German A-level students who´ve chosen English as a major subject for their last two years have to read a play by Shakespeare, when we do it they´re 18 years old and capable of understanding and appreciating the plays by the Bard. They´ve all heard the name and know that the name is famous, but why and what for they rarely know, occasionally someone mentions Romeo and Juliet and Leonardo di Caprio, but that´s all.

I rather like this situation because if you don´t know anything about a piece of literature you can find out more easily how it is constructed, if the information necessary to understand it is given clearly and in a logical order, how the action develops towards the climax. I always read ´Macbeth´, it´s the shortest play and has only one plot, when my students have struggled through it, they´ve done enough. You find the language difficult, you have no idea what it means to foreign students!

Before we open the book I ask them if they´re superstitious. ´Of course not´ comes back in chorus. Ah, so they never read horoscopes, don´t wear lucky charms, knock on wood or evade black cats? Mmmh. What about witchcraft? Now they´ve become careful and don´t answer negatively at once. When I mention satanic cults, they nod and understand that the Middle Ages aren´t over yet, that the Age of Enlightenment hasn´t enlightened humankind completely.

In the first scene set on ´a desolate place´ three witches meet, the words ´thunder, lightning, rain´ are mentioned creating a gloomy atmosphere. We hear about a battle ´lost and won´. This opposition is repeated when all witches together chant ´Fair is foul, and foul is fair´ stressing the idea that what looks good in the beginning becomes bad, but there´s also the idea that something bad becomes good. The words sound like a slogan, a motto, we´ll meet it again several times, either expressed in the same words or through different images.

In the second scene Macbeth and his friend Banquo, two captains, are described indirectly by another soldier praising their brave deeds during the battle and we´re informed about a traitor, the Thane of Cawdor, who assisted the enemy albeit in vain. King Duncan decides on the spot to have him executed, ´Go pronounce his present death/And with his former title greet Macbeth.´ So Macbeth is promoted for his bravery, but gets the title of a traitor!

On their way home from the battlefield Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches who hail Macbeth with the words ´Thane of Glamis´, the title he had before the battle, ´Thane of Cawdor´, the title the King has bestowed on him and ´king hereafter´. For Banquo the witches have the words ´Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.´

When Macbeth learns about the promotion he knows that the witches´ first address was a prophecy which has been fulfilled, does he now see the second as a prophecy, too, pointing into the future? Let´s listen in to his asides (´asides´ are a way of revealing a character´s thoughts on stage) : ´Two truths are told,/As happy prologues to the swelling act/ Of the imperial theme´ . . . ´why do I yield to that suggestion,/Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair/And make my seated heart knock at my ribs/Against the use of nature?´ . . . ´My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical´. Why the excitement? Why think of murder? But then he calms down with the words, ´If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me/Without my stir.´

Yet when he is greeted by the King and congratulated officially we catch him with the aside, ´Stars, hide your fires,/ Let not light see my black and deep desires´.

Scene 5 shows Lady Macbeth reading a letter from her husband. She knows him well, ´ . . .thy nature/It is too full o´th´milk of human kindness´ . . . ´What thou wouldst highly,/That thou wouldst holily; wouldst not play false´ and she decides ´to pour (her) spirits into (his) ear´.

I´ve got cassettes with the text spoken by famous British actors (Alec Guiness as Macbeth), Lady Macbeth´s words, an incantation really, send shudders down the spines of sensitive listeners. ´Come, you spirits/That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here/And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull/Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,/Stop up th´access and passage to remorse´.

When Macbeth arrives at his castle he seriously considers killing the King who´s decided to visit him, yet he still hesitates and argues and can´t make up his mind King Duncan being his sovereign, his cousin and his host. Murdering him would be a threefold crime. His wife succeeds in convincing him, though, that it must be done and done at once and so in the end he tells her ´I am settled and bend up/Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.´

What will happen in the second act? Will he murder King Duncan? My students are convinced that he will. ´Macbeth´ is a five act play, so I ask them what they expect to happen in the remaining three acts, this is a difficult question indeed and they have no idea. Obviously we don´t have a simple thriller here, we know the murderer, the victim, the motive, and three acts seem too many for the disclosure of the crime.

Immediately after the murder Macbeth feels remorse, ´I am afraid of what I have done´ . . . ´To know my deed, ´twere best not know myself´, but Lady Macbeth tells him ´Consider it not so deeply´ . . . ´These deeds must not be thought/After these ways; so, it will make us mad´. She makes him also kills the two grooms who are sleeping in the King´s chamber, smear blood over them and put the daggers beside their bodies so that it looks as if they have committed the crime and he has avenged it.

However, King Duncan´s sons who´ve come together with their father don´t fall for this and decide to flee to England and to Ireland, this makes them suspicious in the eyes of some noblemen, however. The sovereignty will now fall on Macbeth. So all´s well?

Not at all, because Macbeth realises that all he´s done so far has been done in vain as long as Banquo and his son live, Banquo, his friend whom the witches prophesied to be the father of future kings. He hires two villains to kill them, they only get Banquo, though, Fleance can escape.

After the famous banquet scene in the third act in which Macbeth sees Banquo´s ghost sitting at the table the rising action has reached the turning-point, Macbeth is shaken to the core. He can´t undo what he has done, but how can he go on? Gone is the doubtful, hesitating and remorseful man, ´Blood will have blood´ . . . ´I am in blood/Stepped in so far that should I wade no more,/ Returning were as tedious as go o´er and ´We are but young in deed´. At the end of the third act we learn that the King of England is preparing a war against Scotland to help free the people of the ´tyrant´ Macbeth.

In the fourth act Macbeth meets the witches again and learns to beware the nobleman Macduff, that ´none of woman born shall harm Macbeth´ and ´Macbeth shall never vanquished be until/Great Birnham Wood to high Dunsinae hill/Shall come against him´. Macbeth can´t get Macduff who´s fled, but has his whole family killed and feels safe then as the other two pieces of information seem nonsensical to him.

Macbeth´s reign is one of chaos and terror, we hear about it from Macduff and Malcolm, the rightful successor to his murdered father´s throne who meet at the English court where they help prepare the war against Macbeth, ´. . . our country sinks beneath the yoke;/It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash/Is added to her wounds.´ Enough is enough, the tyrant´s end is nigh, Malcolm ends the conversation with the words ´. . .Macbeth/Is ripe for shaking . . .´.

We haven´t heard about Lady Macbeth for some time, what has become of her? The formerly energetic, cruel hearted woman who incited her husband to do the deed has become mad, she´s continually washing her hands trying to rub off the blood only she sees there.

Macbeth is fortifying his castle but although the apparitions he met at the witches´ have given him the impression that he is invincible, he´s in a pensive mood, ´I have lived long enough . . . ´ When he hears about his wife´s premature death, he is overcome by world-wary, bleak fatalism, ´Life´s but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more. It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing.´ I make my students learn these words by heart, they are wise and profound and belong to the best Shakespeare wrote and some general education doesn´t hurt anybody.

The end comes when the English soldiers carry twigs to hide themselves so that Birnham wood seems to move indeed and Macbeth learns that ´Macduff was from his mother´s womb/Untimely ripped´ and is thus able to overwhelm and kill him. The falling action has reached its lowest point, but ´foul is fair´ and the play ends with the proclamation of Malcolm as the new King of Scotland.

Now I´ve told you the whole story, something one should never do in a review, or should one? Firstly I think that there´s hardly anybody out there who doesn´t know ´Macbeth´ already, secondly we don´t read or watch ´Macbeth´ for the plot - it can be told in one sentence - we are fascinated by the themes incorporated in the play such as ambition, evil, order and disorder, violence and tyranny, guilt and conscience, superstition, the role of man and, of course, the language as such.

I hate mornings, but when I have my class in the first lessons of the day and listen to the cassettes, I´m worked up for the whole day even though I´ve heard them six times already!

Shakespeare rocks.