I’ve already finished the semester (and graduated!), but I’ve been lazy and haven’t updated my Reads of 2010. Before the semester ended, we read Macbeth and The Tempest (review forthcoming).
I didn’t enjoy Macbeth much at all. In fact, I found it difficult to finish. Most of my classmates liked Macbeth better than Hamlet, but for me it was the opposite. I thought Hamlet was a much more intriguing play as a whole. Different strokes, I guess. There was nothing about Macbeth that made me feel sympathetic toward him. With Hamlet and even Richard III, I found something slightly redemptive; but with Macbeth, I didn’t find that. His character struck me as very weak and boring.
Additionally, I found the witches sort of distracting and not very enjoyable. To me, they didn’t advance the plot in any way and I felt like they were out of place in a play that didn’t seem very supernatural overall. Lastly, the character of Macbeth wasn’t very interesting to me; in fact, I was more intrigued by Lady Macbeth, but as her husband rises to power, her presence in the play dwindles considerably. This was a pattern with me–I tended to find the female characters in Shakespeare’s plays far more interesting than many of the men. Wouldn’t Macbeth have been much more interesting if it had been written as Lady Macbeth instead? Just a thought. 
