Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Ten of the best Shakespeare characters

Today is Shakespeare's birthday. For the Guardian, in 2012 Robert McCrum came up with a list of the ten best Shakespeare characters, including:
Lady Macbeth: Macbeth

Macbeth and his wife enjoy one of the darkest psycho-sexual relationships ever seen on the English stage. Lady Macbeth’s fiendish manipulation of her husband into acts of horrific violence makes her a supreme archetype. The play has the vertiginous momentum of a thriller and often works best when performed without a break. In that fatal trajectory, when Macbeth “sups full of horrors”, audiences see how his lust for power has been provoked by his wife’s sexual thrall. He has some of the great speeches, but she holds the play’s imaginative dynamo in her fascinating and demonic heart
Read about another Shakespeare character on the list.

Also see: Matt Haig's top 10 novels influenced by Shakespeare.

--Marshal Zeringue