Hello and welcome to this episode of Chronicles, where today we're going to be talking all about Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

And here to talk about this tale of betrayal, blood and woe is Harry.

Thank you for joining me.

Hello there.

Thank you very much for having me on Luca.

Now, I will have to say I'm something of a pleb when it comes to Shakespeare.

As such, you will likely have to guide me through some of the reading of this beyond just pure surface level takes, because I, unlike some of your previous esteemed

guests, I'm not a Shakespeare scholar. I read some Shakespeare in secondary school. I read

the Tempest in A-levels. I really angered my A-level instructor because during the Tempest, I put my hand up and said,

so if Prospero could just make a big, like, wave come along and wash people up on shore and,

like, using magic, why didn't you do that, like, 12 years before when they first got stranded?

She got very angry at me for this question because she didn't have an answer, even though it's actually a very easy question to answer upon reflection.

Well, that is part of the mission for when we discuss Shakespeare on Chronicles, of course.

We had a very early conversation and general discussion about Shakespeare with AA. And then

I've done, after that, a twoparter, looking at Romeo and Juliet, and now to do Macbeth is fantastic.

And a large part of this was absolutely like you. When I was at school, I actually didn't work very well with Shakespeare at all.

It was taught by dull teachers with no passion for the material

and no patience for, you know, getting us younger students to actually learn to appreciate it

either. It all felt too distant, too detached from modern day. But actually, of course,

there is something eternal about the themes that

Shakespeare speaks to, and obviously many of those are in the Scottish play. Well, yes, and there's

something kind of not necessarily revolutionary, but something certainly very bold and daring

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