Macbeth teachers' notes

These Teachers' Notes have been prepared to specifically accompany the unique production of Macbeth, which is the mainstage performance at the 2007 Shakespeare in Queen's Park Festival.

Just about anyone who has gone to school in Australia has at some stage visited the text of Macbeth; whether it be through the use of common phrases from the play ("out damn spot" or "something wicked this way comes"), studying the text in English and the actions in Drama, or seeing a live performance.  Macbeth is one of the most well known of all Shakespeare's works, and it is totally open to numerous interpretations and opinions.

If you have already 'googled' the play, you have no doubt found an enormous amount of web material about the play, characters, themes, recipes, songs; you name it, it's probably there for the taking. What we have tried to do through these Notes, is to point you in the right direction of specifically helpful material. We've chosen websites that are reliable and have a deep resource-base, so we do encourage you to search deeper within each of the sites for further information.

These Notes are really just a taste of what awaits you on the stage and inside the text of Macbeth.  We hope you enjoy our production and use these Notes to truly immerse yourself into this amazingly poignant slice of fiction.

Macbeth in Queens Park

Synopsis

Character overview

Themes

Shakespeare: The playwright

Theatre in the Renaissance

Performance history

Shakespearean timeline

Further resources

Author - Justine Nguyen
Editor - Dr Janet McDonald

Students who attended Macbeth might like to download a Comic Book (PDF 582 kb) rundown of the plot and then, Creatre-your-own-ending (PDF 114 kb).