時間：9時間45分
発音：イギリス英語、スコットランド訛り
速度：140-150分（平均）
オススメ度：★★★☆☆ 気軽にシェイクスピアを聞きたいなら。
現代版マクベス。これは忠実に原作を翻訳したものではなく、現代語を使って小説に書きなおされたバージョンです。シェイクスピア専攻の教授の監修、人気クライムノベル作家が書いたとあって、面白かったです。
I’ve finished listening to the audiobook version of a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. I read some of the Shakespeare’s works in Japanese when I was a kid, but I forgot most of them. When I read “Team of Rivals”, which describes how much Lincoln loved and cherished Shakespeare’s plays, I felt compelled to read Shakespeare and see if they are worth taking the time to read again.
The audiobook I chose was “Macbeth: A Novel”, which was written by the British best-selling crime author David Hewson with the help of A.J. Hartley, a profossor of Shakespeare. This book is a modern interpretation of the original Macbeth, which is easy to understand and enjoyable to listen to.
Macbeth is a Scottish general who is a fearsome soldier and who was a royal subject to his King, Duncan. When Macbeth and Banquo, his best friend from childhood, encounter three witches on the way back from a battle, the witches gave prophecies of Macbeth’s rise as a king, and Banquo’s descendants becoming kings. They were skeptical at first, but some of the predictions soon came true, and their ambitions for the throne took over their rationalities. The night the King anointed his eldest son as his successor against custom, which did not allow succession to the throne through inheritance, Macbeth and his wife brutally murdered the king in his sleep, and blamed the crime on Duncan’s sons. The King’s sons fled to England for fear for their lives, and Macbeth succeeded to the throne afterward. All seemed went well, but the knowledge that he slew a sleeping King in his own house holding was eating away at his conscience. The anxiety from his guilt gave rise to one suspicion after another and he had to commit further crimes to cover up his previous misgivings until they led him to his cruel fate.
Although it was Macbeth who brought in all the pain and suffering, I felt as if it was I who committed all the crimes. The pang of guilt I felt was so intense that it was unbearable to continue to listen to the story.
I suffered as much as Macbeth, and the story was grim and depressing, but yet, the story was compelling, and definitely worth reading.
