From Drumbeat to Book Cover Comes Macbeth

I remember seeing Macbeth on stage in Chicago years ago. It was a DePaul University production, and the drumbeat in the gruesome denouement of the play was so powerful that it was as if our collective hearts would pound through our chest cavity. That was the best musical rendition of Macbeth I had heard.

This book cover offers an equally powerful interpretation of the same play, but does so with visual arts. It's brilliant!

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Macbeth agonizes so much in those dark, unreal hours, before killing Duncan, as to evoke some empathy in the audience (me, at least). He simply wants to call off the whole affair, before it truly gets bloody. But it's Lady Macbeth who emasculates him for hesitating, and prods him into crossing the Rubicon. Once crossed, there is virtually nothing stopping Macbeth from anything but a gruesome denouement. Yes, this book design 'speaks' to this, but it speaks most, I think, to Lady Macbeth's psychological descent into hell. This book design is most about the bloody spots that she can't seem to wash off her hands!