Shakespeare: Macbeth

About this Course

About the Course

In this course Professor Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University) provides of overview of some of the recent scholarship on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with a focus on six key themes. In the first lecture we think about the representation of time in Macbeth. After that, we think about the play’s topicality, i.e. its particular resonance for its original, early 17th-century audience, before turning in the third lecture to consider the presentation of fate and free will in the play. In the fourth lecture we explore the presentation of women in the play, particularly the character of Lady Macbeth and the witches, before turning in the fifth lecture to think about the presentation of sleep and dreams in the play, as well as about consciousness and reality. Finally, in the sixth lecture, we think the use of language and imagery in the play, including the kind of vocabulary used in the play, recurrent imagery, and the play’s insistence of being seen as a play.

About the Lecturer

Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University. Her principal research interests are in Renaissance drama, especially Marlowe, Shakespeare and Ford. She is also interested in the influence of Darwin on fiction, adaptation, and the work of Bram Stoker. At the moment, she is completing a book on From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage. She is a co-editor of Shakespeare, the journal of the British Shakespeare Association, and co-editor of the Arden Early Modern Drama Guides.