title: Video game

text: The early history of the video game industry, following the first game hardware releases and through 1983, had little structure. Video games quickly took off during the golden age of arcade video games from the late 1970s to early 1980s, but the newfound industry was mainly composed of game developers with little business experience. This led to numerous companies forming simply to create clones of popular games to try to capitalize on the market. Due to loss of publishing control and oversaturation of the market, the North American home video game market crashed in 1983, dropping from revenues of around in 1983 to by 1985. Many of the North American companies created in the prior years closed down. Japan's growing game industry was briefly shocked by this crash but had sufficient longevity to withstand the short-term effects, and Nintendo helped to revitalize the industry with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in 1985. Along with it, Nintendo established a number of core industrial practices to prevent unlicensed game development and control game distribution on their platform, methods that continue to be used by console manufacturers today.


title: Video game

text: The industry remained more conservative following the 1983 crash, forming around the concept of publisher-developer dichotomies, and by the 2000s, leading to the industry centralizing around low-risk, triple-A games and studios with large development budgets of at least or more. The advent of the Internet brought digital distribution as a viable means to distribute games, and contributed to the growth of more riskier, experimental independent game development as an alternative to triple-A games in the late 2000s and which has continued to grow as a significant portion of the video game industry.


title: Video game

text: Video games have a large network effect that draw on many different sectors that tie into the larger video game industry. While video game developers are a significant portion of the industry, other key participants in the market include:


title: Video game

text: The industry itself grew out from both the United States and Japan in the 1970s and 1980s before having a larger worldwide contribution. Today, the video game industry is predominantly led by major companies in North America (primarily the United States and Canada), Europe, and southeast Asia including Japan, South Korea, and China. Hardware production remains an area dominated by Asian companies either directly involved in hardware design or part of the production process, but digital distribution and indie game development of the late 2000s has allowed game developers to flourish nearly anywhere and diversify the field.


title: Video game

text: According to the market research firm Newzoo, the global video game industry drew estimated revenues of over in 2020. Mobile games accounted for the bulk of this, with a 48% share of the market, followed by console games at 28% and personal computer games at 23%.


title: Video game

text: Sales of different types of games vary widely between countries due to local preferences. Japanese consumers tend to purchase much more handheld games than console games and especially PC games, with a strong preference for games catering to local tastes. Another key difference is that, though having declined in the West, arcade games remain an important sector of the Japanese gaming industry. In South Korea, computer games are generally preferred over console games, especially MMORPG games and real-time strategy games. Computer games are also popular in China.


title: Video game

text: Video game culture is a worldwide new media subculture formed around video games and game playing. As computer and video games have increased in popularity over time, they have had a significant influence on popular culture. Video game culture has also evolved over time hand in hand with internet culture as well as the increasing popularity of mobile games. Many people who play video games identify as gamers, which can mean anything from someone who enjoys games to someone who is passionate about it. As video games become more social with multiplayer and online capability, gamers find themselves in growing social networks. Gaming can both be entertainment as well as competition, as a new trend known as electronic sports is becoming more widely accepted. In the 2010s, video games and discussions of video game trends and topics can be seen in social media, politics, television, film and music. The COVID-19 pandemic during 2020–2021 gave further visibility to video games as a pastime to enjoy with friends and family online as a means of social distancing.


title: Video game

text: Since the mid-2000s there has been debate whether video games qualify as art, primarily as the form's interactivity interfered with the artistic intent of the work and that they are designed for commercial appeal. A significant debate on the matter came after film critic Roger Ebert published an essay "Video Games can never be art", which challenged the industry to prove him and other critics wrong. The view that video games were an art form was cemented in 2011 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case "Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association" that video games were a protected form of speech with artistic merit. Since then, video game developers have come to use the form more for artistic expression, including the development of art games, and the cultural heritage of video games as works of arts, beyond their technical capabilities, have been part of major museum exhibits, including "The Art of Video Games" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and toured at other museums from 2012 to 2016.


title: Video game

text: Video games will inspire sequels and other video games within the same franchise, but also have influenced works outside of the video game medium. Numerous television shows (both animated and live-action), films, comics and novels have been created based on existing video game franchises. Because video games are an interactive medium there has been trouble in converting them to these passive forms of media, and typically such works have been critically panned or treated as children's media. For example, until 2019, no video game film had ever been received a "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but the releases of "Detective Pikachu" (2019) and "Sonic the Hedgehog" (2020), both receiving "Fresh" ratings, shows signs of the film industry having found an approach to adapt video games for the large screen. That said, some early video game-based films have been highly successful at the box office, such as 1995's "Mortal Kombat" and 2001's "".


title: Video game

text: More recently since the 2000s, there has also become a larger appreciation of video game music, which ranges from chiptunes composed for limited sound-output devices on early computers and consoles, to fully-scored compositions for most modern games. Such music has frequently served as a platform for covers and remixes, and concerts featuring video game soundtracks performed by bands or orchestras, such as "Video Games Live", have also become popular. Video games also frequently incorporate licensed music, particularly in the area of rhythm games, furthering the depth of which video games and music can work together.


title: Video game

text: Further, video games can serve as a virtual environment under full control of a producer to create new works. With the capability to render 3D actors and settings in real-time, a new type of work machinima (short for "machine cinema") grew out from using video game engines to craft narratives. As video game engines gain higher fidelity, they have also become part of the tools used in more traditional filmmaking. Unreal Engine has been used as a backbone by Industrial Light & Magic for their StageCraft technology for shows like "The Mandalorian".


title: Video game

text: Separately, video games are also frequently used as part of the promotion and marketing for other media, such as for films, anime, and comics. However, these licensed games in the 1990s and 2000s often had a reputation for poor quality, developed without any input from the intellectual property rights owners, and several of them are considered among lists of games with notably negative reception, such as "Superman 64". More recently, with these licensed games being developed by triple-A studios or through studios directly connected to the licensed property owner, there has been a significant improvement in the quality of these games, with an early trendsetting example of "".


title: Video game

text: Besides their entertainment value, appropriately-designed video games have been seen to provide value in education across several ages and comprehension levels. Learning principles found in video games have been identified as possible techniques with which to reform the U.S. education system. It has been noticed that gamers adopt an attitude while playing that is of such high concentration, they do not realize they are learning, and that if the same attitude could be adopted at school, education would enjoy significant benefits. Students are found to be "learning by doing" while playing video games while fostering creative thinking.


title: Video game

text: Video games are also believed to be beneficial to the mind and body. It has been shown that action video game players have better hand–eye coordination and visuo-motor skills, such as their resistance to distraction, their sensitivity to information in the peripheral vision and their ability to count briefly presented objects, than nonplayers. Researchers found that such enhanced abilities could be acquired by training with action games, involving challenges that switch attention between different locations, but not with games requiring concentration on single objects. A 2018 systematic review found evidence that video gaming training had positive effects on cognitive and emotional skills in the adult population, especially with young adults. A 2019 systematic review also added support for the claim that video games are beneficial to the brain, although the beneficial effects of video gaming on the brain differed by video games types.


title: Video game

text: Organisers of video gaming events, such as the organisers of the "D-Lux" video game festival in Dumfries, Scotland, have emphasised the positive aspects video games can have on mental health. Organisers, mental health workers and mental health nurses at the event emphasised the relationships and friendships that can be built around video games and how playing games can help people learn about others as a precursor to discussing the person's mental health. A study in 2020 from Oxford University also suggested that playing video games can be a benefit to a person's mental health. The report of 3,274 gamers, all over the age of 18, focused on the games and and used actual play-time data. The report found that those that played more games tended to report greater "wellbeing". Also in 2020, computer science professor Regan Mandryk of the University of Saskatchewan said her research also showed that video games can have health benefits such as reducing stress and improving mental health. The university's research studied all age groups – "from pre-literate children through to older adults living in long term care homes" – with a main focus on 18 to 55-year-olds.


title: Video game

text: A study of gamers attitudes towards gaming which was reported about in 2018 found that millennials use video games as a key strategy for coping with stress. In the study of 1,000 gamers, 55% said that it "helps them to unwind and relieve stress ... and half said they see the value in gaming as a method of escapism to help them deal with daily work pressures".


title: Video game

text: Video games have had controversy since the 1970s. Video games have emerged as one of the primary playthings used by youngsters all over the world. Parents and children's advocates have raised concerns that violent video games can influence young players into performing those violent acts in real life, and events such as the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 in which the perpetrators specifically alluded to using video games to plot out their attack, raised further fears. Medical experts and mental health professionals have also raised concerned that video games may be addictive, and the World Health Organization has included "gaming disorder" in the 11th revision of its International Statistical Classification of Diseases. Other health experts, including the American Psychiatric Association, have stated that there is insufficient evidence that video games can create violent tendencies or lead to addictive behavior, though agree that video games typically use a compulsion loop in their core design that can create dopamine that can help reinforce the desire to continue to play through that compulsion loop and potentially lead into violent or addictive behavior. Even with case law establishing that video games qualify as a protected art form, there has been pressure on the video game industry to keep their products in check to avoid over-excessive violence particularly for games aimed at younger children. The potential addictive behavior around games, coupled with increased used of post-sale monetization of video games, has also raised concern among parents, advocates, and government officials about gambling tendencies that may come from video games, such as controversy around the use of loot boxes in many high-profile games.


title: Video game

text: Numerous other controversies around video games and its industry have arisen over the years, among the more notable incidents include the 1993 United States Congressional hearings on violent games like "Mortal Kombat" which lead to the formation of the ESRB ratings system, numerous legal actions taken by attorney Jack Thompson over violent games such as "Grand Theft Auto III" and "Manhunt" from 2003 to 2007, the outrage over the "No Russian" level from "" in 2009 which allowed the player to shoot a number of innocent non-player characters at an airport, and the Gamergate harassment campaign in 2014 that highlighted misogamy from a portion of the player demographic. The industry as a whole has also dealt with issues related to gender, racial, and LGBTQ+ discrimination and mischaracterization of these minority groups in video games. A further issue in the industry is related to working conditions, as development studios and publishers frequently use "crunch time", required extended working hours, in the weeks and months ahead of a game's release to assure on-time delivery.


title: Video game

text: Players of video games often maintain collections of games. More recently there has been interest in retrogaming, focusing on games from the first decades. Games in retail packaging in good shape have become collectors items for the early days of the industry, with some rare publications having gone for over as of 2020. Separately, there is also concern about the preservation of video games, as both game media and the hardware to play them degrade over time. Further, many of the game developers and publishers from the first decades no longer exist, so records of their games have disappeared. Archivists and preservations have worked within the scope of copyright law to save these games as part of the cultural history of the industry.


title: Video game

text: There are many video game museums around the world, including the National Videogame Museum in Frisco, Texas, which serves as the largest museum wholly dedicated to the display and preservation of the industry's most important artifacts. Europe hosts video game museums such as the Computer Games Museum in Berlin and the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in Oakland, California is a dedicated video game museum focusing on playable exhibits of console and computer games. The Video Game Museum of Rome is also dedicated to preserving video games and their history. The International Center for the History of Electronic Games at The Strong in Rochester, New York contains one of the largest collections of electronic games and game-related historical materials in the world, including a exhibit which allows guests to play their way through the history of video games. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC has three video games on permanent display: "Pac-Man", "Dragon's Lair", and "Pong".


title: Video game

text: The Museum of Modern Art has added a total of 20 video games and one video game console to its permanent Architecture and Design Collection since 2012. In 2012, the Smithsonian American Art Museum ran an exhibition on "The Art of Video Games". However, the reviews of the exhibit were mixed, including questioning whether video games belong in an art museum.


title: Macbeth

text: Macbeth (, full title The Tragedie of Macbeth) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, "Macbeth" most clearly reflects his relationship with King James, patron of Shakespeare's acting company. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy.


title: Macbeth

text: A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.


title: Macbeth

text: Shakespeare's source for the story is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff, and Duncan in "Holinshed's Chronicles" (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth. The events of the tragedy are usually associated with the execution of Henry Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.


title: Macbeth

text: In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed, and will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as "The Scottish Play". The play has attracted some of the most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and has been adapted to film, television, opera, novels, comics, and other media.


title: Macbeth

text: Amid thunder and lightning, Three Witches decide that their next meeting will be with Macbeth. In the following scene, a wounded sergeant reports to King Duncan of Scotland that his generals Banquo and Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, have just defeated the allied forces of Norway and Ireland, who were led by the traitorous Macdonwald and the Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, the King's kinsman, is praised for his bravery and fighting prowess.


title: Macbeth

text: In the following scene, Macbeth and Banquo discuss the weather and their victory. As they wander onto a heath, the Three Witches enter and greet them with prophecies. Though Banquo challenges them first, they address Macbeth, hailing him as "Thane of Glamis", "Thane of Cawdor", and that he will "be King hereafter". Macbeth appears to be stunned to silence. When Banquo asks of his own fortunes, the witches respond paradoxically, saying that he will be less than Macbeth, yet happier, and less successful, yet more. He will father a line of kings, though he himself will "not" be one. While the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the witches vanish, and another thane, Ross, arrives and informs Macbeth of his newly bestowed title: Thane of Cawdor. The first prophecy is thus fulfilled, and Macbeth, previously sceptical, immediately begins to harbour ambitions of becoming king.


title: Macbeth

text: King Duncan welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, and Duncan declares that he will spend the night at Macbeth's castle at Inverness; Duncan also names his son Malcolm as his heir. Macbeth sends a message ahead to his wife, Lady Macbeth, telling her about the witches' prophecies. Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husband's uncertainty and wishes him to murder Duncan in order to obtain kingship. When Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she overrides all of her husband's objections by challenging his manhood and successfully persuades him to kill the king that very night. He and Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncan's two chamberlains drunk so that they will black out; the next morning they will frame the chamberlains for the murder. Since the chamberlains would remember nothing whatsoever, they would be blamed for the deed.


title: Macbeth

text: While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and a number of supernatural portents, including a hallucination of a bloody dagger. He is so shaken that Lady Macbeth has to take charge. In accordance with her plan, she frames Duncan's sleeping servants for the murder by placing bloody daggers on them. Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish nobleman, and Macduff, the loyal Thane of Fife, arrive. A porter opens the gate and Macbeth leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff discovers Duncan's body. Macbeth murders the guards to prevent them from professing their innocence, but claims he did so in a fit of anger over their misdeeds. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland, respectively, fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires their demise as well. The rightful heirs' flight makes them suspects and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king. Banquo reveals this to the audience, and while sceptical of the new King Macbeth, he remembers the witches' prophecy about how his own descendants would inherit the throne; this makes him suspicious of Macbeth.


title: Macbeth

text: Despite his success, Macbeth, also aware of this part of the prophecy, remains uneasy. Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal banquet, where he discovers that Banquo and his young son, Fleance, will be riding out that night. Fearing Banquo's suspicions, Macbeth arranges to have him murdered, by hiring two men to kill them, later sending a third murderer, presumably to ensure that the deed is completed. The assassins succeed in killing Banquo, but Fleance escapes. Macbeth becomes furious: he fears that his power remains insecure as long as an heir of Banquo remains alive.


title: Macbeth

text: At the banquet, Macbeth invites his lords and Lady Macbeth to a night of drinking and merriment. Banquo's ghost enters and sits in Macbeth's place. Macbeth raves fearfully, startling his guests, as the ghost is visible only to him. The others panic at the sight of Macbeth raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady Macbeth tells them that her husband is merely afflicted with a familiar and harmless malady. The ghost departs and returns once more, causing the same riotous anger and fear in Macbeth. This time, Lady Macbeth tells the visitors to leave, and they do so. At the end Hecate scolds the three weird sisters for helping Macbeth, especially without consulting her. Hecate instructs the Witches to give Macbeth false security. Note that some scholars believe the Hecate scene was added in later.


title: Macbeth

text: Macbeth, disturbed, visits the three witches once more and asks them to reveal the truth of their prophecies to him. To answer his questions, they summon horrible apparitions, each of which offers predictions and further prophecies to put Macbeth's fears at rest. First, they conjure an armoured head, which tells him to beware of Macduff (IV.i.72). Second, a bloody child tells him that no one born of a woman will be able to harm him. Thirdly, a crowned child holding a tree states that Macbeth will be safe until Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill. Macbeth is relieved and feels secure because he knows that all men are born of women and forests cannot possibly move.


title: Macbeth

text: Macbeth also asks whether Banquo's sons will ever reign in Scotland, to which the witches conjure a procession of eight crowned kings, all similar in appearance to Banquo, and the last carrying a mirror that reflects even "more" kings. Macbeth realises that these are all Banquo's descendants having acquired kingship in numerous countries.


title: Macbeth

text: After the witches perform a mad dance and leave, Lennox enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England. Macbeth orders Macduff's castle be seized, and, most cruelly, sends murderers to slaughter Macduff, as well as Macduff's wife and children. Although Macduff is no longer in the castle, everyone in Macduff's castle is put to death, including Lady Macduff and their young son.


title: Macbeth

text: Lady Macbeth becomes racked with guilt from the crimes she and her husband have committed. At night, in the king's palace at Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady Macbeth's strange habit of sleepwalking. Suddenly, Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a candle in her hand. Bemoaning the murders of Duncan, Lady Macduff, and Banquo, she tries to wash off imaginary bloodstains from her hands, all the while speaking of the terrible things she knows she pressed her husband to do. She leaves, and the doctor and gentlewoman marvel at her descent into madness.


title: Macbeth

text: In England, Macduff is informed by Ross that his "castle is surprised; wife and babes / Savagely slaughter'd" (IV.iii.204–205). When this news of his family's execution reaches him, Macduff is stricken with grief and vows revenge. Prince Malcolm, Duncan's son, has succeeded in raising an army in England, and Macduff joins him as he rides to Scotland to challenge Macbeth's forces. The invasion has the support of the Scottish nobles, who are appalled and frightened by Macbeth's tyrannical and murderous behaviour. Malcolm leads an army, along with Macduff and Englishmen Siward (the Elder), the Earl of Northumberland, against Dunsinane Castle. While encamped in Birnam Wood, the soldiers are ordered to cut down and carry tree branches to camouflage their numbers.


title: Macbeth

text: Before Macbeth's opponents arrive, he receives news that Lady Macbeth has killed herself, causing him to sink into a deep and pessimistic despair and deliver his "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow" soliloquy (V.v.17–28). Though he reflects on the brevity and meaninglessness of life, he nevertheless awaits the English and fortifies Dunsinane. He is certain that the witches' prophecies guarantee his invincibility, but is struck with fear when he learns that the English army is advancing on Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam Wood, in apparent fulfillment of one of the prophecies.


title: Macbeth

text: A battle culminates in Macduff's confrontation with Macbeth, who kills Young Siward in combat. The English forces overwhelm his army and castle. Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, for he cannot be killed by any man born of woman. Macduff declares that he was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd" (V.8.15–16), (i.e., born by Caesarean section and not a natural birth) and is not "of woman born", fulfilling the second prophecy. Macbeth realises too late that he has misinterpreted the witches' words. Though he realises that he is doomed, and despite Macduff urging him to yield, he is unwilling to surrender and continues fighting. Macduff kills and beheads him, thus fulfilling the remaining prophecy.


title: Macbeth

text: Macduff carries Macbeth's head onstage and Malcolm discusses how order has been restored. His last reference to Lady Macbeth, however, reveals tis thought, by self and violent hands / Took off her life" (V.ix.71–72), but the method of her suicide is undisclosed. Malcolm, now the King of Scotland, declares his benevolent intentions for the country and invites all to see him crowned at Scone.


title: Macbeth

text: A principal source comes from the "Daemonologie" of King James published in 1597 which included a news pamphlet titled "Newes from Scotland" that detailed the famous North Berwick witch trials of 1590. The publication of "Daemonologie" came just a few years before the tragedy of "Macbeth" with the themes and setting in a direct and comparative contrast with King James' personal obsessions with witchcraft, which developed following his conclusion that the stormy weather that threatened his passage from Denmark to Scotland was a targeted attack. Not only did the subsequent trials take place in Scotland, the women accused were recorded, under torture, of having conducted rituals with the same mannerisms as the three witches. One of the evidenced passages is referenced when the women under trial confessed to attempt the use of witchcraft to raise a tempest and sabotage the boat King James and his queen were on board during their return trip from Denmark. The three witches discuss the raising of winds at sea in the opening lines of Act 1 Scene 3.


title: Macbeth

text: "Macbeth" has been compared to Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra." As characters, both Antony and Macbeth seek a new world, even at the cost of the old one. Both fight for a throne and have a 'nemesis' to face to achieve that throne. For Antony, the nemesis is Octavius; for Macbeth, it is Banquo. At one point Macbeth even compares himself to Antony, saying "under Banquo / My Genius is rebuk'd, as it is said / Mark Antony's was by Caesar." Lastly, both plays contain powerful and manipulative female figures: Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth.


title: Macbeth

text: Shakespeare borrowed the story from several tales in "Holinshed's Chronicles", a popular history of the British Isles well known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In "Chronicles", a man named Donwald finds several of his family put to death by his king, Duff, for dealing with witches. After being pressured by his wife, he and four of his servants kill the king in his own house. In "Chronicles", Macbeth is portrayed as struggling to support the kingdom in the face of King Duncan's ineptitude. He and Banquo meet the three witches, who make exactly the same prophecies as in Shakespeare's version. Macbeth and Banquo then together plot the murder of Duncan, at Lady Macbeth's urging. Macbeth has a long, ten-year reign before eventually being overthrown by Macduff and Malcolm. The parallels between the two versions are clear. However, some scholars think that George Buchanan's "Rerum Scoticarum Historia" matches Shakespeare's version more closely. Buchanan's work was available in Latin in Shakespeare's day.


title: Macbeth

text: No medieval account of the reign of Macbeth mentions the Weird Sisters, Banquo, or Lady Macbeth, and with the exception of the latter none actually existed. The characters of Banquo, the Weird Sisters, and Lady Macbeth were first mentioned in 1527 by a Scottish historian Hector Boece in his book "Historia Gentis Scotorum" ("History of the Scottish People") who wanted to denigrate Macbeth in order to strengthen the claim of the House of Stewart to the Scottish throne. Boece portrayed Banquo as an ancestor of the Stewart kings of Scotland, adding in a "prophecy" that the descendants of Banquo would be the rightful kings of Scotland while the Weird Sisters served to give a picture of King Macbeth as gaining the throne via dark supernatural forces. Macbeth did have a wife, but it is not clear if she was as power-hungry and ambitious as Boece portrayed her, which served his purpose of having even Macbeth realise he lacked a proper claim to the throne, and only took it at the urging of his wife. Holinshed accepted Boece's version of Macbeth's reign at face value and included it in his "Chronicles". Shakespeare saw the dramatic possibilities in the story as related by Holinshed, and used it as the basis for the play.


title: Macbeth

text: No other version of the story has Macbeth kill the king in Macbeth's own castle. Scholars have seen this change of Shakespeare's as adding to the darkness of Macbeth's crime as the worst violation of hospitality. Versions of the story that were common at the time had Duncan being killed in an ambush at Inverness, not in a castle. Shakespeare conflated the story of Donwald and King Duff in what was a significant change to the story.


title: Macbeth

text: Shakespeare made another important change. In "Chronicles", Banquo is an accomplice in Macbeth's murder of King Duncan, and plays an important part in ensuring that Macbeth, not Malcolm, takes the throne in the coup that follows. In Shakespeare's day, Banquo was thought to be an ancestor of the Stuart King James I. (In the 19th century it was established that Banquo is an unhistorical character, the Stuarts are actually descended from a Breton family which migrated to Scotland slightly later than Macbeth's time.) The Banquo portrayed in earlier sources is significantly different from the Banquo created by Shakespeare. Critics have proposed several reasons for this change. First, to portray the king's ancestor as a murderer would have been risky. Other authors of the time who wrote about Banquo, such as Jean de Schelandre in his "Stuartide", also changed history by portraying Banquo as a noble man, not a murderer, probably for the same reasons. Second, Shakespeare may have altered Banquo's character simply because there was no dramatic need for another accomplice to the murder; there was, however, a need to give a dramatic contrast to Macbeth—a role which many scholars argue is filled by Banquo.


title: Macbeth

text: Other scholars maintain that a strong argument can be made for associating the tragedy with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. As presented by Harold Bloom in 2008: "[S]cholars cite the existence of several topical references in "Macbeth" to the events of that year, namely the execution of the Father Henry Garnett for his alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, as referenced in the porter's scene." Those arrested for their role in the Gunpowder Plot refused to give direct answers to the questions posed to them by their interrogators, which reflected the influence of the Jesuit practice of equivocation. Shakespeare, by having Macbeth say that demons "palter...in a double sense" and "keep the promise to our ear/And break it to our hope", confirmed James's belief that equivocation was a "wicked" practice, which reflected in turn the "wickedness" of the Catholic Church. Garnett had in his possession "A Treatise on Equivocation", and in the play the Weird Sisters often engage in equivocation, for instance telling Macbeth that he could never be overthrown until "Great Birnan wood to high Dunsinane hill/Shall Come". Macbeth interprets the prophecy as meaning never, but in fact, the Three Sisters refer only to branches of the trees of Great Birnam coming to Dunsinane hill. The inspiration for this prophecy may have originated with the Battle of Droizy; both that Battle and Macbeth may have, in turn, inspired J. R. R. Tolkien's tree herders, the Ents in his novels "The Lord of the Rings".


title: Macbeth

text: "Macbeth" cannot be dated precisely, but it is usually taken to be contemporaneous to the other canonical tragedies: "Hamlet", "Othello", and "King Lear". While some scholars have placed the original writing of the play as early as 1599, most believe that the play is unlikely to have been composed earlier than 1603 as the play is widely seen to celebrate King James' ancestors and the Stuart accession to the throne in 1603 (James believed himself to be descended from Banquo), suggesting that the parade of eight kings—which the witches show Macbeth in a vision in Act IV—is a compliment to King James. Many scholars think the play was written in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, citing possible internal allusions to the 1605 plot and its ensuing trials. In fact, there are a great number of allusions and possible pieces of evidence alluding to the Plot, and, for this reason, a great many critics agree that "Macbeth" was written in the year 1606. Lady Macbeth's instructions to her husband, "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't" (1.5.74–75), may be an allusion to a medal that was struck in 1605 to commemorate King James' escape that depicted a serpent hiding among lilies and roses.


title: Macbeth

text: Particularly, the Porter's speech (2.3.1–21) in which he welcomes an "equivocator", a farmer, and a tailor to hell (2.3.8–13), has been argued to be an allusion to the 28 March 1606 trial and execution on 3 May 1606 of the Jesuit Henry Garnet, who used the alias "Farmer", with "equivocator" referring to Garnet's defence of "equivocation". The porter says that the equivocator "committed treason enough for God's sake" (2.3.9–10), which specifically connects equivocation and treason and ties it to the Jesuit belief that equivocation was only lawful when used "for God's sake", strengthening the allusion to Garnet. The porter goes on to say that the equivocator "yet could not equivocate to heaven" (2.3.10–11), echoing grim jokes that were current on the eve of Garnet's execution: i.e. that Garnet would be "hanged without equivocation" and at his execution he was asked "not to equivocate with his last breath". The "English tailor" the porter admits to hell (2.3.13), has been seen as an allusion to Hugh Griffin, a tailor who was questioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 27 November and 3 December 1607 for the part he played in Garnet's "miraculous straw", an infamous head of straw that was stained with Garnet's blood that had congealed into a form resembling Garnet's portrait, which was hailed by Catholics as a miracle. The tailor Griffin became notorious and the subject of verses published with his portrait on the title page.


title: Macbeth

text: When James became king of England, a feeling of uncertainty settled over the nation. James was a Scottish king and the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, a staunch Catholic and English traitor. In the words of critic Robert Crawford, ""Macbeth" was a play for a post-Elizabethan England facing up to what it might mean to have a Scottish king. England seems comparatively benign, while its northern neighbour is mired in a bloody, monarch-killing past. ... "Macbeth" may have been set in medieval Scotland, but it was filled with material of interest to England and England's ruler." Critics argue that the content of the play is clearly a message to James, the new Scottish King of England. Likewise, the critic Andrew Hadfield noted the contrast the play draws between the saintly King Edward the Confessor of England who has the power of the royal touch to cure scrofula and whose realm is portrayed as peaceful and prosperous vs. the bloody chaos of Scotland. James in his 1598 book "The Trew Law of Free Monarchies" had asserted that kings are always right, if not just, and his subjects owe him total loyalty at all times, writing that even if a king is a tyrant, his subjects must never rebel and just endure his tyranny for their own good. James had argued that the tyranny was preferable to the problems caused by rebellion which were even worse; Shakespeare by contrast in "Macbeth" argued for the right of the subjects to overthrow a tyrant king, in what appeared to be an implied criticism of James's theories if applied to England. Hadfield also noted a curious aspect of the play in that it implies that primogeniture is the norm in Scotland, but Duncan has to nominate his son Malcolm to be his successor while Macbeth is accepted without protest by the Scottish lairds as their king despite being an usurper. Hadfield argued this aspect of the play with the thanes apparently choosing their king was a reference to the Stuart claim to the English throne, and the attempts of the English Parliament to block the succession of James's Catholic mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, from succeeding to the English throne. Hadfield argued that Shakespeare implied that James was indeed the rightful king of England, but owed his throne not to divine favour as James would have it, but rather due to the willingness of the English Parliament to accept the Protestant son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, as their king.


title: Macbeth

text: Garry Wills provides further evidence that "Macbeth" is a Gunpowder Play (a type of play that emerged immediately following the events of the Gunpowder Plot). He points out that every Gunpowder Play contains "a necromancy scene, regicide attempted or completed, references to equivocation, scenes that test loyalty by use of deceptive language, and a character who sees through plots—along with a vocabulary similar to the Plot in its immediate aftermath (words like "train, blow, vault") and an ironic recoil of the Plot upon the Plotters (who fall into the pit they dug)."


title: Macbeth

text: The play utilizes a few key words that the audience at the time would recognize as allusions to the Plot. In one sermon in 1605, Lancelot Andrewes stated, regarding the failure of the Plotters on God's day, "Be they fair or foul, glad or sad (as the poet calleth Him) the great Diespiter, 'the Father of days' hath made them both." Shakespeare begins the play by using the words "fair" and "foul" in the first speeches of the witches and Macbeth. In the words of Jonathan Gil Harris, the play expresses the "horror unleashed by a supposedly loyal subject who seeks to kill a king and the treasonous role of equivocation. The play even echoes certain keywords from the scandal—the 'vault' beneath the House of Parliament in which Guy Fawkes stored thirty kegs of gunpowder and the 'blow' about which one of the conspirators had secretly warned a relative who planned to attend the House of Parliament on 5 November...Even though the Plot is never alluded to directly, its presence is everywhere in the play, like a pervasive odor."


title: Macbeth

text: Scholars also cite an entertainment seen by King James at Oxford in the summer of 1605 that featured three "sibyls" like the weird sisters; Kermode surmises that Shakespeare could have heard about this and alluded to it with the weird sisters. However, A. R. Braunmuller in the New Cambridge edition finds the 1605–06 arguments inconclusive, and argues only for an earliest date of 1603.


title: Macbeth

text: One suggested allusion supporting a date in late 1606 is the first witch's dialogue about a sailor's wife: "'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries./Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the "Tiger"" (1.3.6–7). This has been thought to allude to the "Tiger", a ship that returned to England 27 June 1606 after a disastrous voyage in which many of the crew were killed by pirates. A few lines later the witch speaks of the sailor, "He shall live a man forbid:/Weary se'nnights nine times nine" (1.3.21–22). The real ship was at sea 567 days, the product of 7x9x9, which has been taken as a confirmation of the allusion, which if correct, confirms that the witch scenes were either written or amended later than July 1606.


title: Macbeth

text: The play is not considered to have been written any later than 1607, since, as Kermode notes, there are "fairly clear allusions to the play in 1607". One notable reference is in Francis Beaumont's "Knight of the Burning Pestle", first performed in 1607. The following lines (Act V, Scene 1, 24–30) are, according to scholars, a clear allusion to the scene in which Banquo's ghost haunts Macbeth at the dinner table:


title: Macbeth

text: "Macbeth" was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text. Some scholars contend that the Folio text was abridged and rearranged from an earlier manuscript or prompt book. Often cited as interpolation are stage cues for two songs, whose lyrics are not included in the Folio but are included in Thomas Middleton's play "The Witch", which was written between the accepted date for "Macbeth" (1606) and the printing of the Folio. Many scholars believe these songs were editorially inserted into the Folio, though whether they were Middleton's songs or preexisting songs is not certain. It is also widely believed that the character of Hecate, as well as some lines of the First Witch (4.1 124–131), were not part of Shakespeare's original play but were added by the Folio editors and possibly written by Middleton, though "there is no completely objective proof" of such interpolation.


title: Macbeth

text: "Macbeth" is an anomaly among Shakespeare's tragedies in certain critical ways. It is short: more than a thousand lines shorter than "Othello" and "King Lear", and only slightly more than half as long as "Hamlet". This brevity has suggested to many critics that the received version is based on a heavily cut source, perhaps a prompt-book for a particular performance. This would reflect other Shakespeare plays existing in both Quarto and the Folio, where the Quarto versions are usually longer than the Folio versions. "Macbeth" was first printed in the First Folio, but has no Quarto version – if there were a Quarto, it would probably be longer than the Folio version. That brevity has also been connected to other unusual features: the fast pace of the first act, which has seemed to be "stripped for action"; the comparative flatness of the characters other than Macbeth; and the oddness of Macbeth himself compared with other Shakespearean tragic heroes. A. C. Bradley, in considering this question, concluded the play "always was an extremely short one", noting the witch scenes and battle scenes would have taken up some time in performance, remarking, "I do not think that, in reading, we "feel" "Macbeth" to be short: certainly we are astonished when we hear it is about half as long as "Hamlet". Perhaps in the Shakespearean theatre too it seemed to occupy a longer time than the clock recorded."


title: Macbeth

text: At least since the days of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, analysis of the play has centred on the question of Macbeth's ambition, commonly seen as so dominant a trait that it defines the character. Johnson asserted that Macbeth, though esteemed for his military bravery, is wholly reviled.


title: Macbeth

text:
This opinion recurs in critical literature, and, according to Caroline Spurgeon, is supported by Shakespeare himself, who apparently intended to degrade his hero by vesting him with clothes unsuited to him and to make Macbeth look ridiculous by several exaggerations he applies: His garments seem either too big or too small for him – as his ambition is too big and his character too small for his new and unrightful role as king. When he feels as if "dressed in borrowed robes", after his new title as Thane of Cawdor, prophesied by the witches, has been confirmed by Ross (I, 3, ll. 108–109), Banquo comments: "New honours come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould,
But with the aid of use" (I, 3, ll. 145–146). And, at the end, when the tyrant is at bay at Dunsinane, Caithness sees him as a man trying in vain to fasten a large garment on him with too small a belt: "He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
 Within the belt of rule" (V, 2, ll. 14–15) while Angus sums up what everybody thinks ever since Macbeth's accession to power: "now does he feel his title
 Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
 upon a dwarfish thief" (V, 2, ll. 18–20).


title: Macbeth

text: Like Richard III, but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall. As Kenneth Muir writes, "Macbeth has not a predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown." Some critics, such as E. E. Stoll, explain this characterisation as a holdover from Senecan or medieval tradition. Shakespeare's audience, in this view, expected villains to be wholly bad, and Senecan style, far from prohibiting a villainous protagonist, all but demanded it.


title: Macbeth

text:
Yet for other critics, it has not been so easy to resolve the question of Macbeth's motivation. Robert Bridges, for instance, perceived a paradox: a character able to express such convincing horror before Duncan's murder would likely be incapable of committing the crime. For many critics, Macbeth's motivations in the first act appear vague and insufficient. John Dover Wilson hypothesised that Shakespeare's original text had an extra scene or scenes where husband and wife discussed their plans. This interpretation is not fully provable; however, the motivating role of ambition for Macbeth is universally recognised. The evil actions motivated by his ambition seem to trap him in a cycle of increasing evil, as Macbeth himself recognises: "I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
 Returning were as tedious as go o'er."


title: Macbeth

text: While working on Russian translations of Shakespeare's works, Boris Pasternak compared Macbeth to Raskolnikov, the protagonist of "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Pasternak argues that "neither Macbeth or Raskolnikov is a born criminal or a villain by nature. They are turned into criminals by faulty rationalizations, by deductions from false premises." He goes on to argue that Lady Macbeth is "feminine ... one of those active, insistent wives" who becomes her husband's "executive, more resolute and consistent than he is himself". According to Pasternak, she is only helping Macbeth carry out his own wishes, to her own detriment.


title: Macbeth

text: The disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not limited to him. Almost from the moment of the murder, the play depicts Scotland as a land shaken by inversions of the natural order. Shakespeare may have intended a reference to the great chain of being, although the play's images of disorder are mostly not specific enough to support detailed intellectual readings. He may also have intended an elaborate compliment to James's belief in the divine right of kings, although this hypothesis, outlined at greatest length by Henry N. Paul, is not universally accepted. As in "Julius Caesar", though, perturbations in the political sphere are echoed and even amplified by events in the material world. Among the most often depicted of the inversions of the natural order is sleep. Macbeth's announcement that he has "murdered sleep" is figuratively mirrored in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking.


title: Macbeth

text: "Macbeth"s generally accepted indebtedness to medieval tragedy is often seen as significant in the play's treatment of moral order. Glynne Wickham connects the play, through the Porter, to a mystery play on the harrowing of hell. Howard Felperin argues that the play has a more complex attitude toward "orthodox Christian tragedy" than is often admitted; he sees a kinship between the play and the tyrant plays within the medieval liturgical drama.


title: Macbeth

text: The theme of androgyny is often seen as a special aspect of the theme of disorder. Inversion of normative gender roles is most famously associated with the witches and with Lady Macbeth as she appears in the first act. Whatever Shakespeare's degree of sympathy with such inversions, the play ends with a thorough return to normative gender values. Some feminist psychoanalytic critics, such as Janet Adelman, have connected the play's treatment of gender roles to its larger theme of inverted natural order. In this light, Macbeth is punished for his violation of the moral order by being removed from the cycles of nature (which are figured as female); nature itself (as embodied in the movement of Birnam Wood) is part of the restoration of moral order.


title: Macbeth

text: Critics in the early twentieth century reacted against what they saw as an excessive dependence on the study of character in criticism of the play. This dependence, though most closely associated with Andrew Cecil Bradley, is clear as early as the time of Mary Cowden Clarke, who offered precise, if fanciful, accounts of the predramatic lives of Shakespeare's female leads. She suggested, for instance, that the child Lady Macbeth refers to in the first act died during a foolish military action.


title: Macbeth

text: In the play, the Three Witches represent darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses. Their presence communicates treason and impending doom. During Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as worse than rebels, "the most notorious traytor and rebell that can be". They were not only political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well. Much of the confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to straddle the play's borders between reality and the supernatural. They are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear whether they control fate, or whether they are merely its agents. They defy logic, not being subject to the rules of the real world. The witches' lines in the first act: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air" are often said to set the tone for the rest of the play by establishing a sense of confusion. Indeed, the play is filled with situations where evil is depicted as good, while good is rendered evil. The line "Double, double toil and trouble," communicates the witches' intent clearly: they seek only trouble for the mortals around them. The witches' spells are remarkably similar to the spells of the witch Medusa in Anthony Munday's play "Fidele and Fortunio" published in 1584, and Shakespeare may have been influenced by these.


title: Macbeth

text: While the witches do not tell Macbeth directly to kill King Duncan, they use a subtle form of temptation when they tell Macbeth that he is destined to be king. By placing this thought in his mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his own destruction. This follows the pattern of temptation used at the time of Shakespeare. First, they argued, a thought is put in a man's mind, then the person may either indulge in the thought or reject it. Macbeth indulges in it, while Banquo rejects.


title: Macbeth

text: According to J. A. Bryant Jr., "Macbeth" also makes use of Biblical parallels, notably between King Duncan's murder and the murder of Christ:


title: Macbeth

text: While many today would say that any misfortune surrounding a production is mere coincidence, actors and others in the theatre industry often consider it bad luck to mention "Macbeth" by name while inside a theatre, and sometimes refer to it indirectly, for example as "The Scottish Play", or "MacBee", or when referring to the characters and not the play, "Mr. and Mrs. M", or "The Scottish King".


title: Macbeth

text: This is because Shakespeare (or the play's revisers) is said to have used the spells of real witches in his text, purportedly angering the witches and causing them to curse the play. Thus, to say the name of the play inside a theatre is believed to doom the production to failure, and perhaps cause physical injury or death to cast members. There are stories of accidents, misfortunes and even deaths taking place during runs of "Macbeth".


title: Macbeth

text: According to the actor Sir Donald Sinden, in his Sky Arts TV series "Great West End Theatres", contrary to popular myth, Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth is not the unluckiest play as superstition likes to portray it. Exactly the opposite! The origin of the unfortunate moniker dates back to repertory theatre days when each town and village had at least one theatre to entertain the public. If a play was not doing well, it would invariably get 'pulled' and replaced with a sure-fire audience pleaser – "Macbeth" guaranteed full-houses. So when the weekly theatre newspaper, "The Stage" was published, listing what was on in each theatre in the country, it was instantly noticed what shows had "not" worked the previous week, as they had been replaced by a definite crowd-pleaser. More actors have died during performances of Hamlet than in the "Scottish play" as the profession still calls it. It is forbidden to quote from it backstage as this could cause the current play to collapse and have to be replaced, causing possible unemployment.


title: Macbeth

text: Several methods exist to dispel the curse, depending on the actor. One, attributed to Michael York, is to immediately leave the building the stage is in with the person who uttered the name, walk around it three times, spit over their left shoulders, say an obscenity then wait to be invited back into the building. A related practice is to spin around three times as fast as possible on the spot, sometimes accompanied by spitting over their shoulder, and uttering an obscenity. Another popular "ritual" is to leave the room, knock three times, be invited in, and then quote a line from "Hamlet". Yet another is to recite lines from "The Merchant of Venice", thought to be a lucky play.


title: Macbeth

text: Sir Patrick Stewart, on the radio program "Ask Me Another", asserted "if you have played the role of the Scottish thane, then you are allowed to say the title, any time anywhere".


title: Macbeth

text: The only eyewitness account of "Macbeth" in Shakespeare's lifetime was recorded by Simon Forman, who saw a performance at the Globe on 20 April 1610. Scholars have noted discrepancies between Forman's account and the play as it appears in the Folio. For example, he makes no mention of the apparition scene, or of Hecate, of the man not of woman born, or of Birnam Wood. However, Clark observes that Forman's accounts were often inaccurate and incomplete (for instance omitting the statue scene from "The Winter's Tale") and his interest did not seem to be in "giving full accounts of the productions".


title: Macbeth

text: As mentioned above, the Folio text is thought by some to be an alteration of the original play. This has led to the theory that the play as we know it from the Folio was an adaptation for indoor performance at the Blackfriars Theatre (which was operated by the King's Men from 1608) – and even speculation that it represents a specific performance before King James. The play contains more musical cues than any other play in the canon as well as a significant use of sound effects.


title: Macbeth

text: All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government on 6 September 1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them. Sir William Davenant, founder of the Duke's Company, adapted Shakespeare's play to the tastes of the new era, and his version would dominate on stage for around eighty years. Among the changes he made were the expansion of the role of the witches, introducing new songs, dances and 'flying', and the expansion of the role of Lady Macduff as a foil to Lady Macbeth. There were, however, performances outside the patent companies: among the evasions of the Duke's Company's monopoly was a puppet version of "Macbeth".


title: Macbeth

text: "Macbeth" was a favourite of the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys, who saw the play on 5 November 1664 ("admirably acted"), 28 December 1666 ("most excellently acted"), ten days later on 7 January 1667 ("though I saw it lately, yet [it] appears a most excellent play in all respects"), on 19 April 1667 ("one of the best plays for a stage ... that ever I saw"), again on 16 October 1667 ("was vexed to see Young, who is but a bad actor at best, act Macbeth in the room of Betterton, who, poor man! is sick"), and again three weeks later on 6 November 1667 ("[at] "Macbeth", which we still like mightily"), yet again on 12 August 1668 ("saw "Macbeth", to our great content"), and finally on 21 December 1668, on which date the king and court were also present in the audience.


title: Macbeth

text: The first professional performances of "Macbeth" in North America were probably those of The Hallam Company.


title: Macbeth

text: In 1744, David Garrick revived the play, abandoning Davenant's version and instead advertising it "as written by Shakespeare". In fact this claim was largely false: he retained much of Davenant's more popular business for the witches, and himself wrote a lengthy death speech for Macbeth. And he cut more than 10% of Shakespeare's play, including the drunken porter, the murder of Lady Macduff's son, and Malcolm's testing of Macduff. Hannah Pritchard was his greatest stage partner, having her premiere as his Lady Macbeth in 1747. He would later drop the play from his repertoire upon her retirement from the stage. Mrs. Pritchard was the first actress to achieve acclaim in the role of Lady Macbeth – at least partly due to the removal of Davenant's material, which made irrelevant moral contrasts with Lady Macduff. Garrick's portrayal focused on the inner life of the character, endowing him with an innocence vacillating between good and evil, and betrayed by outside influences. He portrayed a man capable of observing himself, as if a part of him remained untouched by what he had done, the play moulding him into a man of sensibility, rather than him descending into a tyrant.


title: Macbeth

text: John Philip Kemble first played Macbeth in 1778. Although usually regarded as the antithesis of Garrick, Kemble nevertheless refined aspects of Garrick's portrayal into his own. However it was the "towering and majestic" Sarah Siddons (Kemble's sister) who became a legend in the role of Lady Macbeth. In contrast to Hannah Pritchard's savage, demonic portrayal, Siddons' Lady Macbeth, while terrifying, was nevertheless – in the scenes in which she expresses her regret and remorse – tenderly human. And in portraying her actions as done out of love for her husband, Siddons deflected from him some of the moral responsibility for the play's carnage. Audiences seem to have found the sleepwalking scene particularly mesmerising: Hazlitt said of it that "all her gestures were involuntary and mechanical ... She glided on and off the stage almost like an apparition."


title: Macbeth

text: In 1794, Kemble dispensed with the ghost of Banquo altogether, allowing the audience to see Macbeth's reaction as his wife and guests see it, and relying upon the fact that the play was so well known that his audience would already be aware that a ghost enters at that point.


title: Macbeth

text: Ferdinand Fleck, notable as the first German actor to present Shakespeare's tragic roles in their fullness, played Macbeth at the Berlin National Theatre from 1787. Unlike his English counterparts, he portrayed the character as achieving his stature after the murder of Duncan, growing in presence and confidence: thereby enabling stark contrasts, such as in the banquet scene, which he ended babbling like a child.


title: Macbeth

text: Performances outside the patent theatres were instrumental in bringing the monopoly to an end. Robert Elliston, for example, produced a popular adaptation of "Macbeth" in 1809 at the Royal Circus described in its publicity as "this matchless piece of pantomimic and choral performance", which circumvented the illegality of speaking Shakespeare's words through mimed action, singing, and doggerel verse written by J. C. Cross.


title: Macbeth

text: In 1809, in an unsuccessful attempt to take Covent Garden upmarket, Kemble installed private boxes, increasing admission prices to pay for the improvements. The inaugural run at the newly renovated theatre was "Macbeth", which was disrupted for over two months with cries of "Old prices!" and "No private boxes!" until Kemble capitulated to the protestors' demands.


title: Macbeth

text: Edmund Kean at Drury Lane gave a psychological portrayal of the central character, with a common touch, but was ultimately unsuccessful in the role. However he did pave the way for the most acclaimed performance of the nineteenth century, that of William Charles Macready. Macready played the role over a 30-year period, firstly at Covent Garden in 1820 and finally in his retirement performance. Although his playing evolved over the years, it was noted throughout for the tension between the idealistic aspects and the weaker, venal aspects of Macbeth's character. His staging was full of spectacle, including several elaborate royal processions.


title: Macbeth

text: In 1843 the Theatres Regulation Act finally brought the patent companies' monopoly to an end. From that time until the end of the Victorian era, London theatre was dominated by the actor-managers, and the style of presentation was "pictorial" – proscenium stages filled with spectacular stage-pictures, often featuring complex scenery, large casts in elaborate costumes, and frequent use of tableaux vivant. Charles Kean (son of Edmund), at London's Princess's Theatre from 1850 to 1859, took an antiquarian view of Shakespeare performance, setting his "Macbeth" in a historically accurate eleventh-century Scotland. His leading lady, Ellen Tree, created a sense of the character's inner life: "The Times" critic saying "The countenance which she assumed ... when luring on Macbeth in his course of crime, was actually appalling in intensity, as if it denoted a hunger after guilt." At the same time, special effects were becoming popular: for example in Samuel Phelps' "Macbeth" the witches performed behind green gauze, enabling them to appear and disappear using stage lighting.


title: Macbeth

text: In 1849, rival performances of the play sparked the Astor Place riot in Manhattan. The popular American actor Edwin Forrest, whose Macbeth was said to be like "the ferocious chief of a barbarous tribe" played the central role at the Broadway Theatre to popular acclaim, while the "cerebral and patrician" English actor Macready, playing the same role at the Astor Place Opera House, suffered constant heckling. The existing enmity between the two men (Forrest had openly hissed Macready at a recent performance of "Hamlet" in Britain) was taken up by Forrest's supporters – formed from the working class and lower middle class and anti-British agitators, keen to attack the upper-class pro-British patrons of the Opera House and the colonially-minded Macready. Nevertheless, Macready performed the role again three days later to a packed house while an angry mob gathered outside. The militia tasked with controlling the situation fired into the mob. In total, 31 rioters were killed and over 100 injured.


title: Macbeth

text: Charlotte Cushman is unique among nineteenth century interpreters of Shakespeare in achieving stardom in roles of both genders. Her New York debut was as Lady Macbeth in 1836, and she would later be admired in London in the same role in the mid-1840s. Helen Faucit was considered the embodiment of early-Victorian notions of femininity. But for this reason she largely failed when she eventually played Lady Macbeth in 1864: her serious attempt to embody the coarser aspects of Lady Macbeth's character jarred harshly with her public image. Adelaide Ristori, the great Italian actress, brought her Lady Macbeth to London in 1863 in Italian, and again in 1873 in an English translation cut in such a way as to be, in effect, Lady Macbeth's tragedy.


title: Macbeth

text: Henry Irving was the most successful of the late-Victorian actor-managers, but his "Macbeth" failed to curry favour with audiences. His desire for psychological credibility reduced certain aspects of the role: He described Macbeth as a brave soldier but a moral coward, and played him untroubled by conscience – clearly already contemplating the murder of Duncan before his encounter with the witches. Irving's leading lady was Ellen Terry, but her Lady Macbeth was unsuccessful with the public, for whom a century of performances influenced by Sarah Siddons had created expectations at odds with Terry's conception of the role.


title: Macbeth

text: Late nineteenth-century European Macbeths aimed for heroic stature, but at the expense of subtlety: Tommaso Salvini in Italy and Adalbert Matkowsky in Germany were said to inspire awe, but elicited little pity.


title: Macbeth

text: Two developments changed the nature of "Macbeth" performance in the 20th century: first, developments in the craft of acting itself, especially the ideas of Stanislavski and Brecht; and second, the rise of the dictator as a political icon. The latter has not always assisted the performance: it is difficult to sympathise with a Macbeth based on Hitler, Stalin, or Idi Amin.


title: Macbeth

text: Barry Jackson, at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1923, was the first of the 20th-century directors to costume "Macbeth" in modern dress.


title: Macbeth

text: In 1936, a decade before his film adaptation of the play, Orson Welles directed "Macbeth" for the Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, using black actors and setting the action in Haiti: with drums and Voodoo rites to establish the Witches scenes. The production, dubbed "The Voodoo Macbeth", proved inflammatory in the aftermath of the Harlem riots, accused of making fun of black culture and as "a campaign to burlesque negroes" until Welles persuaded crowds that his use of black actors and voodoo made important cultural statements.


title: Macbeth

text: A performance which is frequently referenced as an example of the play's curse was the outdoor production directed by Burgess Meredith in 1953 in the British colony of Bermuda, starring Charlton Heston. Using the imposing spectacle of Fort St. Catherine as a key element of the set, the production was plagued by a host of mishaps, including Charlton Heston being burned when his tights caught fire.


title: Macbeth

text: The critical consensus is that there have been three great Macbeths on the English-speaking stage in the 20th century, all of them commencing at Stratford-upon-Avon: Laurence Olivier in 1955, Ian McKellen in 1976 and Antony Sher in 1999. Olivier's portrayal (directed by Glen Byam Shaw, with Vivien Leigh as Lady Macbeth) was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Kenneth Tynan expressed the view that it succeeded because Olivier built the role to a climax at the end of the play, whereas most actors spend all they have in the first two acts.


title: Macbeth

text: The play caused grave difficulties for the Royal Shakespeare Company, especially at the (then) Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Peter Hall's 1967 production was (in Michael Billington's words) "an acknowledged disaster" with the use of real leaves from Birnham Wood getting unsolicited first-night laughs, and Trevor Nunn's 1974 production was (Billington again) "an over-elaborate religious spectacle".


title: Macbeth

text: But Nunn achieved success for the RSC in his 1976 production at the intimate Other Place, with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in the central roles. A small cast worked within a simple circle, and McKellen's Macbeth had nothing noble or likeable about him, being a manipulator in a world of manipulative characters. They were a young couple, physically passionate, "not monsters but recognisable human beings", but their relationship atrophied as the action progressed.


title: Macbeth

text: The RSC again achieved critical success in Gregory Doran's 1999 production at The Swan, with Antony Sher and Harriet Walter in the central roles, once again demonstrating the suitability of the play for smaller venues. Doran's witches spoke their lines to a theatre in absolute darkness, and the opening visual image was the entrance of Macbeth and Banquo in the berets and fatigues of modern warfare, carried on the shoulders of triumphant troops. In contrast to Nunn, Doran presented a world in which king Duncan and his soldiers were ultimately benign and honest, heightening the deviance of Macbeth (who seems genuinely surprised by the witches' prophecies) and Lady Macbeth in plotting to kill the king. The play said little about politics, instead powerfully presenting its central characters' psychological collapse.


title: Macbeth

text: "Macbeth" returned to the RSC in 2018, when Christopher Eccleston played the title role, with Niamh Cusack as his wife, Lady Macbeth. The play later transferred to the Barbican in London.


title: Macbeth

text: In Soviet-controlled Prague in 1977, faced with the illegality of working in theatres, Pavel Kohout adapted "Macbeth" into a 75-minute abridgement for five actors, suitable for "bringing a show in a suitcase to people's homes".


title: Macbeth

text: Spectacle was unfashionable in Western theatre throughout the 20th century. In East Asia, however, spectacular productions have achieved great success, including Yukio Ninagawa's 1980 production with Masane Tsukayama as Macbeth, set in the 16th century Japanese Civil War. The same director's tour of London in 1987 was widely praised by critics, even though (like most of their audience) they were unable to understand the significance of Macbeth's gestures, the huge Buddhist altar dominating the set, or the petals falling from the cherry trees.


title: Macbeth

text: Xu Xiaozhong's 1980 Central Academy of Drama production in Beijing made every effort to be unpolitical (necessary in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution): yet audiences still perceived correspondences between the central character (whom the director had actually modelled on Louis Napoleon) and Mao Zedong. Shakespeare has often been adapted to indigenous theatre traditions, for example the "Kunju Macbeth" of Huang Zuolin performed at the inaugural Chinese Shakespeare Festival of 1986. Similarly, B. V. Karanth's "Barnam Vana" of 1979 had adapted "Macbeth" to the Yakshagana tradition of Karnataka, India. In 1997, Lokendra Arambam created "Stage of Blood", merging a range of martial arts, dance and gymnastic styles from Manipur, performed in Imphal and in England. The stage was literally a raft on a lake.


title: Macbeth

text: "Throne of Blood" (蜘蛛巣城 Kumonosu-jō, "Spider Web Castle") is a 1957 Japanese samurai film co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film transposes "Macbeth" from Medieval Scotland to feudal Japan, with stylistic elements drawn from Noh drama. Kurosawa was a fan of the play and planned his own adaptation for several years, postponing it after learning of Orson Welles' Macbeth (1948). The film won two Mainichi Film Awards.


title: Macbeth

text: The play has been translated and performed in various languages in different parts of the world, and "Media Artists" was the first to stage its Punjabi adaptation in India. The adaptation by Balram and the play directed by Samuel John have been universally acknowledged as a milestone in Punjabi theatre. The unique attempt involved trained theatre experts and the actors taken from a rural background in Punjab. Punjabi folk music imbued the play with the native ethos as the Scottish setting of Shakespeare's play was transposed into a Punjabi milieu.


title: Macbeth

text: In 2021, Saoirse Ronan starred in "The Tragedy of Macbeth" at the Almeida Theatre in London. The following year a revival production opened on Broadway with Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga to middling reviews.


title: Macbeth

text: All references to "Macbeth", unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Arden Shakespeare, second series edition edited by Kenneth Muir. Under their referencing system, III.I.55 means act 3, scene 1, line 55. All references to other Shakespeare plays are to The Oxford Shakespeare "Complete Works of Shakespeare" edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Dana Elaine Owens (born March 18, 1970), known professionally as Queen Latifah, is an American rapper, actress, and singer. Born in Newark, New Jersey, she signed with Tommy Boy Records in 1989 and released her debut album "All Hail the Queen" on November 28, 1989, featuring the hit single "Ladies First". "Nature of a Sista'" (1991) was her second and final album with Tommy Boy Records.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Latifah starred as Khadijah James on the Fox sitcom "Living Single" from 1993 to 1998. Her third album, "Black Reign" (1993), became the first album by a solo female rapper to receive a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and spawned the single "U.N.I.T.Y.", which was influential in raising awareness of violence against women and the objectification of Black female sexuality. The track reached the top 40 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, and won a Grammy Award. She then starred in the lead role of "Set It Off" (1996) and released her fourth album, "Order in the Court", on June 16, 1998, with Motown Records. Latifah garnered acclaim with her role of Matron "Mama" Morton in the musical film "Chicago" (2002), receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Latifah released her fifth album "The Dana Owens Album" in 2004. In 2007 and 2009, she released two more studio albums – "Trav'lin' Light" and "Persona". She created the daytime talk show "The Queen Latifah Show", which ran from 1999 to 2001, and again from 2013 to 2015, in syndication. She has appeared in a number of films, such as "Bringing Down the House" (2003), "Taxi" (2004), "" (2005), "Beauty Shop" (2005), "Last Holiday" (2006), "Hairspray" (2007), "Joyful Noise" (2012), "22 Jump Street" (2014) and "Girls Trip" (2017) and provided voice work in the "Ice Age" film series. Latifah received critical acclaim for her portrayal of blues singer Bessie Smith in the HBO film "Bessie" (2015), which she co-produced, winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. From 2016 to 2019, she starred as Carlotta Brown in the musical drama series "Star". In 2020, she portrayed Hattie McDaniel in the miniseries "Hollywood". Since 2021, she has held the lead role on CBS' revival of the action drama "The Equalizer".


title: Queen Latifah

text: Noted for her work in music, film and television, Latifah has earned a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, and has been nominated for an Academy Award. In 2006, she became the first hip hop artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Dana Elaine Owens was born in Newark, New Jersey, on March 18, 1970, and lived primarily in East Orange, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Rita Lamae (née Bray; d. 2018), a teacher at Irvington High School (Latifah's alma mater), and Lancelot Amos Owens, a police officer. Her parents divorced when Latifah was ten.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Latifah was raised in the Baptist faith. She attended Catholic school in Newark, New Jersey and Essex Catholic Girls' High School in Irvington, but graduated from Irvington High School. After high school, Queen Latifah attended classes at Borough of Manhattan Community College.


title: Queen Latifah

text: She found her stage name, "Latifah" ( "laţīfa"), meaning "delicate" and "very kind" in Arabic, in a book of Arabic names when she was eight. Always tall, the Latifah was a power forward on her high school basketball team. She performed the number "Home" from the musical "The Wiz" in a grammar school play.


title: Queen Latifah

text: She began beat boxing for the hip-hop group Ladies Fresh and was an original member of the Flavor Unit, which, at that time, was a crew of MCs grouped around producer DJ King Gemini, who made a demo recording of Queen Latifah's rap Princess of the Posse. He gave the recording to Fab 5 Freddy, the host of "Yo! MTV Raps". The song got the attention of Tommy Boy Music employee Dante Ross, who signed Latifah and in 1989 issued her first single, "Wrath of My Madness". More recent artists, like Ice Cube and Lil' Kim, would go on to sample Latifah's track in their songs, "Wrath of Kim's Madness" and "You Can't Play With My Yo-Yo" in later years. Latifah has a two-octave vocal range. She is considered a contralto, having the ability to both rap and sing.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Latifah made her mark in hip-hop by rapping about issues surrounding being a black woman. Her songs covered topics including domestic violence, harassment on the streets, and relationship problems.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Freddy helped Latifah sign with Tommy Boy Records, which released Latifah's first album "All Hail the Queen" in 1989, when she was nineteen. That year, she appeared as Referee on the UK label Music of Life album "1989The Hustlers Convention (live)". She received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1992. The single "Ladies First" featuring Monie Love became the first collaborative track by two female rappers not in a group. In 1993, she released the album "Black Reign", which was certified Gold in the United States and produced the Grammy Award-winning song "U.N.I.T.Y." In 1998, co-produced by Ro Smith, now CEO of Def Ro Inc., she released her fourth hip-hop album "Order in the Court", which was released by Motown Records. Latifah was also a member of the hip-hop collective Native Tongues.


title: Queen Latifah

text: After "Order in the Court", Latifah shifted primarily to singing soul music and jazz standards, which she had used sparingly in her previous hip-hop-oriented records. In 2004, she released the soul/jazz standards "The Dana Owens Album". On July 11, 2007, Latifah sang at the famed Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles as the headlining act in a live jazz concert. In front of a crowd of more than 12,400, she was backed by a 10-piece live orchestra and three backup vocalists, which was billed as the Queen Latifah Orchestra. Latifah performed new arrangements of standards including "California Dreaming", first made popular by 1960s icons the Mamas & the Papas. Later in 2007, Latifah released an album titled "Trav'lin' Light". Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Joe Sample, George Duke, Christian McBride, and Stevie Wonder made guest appearances. It was nominated for a Grammy in the "Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album" category.


title: Queen Latifah

text: In 2009, Latifah, along with the NJPAC Jubilation Choir, recorded the title track on the album "", covering the song that the Edwin Hawkins Singers made popular in 1969.


title: Queen Latifah

text: In 2008, Latifah was asked if she would make another hip-hop album. She was quoted stating that the album was done already and it would be called "All Hail the Queen II". The following year, in 2009, she released her album "Persona". The song "Cue the Rain" was released as the album's lead single. 2011 saw Queen Latifah sing "Who Can I Turn To" in a duet with Tony Bennett for his album "Duets II". In January 2012, while appearing on "106 & Park" with Dolly Parton, to promote "Joyful Noise", Latifah stated that she had been working on a new album.


title: Queen Latifah

text: She began her film career in supporting roles in the 1991 and 1992 films "House Party 2", "Juice" and "Jungle Fever". Moreover, she has guest starred in two episodes during the second season (1991–1992) of the NBC hit "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and had a guest role as herself on "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper" in 1993. From 1993 to 1998, Latifah had a starring role on "Living Single", the FOX sitcom, which gained high ratings among black audiences; she also wrote and performed its theme music. Her mother Rita played her mother on-screen. Latifah appeared in the 1996 box-office hit, "Set It Off", and had a supporting role in the Holly Hunter film "Living Out Loud" (1998). She played the role of Thelma in the 1999 movie "The Bone Collector", alongside Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. She also had her own talk show, "The Queen Latifah Show", from 1999 to 2001 and revamped in 2013. On January 6, 2014, "The Queen Latifah Show" was renewed for a second season. However, on November 21, 2014, Sony Pictures Television canceled Latifah's show due to declining ratings. Production of the series closed down, taking effect on December 18, 2014, leaving new episodes that were broadcast until March 6, 2015.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Although Latifah had previously received some critical acclaim, she gained mainstream success after being cast as Matron "Mama" Morton in "Chicago", a musical film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Latifah herself received the nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role, but lost to co-star Catherine Zeta-Jones. Latifah is one of five hip-hop/R&B artists to receive an Academy Award nomination in an acting category. The others are Will Smith (Best Actor, "Ali", 2001, and "The Pursuit of Happyness", 2006), Jennifer Hudson (Best Supporting Actress, "Dreamgirls", 2007), Jamie Foxx, (Best Actor, "Ray", and Best Supporting Actor "Collateral", both in 2004, also winning the first) and Mary J. Blige, (Best Supporting Actress, Mudbound.)


title: Queen Latifah

text: In 2003, she starred with Steve Martin in the film "Bringing Down the House", which was a major success at the box office. She also recorded a song "Do Your Thing" for the soundtrack. Since then, she has had both leading and supporting roles in a multitude of films that received varied critical and box office receptions, including films such as "Scary Movie 3", "", "Taxi", "Kung Faux", "Beauty Shop", and "Hairspray". In early 2006, Latifah appeared in a romantic comedy/drama entitled "Last Holiday". Film critic Richard Roeper stated that "this is the Queen Latifah performance I've been waiting for ever since she broke into movies". Also in 2006, Latifah voiced Ellie, a friendly mammoth, in the animated film, "" (her first voice appearance in an animated film), and appeared in the drama "Stranger Than Fiction".


title: Queen Latifah

text: The summer of 2007 brought Latifah triple success in the big-screen version of the Broadway smash hit "Hairspray", in which she acted, sang, and danced. The film rated highly with critics. It starred, among others, John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Allison Janney, James Marsden, Christopher Walken, and Zac Efron. Also in 2007, she portrayed an HIV-positive woman in the film "Life Support", a role for which she garnered her first Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award and an Emmy nomination. For her work, Queen Latifah received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on January 4, 2006, located at 6915 Hollywood Blvd.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Queen Latifah produced the 2007 film "The Perfect Holiday". In addition to producing the film, Latifah starred alongside Terrence Howard, Morris Chestnut, Gabrielle Union, Charles Q. Murphy, Jill Marie Jones, and Faizon Love. In 2008, Latifah appeared in the crime comedy "Mad Money" opposite Academy Award–winner Diane Keaton as well as Katie Holmes and Ted Danson. She appeared on "Saturday Night Live" on October 4, 2008, as moderator Gwen Ifill in a comedic sketch depicting the vice-presidential debate between then-Senator Joe Biden and then-Governor Sarah Palin and played in "The Secret Life of Bees". In 2009, Latifah was a presenter at the 81st Academy Awards, presenting the segment honoring film professionals who had died during 2008 and singing "I'll Be Seeing You" during the montage. Latifah spoke at Michael Jackson's memorial service in Los Angeles. She also hosted the 2010 People's Choice Awards. Latifah sang "America the Beautiful" at Super Bowl XLIV hosted in Miami, Florida, on February 7, 2010, with Carrie Underwood. Latifah hosted the 2010 BET Awards on June 27, 2010. She starred with Dolly Parton in "Joyful Noise" (2012). In June 2011, Latifah received an honorary doctorate degree in Humane Letters from Delaware State University in Dover, Delaware. On September 16, 2013, Latifah premiered her own syndicated daytime television show titled "The Queen Latifah Show". On January 26, 2014, Latifah officiated the weddings of 33 same-sex and opposite-sex couples during a performance of "Same Love" by Macklemore at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. In 2015, Latifah received a Best Actress Emmy nomination for her lead role as Bessie Smith in "Bessie", an HBO film which received a total of 12 Emmy nominations.


title: Queen Latifah

text: On April 26, 2017, MTV announced that Latifah will be an executive producer for the third season of the slasher television series "Scream". The show will undergo a reboot with a new cast and Brett Matthews serving as show runner. In addition, Matthews, Shakim Compere and Yaneley Arty will also be credited as executive producers for the series under Flavor Unit Entertainment. On June 24, 2019, it was confirmed that the third season is scheduled to premiere over three nights on VH1, starting from July 8, 2019. The third season titled "Scream: Resurrection" premiered on July 8, 2019.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Latifah played the sea witch Ursula in "The Little Mermaid Live!". Although the production itself was not well received, critics widely praised Latifah's performance, with "The Hollywood Reporter" calling her performance "the best moment of the evening".


title: Queen Latifah

text: CBS has announced a new active TV series, "The Equalizer", a reboot of the 1980s detective series of the same name, starring Latifah in the lead role (renamed as Robyn for her version). More recently, she signed a deal with Audible.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Latifah's music usually contains hip-hop, jazz and gospel and has the elements of R&B, soul, and dance. She possesses a two-octave vocal range. Queen Latifah is a contralto, and she has the ability to rap and sing. Her biggest musical influences are EPMD, KRS-One, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, and Run–D.M.C. She also cites Bessie Smith as one of her influences.


title: Queen Latifah

text: "Al Hail the Queen" features hip-hop, reggae, soulful back-up vocals, boppish scatting, snappy horn back-ups, and house music. She described the work as "a creative outlet... and sometimes it can become like a newspaper that people read with their ears."


title: Queen Latifah

text: Early in her career, Queen Latifah's lyrics were described as woman-centered and Afrocentric. The rapper often used Afrocentric attires during public appearances and music videos, looks that became her trademark. In 1990, "The New York Times" Michelle Wallace described her art as "politically sophisticated", which "seems worlds apart from the adolescent, buffoonish sex orientation of most rap." For "AllMusic", her "strong, intelligent, no-nonsense" persona made her "arguably the first MC who could properly be described as feminist". Queen Latifah did not identify as a feminist at the time, and expressed that her music was not exclusive for the female audience. On the topic, author Tricia Rose wrote that Black female rappers likely did not identify with feminism during that time because it was perceived as a movement that focused primarily on white women's issues.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Latifah is a celebrity spokesperson for CoverGirl cosmetics, Curvation women's underwear, Pizza Hut, and Jenny Craig. She represents her own line of cosmetics for women of color called the CoverGirl Queen Collection. Latifah has also launched a perfume line called "Queen" and "Queen of Hearts". On May 23, 2018, Latifah was named the godmother of Carnival Cruise Lines' vessel Carnival Horizon. Apart from singing, Queen Latifah has written a book on confidence and self-respect called "Ladies First: Revelations of a Strong Woman."


title: Queen Latifah

text: Raised in East Orange, New Jersey, Latifah has been a resident of Colts Neck, New Jersey; Rumson, New Jersey; and Beverly Hills, California.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Latifah's older brother, Lancelot Jr., was killed in 1992 in an accident involving a motorcycle that Latifah had purchased for him. A 2006 interview revealed that Latifah still wears the key to the motorcycle around her neck, visible throughout her performance in her sitcom "Living Single". In 1995, Latifah was the victim of a carjacking, which also resulted in the shooting of her boyfriend, Sean Moon.


title: Queen Latifah

text: In 1996, she was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and possession of a loaded handgun. In 2002, she was arrested for driving under the influence in Los Angeles County. She was placed on three years' probation after being convicted.


title: Queen Latifah

text: On March 21, 2018, her mother, actress Rita Owens, died due to heart failure, an issue she had been battling since 2004.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Latifah long refused to address speculation around her sexuality and personal life, telling "The New York Times" in 2008 that "I don't feel like I need to share my personal life, and I don't care if people think I'm gay or not". At the BET Awards 2021, during her acceptance speech for the Lifetime Achievement Award, she publicly acknowledged her partner Eboni Nichols and son Rebel for the first time, ending the speech with "happy Pride!"


title: Queen Latifah

text: In the January 2020 season 6, episode 4 of "Finding Your Roots" titled "This Land Is My Land", Latifah learned that her family were descended from a line of freed Negros, since her ancestors were listed by name in the US pre-civil war census of 1860. Slaves were almost never listed by name in pre-US civil war censuses. Latifah also learned the exact date her ancestors became free: October 1, 1792, the date her second earliest ancestor, a woman named 'Jug' or Juggy Owens, was emancipated from slavery.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Disagreements between Foxy Brown and Queen Latifah began in mid-1996, where media reports indicated that Brown was a prime target of Latifah's diss record "Name Callin'", which was featured on the "Set It Off" soundtrack. In response, Brown made allegations of Latifah "checking her out" at musical events and further questioned Latifah's sexuality in various public radio interviews. In 1998, Brown released a diss record titled "10% Dis", where she continually questioned Latifah's sexuality and accused her of being jealous.


title: Queen Latifah

text: By late spring of 1998, Latifah responded to Brown through another diss record titled "Name Callin' Part II". On the record, Latifah disses Brown about her heavy reliance on sex appeal, in which she implies that Brown has to rely on skimpy outfits to hide her "half-assed flow". Foxy Brown retaliated via a response-diss record titled "Talk to Me", in which Brown made fun of the ratings of Latifah's television talk show and went on to make various homophobic remarks to both Latifah and then-newcomer Queen Pen.


title: Queen Latifah

text: A significant part of media dubbed Latifah "the winner" of the feud. Hip-hop magazine "Ego Trip" stated that Latifah won the feud with her diss record "Name Callin' Part II" and added that she showed that "the lady's still first", in reference to Latifah's 1990 single, "Ladies First". In 2000, Brown and Latifah reconciled; to prove that the truce was real, Brown performed her song "Na Na Be Like" on "The Queen Latifah Show".


title: Queen Latifah

text: Often cited as one of the best female rappers, Queen Latifah achieved groundbreaking success in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and became what "Pitchfork" considered as the "most recognizable female rapper" of the golden era of hip hop. "AllMusic" writer Steve Huey stated that Latifah was "certainly not the first female rapper, but she was the first one to become a bona fide star." In the book "Notable Black American Women", Jessie Carney Smith hailed her as "rap's first feminist" and "one of the few women to make a mark in the male-dominated field of rap music". "Variety" called her "one of the major forerunners for women in modern hip-hop," and "The Guardian" referred to her as a "pioneer of female rap."


title: Queen Latifah

text: Throughout her career, several media publications have referred to her as the "Queen of Rap" including "New York" magazine (1990) via editor Dinitia Smith, as well as "Queen of Hip Hop". Latifah became the first solo female rapper to receive a RIAA certification for an album ("Black Reign"), a commercial breakthrough that the "AllMusic" editor considered as creating a path for "a talented crew of women rappers to make their own way onto the charts as the 90s progressed". Her breakthrough also helped place New Jersey on the hip hop map. In 1998, she performed in the Super Bowl XXXII halftime show, making her the first rapper to do so.


title: Queen Latifah

text: According to an "African American Review" journal, her afrocentric feminist music video for "Ladies First" presented a "televisual moment" and disrupted the continuity of sexism and racism that dominated the music videos at the time. The song was listed on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll, and was one of the firsts texts to address the declining standards of male female relationships in community life. Author Tricia Rose expressed that it "offered hip-hop for the development of pro-female pro-black diasporas political consciousness." In "Consequence", Okla Jones noted that the song "U.N.I.T.Y."—which lyrics confront slurs against women in hip-hop culture and address other types of disrespect—created a path for future female rappers to be "their authentic selves".


title: Queen Latifah

text: "Vibe" magazine has noted her as the first female rapper to cross over into TV & film, as an artist that "broke barriers and set standards" for Black women in music to follow, and cited her as the "First Lady of Hip-Hop". For her performance as Matron "Mama" Morton in "Chicago", Latifah earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the first woman in hip hop to earn an Oscar nomination.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Queen Latifah has been cited as an influence to R&B, soul, and hip-hop artists, such as Eve, Da Brat, Lil' Kim, Fugees, Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliott, Remy Ma, Ivy Queen, Foxy Brown, Ms. Dynamite, Naughty by Nature, Rapsody, Megan Thee Stallion, as well as actors Michael K. Williams, Keke Palmer, Vin Diesel, and author Jason Reynolds.


title: Queen Latifah

text: Playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda has stated that Latifah inspired the portrayal of Angelica Schuyler in the musical "Hamilton". In 2020, "Vogue" editor Janelle Okwodu considered her a fashion icon that "helped to start a conversation about body image that continues to this day", crediting her among the first artists that pioneered the "climate of size inclusivity and muses of all shapes".