Thesis (M.A.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Arts - Department of English

The concern of the proposed thesis is to explore how Shakespeare's Macbeth is adapted or appropriated in selected modern works of art. The thesis seeks to prove that the play can be reformulated and changed to fit different media of expression other than theater, such as film. For illustration, in theater it can be reformed into parodies and comedies. As for the plays in focus, Tom Stoppard{u2019}s Cahoot{u2019}s Macbeth (1979) is a comic version of Macbeth, which explores the socio-political context of its time through puns and wordplay inserted in the plot of the tragedy. Moreover, in contemporary Egyptian productions of the play, MAC-WA-LEE (2015) turns the original tragedy into a burlesque farcical adaptation done in colloquial Arabic. As for film, the works explored in the thesis are, Macbeth in 1971by Roman Polanski and in 2015 by Justin Kurzel. The Polanski version is a clear adaptation of Macbeth, which allows a later filmmaker to appropriate similar visual choices to his film. Nevertheless, both films carry traits that are both common to and carefully chosen from the original play, to express the sociopolitical context surrounding the production of the films in different eras

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