Paris Peace Accords 23 Oct. 1991

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Listen, read along to this excellent audio recording of MACBETH, a play by William Shakespeare

"Macbeth", with Paul Scofield - 1966 - BBC Radio


Macbeth dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake. A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death. - Wikipedia
Characters
Duncan – King of Scotland
Malcolm – Duncan's elder son
Donalbain – Duncan's younger son
Macbeth – a general in the army of King Duncan; originally Thane of Glamis, then Thane of Cawdor, and later King of Scotland
Lady Macbeth – Macbeth's wife, and later Queen of Scotland
Banquo – Macbeth's friend and a general in the army of King Duncan
Fleance – Banquo's son
Macduff – Thane of Fife
Lady Macduff – Macduff's wife
Macduff's son
Ross, Lennox, Angus, Menteith, Caithness – Scottish Thanes
Siward – general of the English forces
Young Siward – Siward's son
Seyton – Macbeth's armourer
Hecate – Queen of the witches
Three Witches
Captain – in the Scottish army
Three Murderers – employed by Macbeth
Third Murderer
Two Murderers – attack Lady Macduff
Porter – gatekeeper at Macbeth's home
Doctor – Lady Macbeth's doctor
Doctor – at the English court
Gentlewoman – Lady Macbeth's caretaker
Lord – opposed to Macbeth
First Apparition – armed head
Second Apparition – bloody child
Third Apparition – crowned child
Attendants, Messengers, Servants, Soldiers

Excerpts of some of the more famous phrases 
and those relating to Cambodia

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths

To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't. 

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.

I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

the sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil

There's daggers in men's smiles: the near in blood,
The nearer bloody.

But I remember now
I am in this earthly world; where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly: 

O nation miserable,
With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd,
When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again

Alas, poor country!
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be call'd our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy; the dead man's knell
Is there scarce ask'd for who; and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.
 
Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets:
More needs she the divine than the physician.
 
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
 
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.
 

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