19 - Macbeth Part 2: Red-Handed, Ghosts and Guilt

Banquo! Lady Macbeth! Shakesqueer! The Monster's Body Is a Cultural Body! Charles Manson! Playboy! Join us for Macbeth, Part 2, in which we explore changing beliefs about ghosts from the ancient world to Shakespeare's England and discuss how audiences, past and present, might understand Banquo's ghost. From there, we turn to Lady Macbeth's fractured experience of guilt and time before considering the many ways filmmakers have reimagined the play to reflect the anxieties of their own historical moments.

Make contact:

@ghostswerepeopletoo (tumblr/instagram)

gwp2pod@gmail.com

Read Quest's article! “Revenge of the Monster Queer: The Cosmic Horror and Eldritch Liberation of Drag" in The Monstrous Utopian, ed. Michael Chemers and Analola Santana, Routledge

Bibliography:

• Didion, Joan. The White Album. Simon & Schuster, 1979.
• Freebury-Jones, Darren, and Rachel Aanstad. “Did Shakespeare's Audiences Believe in Ghosts?” Shakespeare and Friends. YouTube, 18 Jan. 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br4N4RA0j_s. Accessed 28 July 2026.
• Love, Heather. “Macbeth: Milk.” Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by Madhavi Menon, Duke University Press, 2011, pp. 201–208. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1134f1s.26. Accessed 28 July 2026.
• Puhvel, Martin. “The Perplexing Ghost of Banquo: Ambiguity and Its Roots.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, vol. 94, no. 3, 1993, pp. 287–302.
• Williams, Deanne. “Mick Jagger Macbeth.” Macbeth and Its Afterlife, edited by Peter Holland, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 145–160.

Films:

• Macbeth. Directed by Orson Welles, Republic Pictures, 1948.
• Macbeth. Directed by Roman Polanski, Columbia Pictures, 1971.
• Macbeth. Directed by Justin Kurzel, StudioCanal, 2015.
• The Tragedy of Macbeth. Directed by Joel Coen, A24 and Apple Original Films, 2021.