...When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning or in rain?
When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won...

…Fair is foul, and foul is fair…

…If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not…

…Nothing in this life
Became him like leaving it….

…Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness…

…Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters…

…If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well
It were done quickly…

…That but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here….

…Vaulting ambition…

…False face must hide what false heart doth know…

…Is this a dagger I see before me?…

…Sleep no more; Macbeth doth murder sleep…

…Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand?…

…There’s daggers in men’s smiles…

…Nought’s had, all’s spent…

…Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble…

...By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes...

…A deed without a name…

…for no man of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth…

…What, will the line stretch out to th’ crack of doom?…

…Out, damned spot! Out, I say!…

…What’s done cannot be undone…

…I will not be afraid of death and Bane
Till Burnam Forest come to Dunsinane…

…I have supp’d full with horrors…

…To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow…

…And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candles!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing…

…Lay on, Macduff;
And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’…
    The next scholastic attempt at Shakespeare was Macbeth, and it was better too. A play more suited to a bunch of hooligans and they took us to the cinema to see the British film, with Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson. Terrific, even if it proved to be far from the best movie version, of which the Japanese one, Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, is the most remarkable. Maybe there was something to all this Shakespeare stuff after all. Even if it was written in a secret code.
    The excessive list of quotes above is really just a sample, almost all of the play is quotable, and the story, and the characterisation, beyond description. Shakespeare takes us into the mind of a murderer and we get to explore its every nook and cranny. It was the model for all murder yarns to come, a formula that was so strong even Hitchcock was unable to improve on it. For mine, this is his best work, far better than the stagey poser Hamlet. The greatest playwright in all history at the very peak of his powers.
     Macbeth was a historic figure and by all accounts a far more worthy fellow than Shakespeare says he was. It seems to be a rare instance of an original work by Bill, blending history and legend, although there is a record of a lost play called Macdobeth dated 1596, whereas political allusions suggest Macbeth was written in 1606.
Shakespeare Scoreboard:
Original plays 1. (Macbeth)
Plays ripped off from others:   1. (Merchant of Venice from Marlowe’s Jew of Malta)