Macbeth
A Tragedy (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Macbeth: A Tragedy

The decorations for the Coburn Players' Macbeth Book, aim to illustrate the mental tones and colors that make up the play when regarded as a design.

The cover, illustrating the line, "Is this a dagger which I see before me" is more self-explanatory than the border designs, whose subject matter may be found in the lines of the Witches in act IV, scene I.

"Brindled cat," "hedge-pig," "harpie," and "poisoned entrails" will be found in the upper right and left hand corners of the left and right hand pages.

Excepting these four, which are introductory, the twenty-four ingredients which the Witches put into the cauldron are represented in the order of the text, beginning with "fillet of a fenny snake" and reading to the right and down the right hand side of the left hand page, thence up the left-hand side to the right hand page and over to "gibbet."

Five panels on the extreme left are representative of Macbeth the soldier, while five on the extreme right refer to Macbeth as King.

In the first of these panels on the left is the owl of wisdom, balanced on the right side by the more sinister bat. The helmet and mail is balanced by the crown and ermine; the sword and belt by the sceptre and orb; the victory palm by the double throne; the battle victims by Birnam wood.

Two large panels at the bottom on the left, show the "blasted heath"; on the right the corresponding panels represent the royal castle and army.

In the lower left hand corner of the left hand page is a Shakespeare monogram; opposite is the initial letter of Macbeth.

The scene on the title page, showing Macbeth at the witches' cave and that of Lady Macbeth in Act V, Scene I, were selected to be expressed in design, rather than in photographs on account of their deeper significance in the structure of the play.

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