Help me with Macbeth

[alittlelamb]

im doing a project on Macbeth.. i hav to demonstrate a knowledge of the staging of the play in Shakespeare's time and explain how the staging contributes to the success of the play... so can anyone help me?? im suffocating... Thankx alot..

[The Unnamable]

im doing a project on Macbeth.. i hav to demonstrate a knowledge of the staging of the play in Shakespeare's time and explain how the staging contributes to the success of the play... so can anyone help me?? im suffocating... Thankx alot..
That’s not a pleasant assignment you’ve been set.

Have a look at the Globe online http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/navigation/framesetNS.htm (resources for students) to give you an idea of what the physical conditions of the theatre was. There is also background information that you should find useful.

I suppose you’ll have to have only males playing all the parts and emphasise the ribald humour of the Porter scene (Polanski has him relieving himself up against the wall before he answers the ‘knocking’).
The witches could be one focus for your consideration of staging effects. Although they did not have the sophisticated stage effects available today, they did have the capacity to create convincingly frightening witches and an atmosphere of dark, brooding evil (relative to the beliefs of the day).

[alittlelamb]

alright.. thankx for ur infor anyway.. really... i hope wat u posted helped me in some ways... yes i know its not a pleasant one.. sighx... that is because my teacher is putting the marks to my exams.. and im getting stressed over it as my language is not that good either.

[alittlelamb]

does that also mean that they set the scene when they think that that day is going to rain and having dark clouds?

[The Unnamable]

does that also mean that they set the scene when they think that that day is going to rain and having dark clouds?
I don’t think that would be feasible. Most of the work would have to be done by Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry to make us imagine the blasted heath and the weird sisters – so we get lots of references to ‘fog and filthy air’ etc. and have the incantatory verse of the cauldron scene. They could manage sound effects that were convincingly thunder-like and the costumes, make-up etc. would also contribute. When the play was performed, witchcraft was taken far more seriously than it is today (although I’m not sure about this reading some posts). King James wrote a book called ‘Daemonologie’. Some people in the audience believed in the existence of witches and would probably have been genuinely scared.

[mewize]

The flags at the globe were raised at two in the afternoon on the day that plays were to be performed. I saw in the epilogue of Will Kemp's Nine Days Wonder that he makes a passing reference to his former employer Shakerags and he makes a passing reference to Macbeth there as well. There appears to have been a bitter power strugle within the playhouses, from the blackfriars to the problems with repeated closures due to political underpinnings of the works. Staging plays that deliberately satarized kings and noblemen were risky business. Ben Johnson was imprisoned along with Thomas Nashe for delivering a play that satarized Lord Cobham- Isle of Dogs. Certainly Robert Devereux knew the significance and power plays had on the audience which of corse was made up of possible surporters. thus plays about kings were difficult to stage successfully.

[JackExsecror]

In Shakespeare's time, there were BARELY any stage props. The Globe Theatre consisted only of MALE actors, and yes, they'd have to dress up as women for female roles. The amount of props were dramatically low. For example, an actor trying to have a full set of armor would probably have a chestplate and nothing else. The settings of the plays were often described by Shakespeare, such as "The stars doth shine bright", which would mean that it was nighttime. Shakespeare barely ever states "It is nighttime", and it usually in the text.