I hope you |
0:15.1 | enjoy the programs. Hello Shakespeare's Macbeth is one of his greatest |
0:19.2 | tragedies, fast-moving, unsettling, unsettling, bloody and compelling. three witches prophesy he'll be king one day, and he makes that property true |
0:28.1 | almost the next day, murdering King Duncan as he sleeps and his guest at Macbeth's home. And so we explore their brutal world |
0:35.8 | where few boundaries are distinct between safe and unsafe, friend and foe, real and unreal, |
0:41.9 | man in beast, until Macbeth, too, is slaughtered. |
0:45.2 | With me to discuss Macbeth, are Kehen and Ryan, a Maritus professor of English literature at |
0:50.0 | Royal Holloway University of London. David Scullck, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Queen |
0:55.6 | Mary University of London and Director, the Center for Global Shakespeare. And Emma Smith, Professor |
1:01.3 | of Shakespeare Studies at Hartford College University of Oxford. |
1:04.9 | Emma Smith, it's one of those plays that you call timeless, |
1:09.2 | but I think we should know as much as possible about the time in which Shakespeare wrote it. |
1:16.2 | I think there are perhaps two things to start with here and they're all to do with the |
1:20.8 | Jacobian context under the new king, James the sixth |
1:25.2 | and first of England. |
1:26.5 | Six from, he was James the sixth of Scotland and he came to England, he came to England, |
1:30.4 | became James the first, yes. Absolutely, and he became King in 1603. |
1:34.6 | One of the first things he does is to take on the patronage of the |
1:40.3 | Chamberlain's men who become the King'smen, that's the company to which Shakespeare is attached. |
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