Macbeth Reading Response

I have always enjoyed Shakespeare's poetry, for that is all I have read for him. I have seen the movies such as Romeo and Juliette and I've quite enjoyed them. In high school, we always analyzed his sonnets, and I always found them very artistically beautiful. From the style, to the rhymes, to the messages, to the word choices. And speaking of words, you will need a dictionary with you to be able to fully understand what he is trying to say, because the type of English he writes in is very dissimilar to the English we use today. I still don't know how I feel about Macbeth yet. I want to read more to see what it's all about. When I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was reading Macbeth for English class, he said: "Oh that's a great book, you're going to enjoy it!". So that got me a little excited to read it. When I first started reading though... To be honest, I didn't understand anything. I had to look back and forth at the footnotes to be able to stay focused. In scene 1 of Act 1, three witches meet in a a dark scary place, and I concluded that from my own imagination since in plays you don't really get much setting description. They use words like "heath", "anon", "kerns"... I have never seen these words before, which made it a little difficult for me to understand the text. However, through moving on with the reading, I started getting used to reading the footnotes right when I don't understand something. What I also noticed is that the play is written in verse, which is pretty interesting. So that made me wonder about how would it be acted out in real life. Shakespeare continues with introducing more characters to the play like Ross, Agnus, Banquo, and Macbeth... I am pretty sure there will be more characters in this epic, but I still don't understand the connections. I am looking forward to reading this work until the end.

- Sara