Macbeth

A collaboration between experienced Shakespeare scholar-educator Wendy Beth Hyman and her former student, emerging queer illustrator and animator Clair Wang, that seeks to visualize the literary language of Macbeth.

Macbeth: A Visual Companion offers a unique resource to readers, teachers, and performers of Shakespeare: an illustrated guide to those literary features of Shakespeare’s texts that can’t be represented on stage. How do you unravel a complex metaphor, an antiquated pun, an embedded allegory? What if allusions and images and similes could appear before the reader’s eyes? What if we could learn to read as Renaissance readers did: with fewer footnotes, but greater capacity to “see” literary language like chiasmus or equivocation? This is the aim of this creative collaboration. 

Designed to be read alongside the free online editions provided by the Folger Shakespeare Library, Macbeth: A Visual Companion illuminates the most obscure features of a very complex play, empowering readers to unpack Shakespeare without reliance on watered-down modernizations or even staged productions. Hyman and Wang present a two-part strategy. One, illustrations that, rather than counterfeiting the action of drama, provide a visual representation of the inner worlds of language. And two, scholarly commentary that, rather than inertly explain or obtusely theorize difficulty, shows how literary devices themselves generate meaning. They thus model for readers how to access metaphors, allusions, and images in real time—just like Shakespeare’s original audience did. In the process, they aim to empower students and non-specialist teachers not only to understand Macbeth or Shakespeare more generally, but also to showcase a model for more confidently grappling with challenging literary texts of all kinds.

Wendy Beth Hyman is the Donald R. Longman Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College and a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. She is the author of Impossible Desire and the Limits of Knowledge in Renaissance Poetry; coeditor of Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now; and editor of The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature. Clair Wang (he/him) is a graduate of Oberlin College with a major in English and minors in both Theater and Studio Art. A self-taught illustrator who works in comics and animation, Wang is heavily inspired by topics surrounding literature and mythology from around the world. He established a background in editorial art during his four years with the Oberlin Review through weekly comic strips, and has continued his freelance illustration and design work post-graduation. Clair is currently developing an original graphic novel alongside a portfolio of visual storytelling and animation at https://www.clairywang.com/.