Modern First Folio Edition of `Macbeth

Lady Macbeth and Macbeth

Players Shakespeare offers us the Modern First Folio Edition of `Macbeth (in PDF), plus plot and production notes which I found intriguing:

A key issue for the director of a modern production of the play is how to re-balance the two halves of the play so they both maintain the audience’s interest. 

Our own approach has been to see the two halves of the play as separate stories. The first half explores the temptation of Macbeth and his wife; their succumbing to that temptation; and their descent into evil and despair. The second half of the play shows the bonding of the opposition to Macbeth into a force that can and does overthrow the evil king. 

For this approach to work, we have to persuade the audience to change focus from Macbeth in the first half, to the liberating forces of Malcolm, Macduff, and Ross. We can encourage the audience to do this with a number of ploys: 

• Play the murder of Lady Macduff and her children as horrifically as possible so the audience are shocked into rejecting Macbeth.
• Follow this up by majoring on Macduff’s suffering when he learns of the murder of his family, which bonds the three men (Malcolm, Macduff, and Ross) to try to overthrow Macbeth. This probably requires some serious cutting of the scene (A4S3), particularly Malcolm’s pretence of being evil, and the discussion of the English king’s ability to cure scrofula
• Play Act 5 with the audience in ‘opposition’ to Macbeth. In a promenade performance of the play, we achieved this by co-opting the audience as members of the English army, complete with pine branches, so they became Birnam wood on its way to Dunsinane. They saw Macbeth‘s scenes in Act 5 from within the English army, and could listen to his exquisite poetry of despair in opposition to him.

Shakespeare employed a character "sea change" in plays, such as this and `Hamlet, too.  The tragic hero slides out for several scenes, then comes back in a wholly changed demeanor.  I hadn't quite viewed `Macbeth as two separate stories.  Instead the play progresses to, and dramatizes, the hell that both husband and wife created.  Shakespeare needed to develop Malcolm et al., as part of this process.