Macbeth and Macbett, from Shakespeare to Ionesco

Abstract

Shakespeare is one of the greatest and most prestigious playwrights of all time and the inspiration for a multitude of literary works and other types of artistic manifestations. In addition to works that revisit one or another aspect present in Shakespearean plays, we have narratives that clearly reinterpret a specific play. Here we focus on Eugène Ionesco’s play Macbett in order to analyze in which aspects the romanian author’s play dialogues with Shakespeare’s and how Ionesco modified and updated the 17th century dramaturgical text. Ionesco’s play can be read as a kind of parody of the English play, but despite subverting characteristics of the plot and characters, it does not leave aside the great human issues that are the essence of the Shakespearean play. Still from the perspective of parody, it is possible to identify a comic element in Macbett that dialogues with the idea of the theater of the absurd proposed by Martin Esslin, a movement to which Ionesco belongs. The theme of power and greed is maintained as central in Ionesco’s play and appears to be the most solid link between the two dramaturgies. Macbeth and Macbett, placed side by side in this study, point to the Shakespearean canon and the countless possibilities of reading and interpretation that emerge from it.