‘He Shall Live a Man Forbid’: Ingmar Bergman’s Macbeth

Summary

Although at some times popular, Shakespeare has at others been a rare guest on the Swedish stage. The Second World War stands out as a particularly lean period. During these years only nine of his plays were mounted at major theatres, three of them – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and, significantly, Macbeth and Henry V – not being put on until 1944/5. When Macbeth opened at a provincial theatre in November 1944, a Stockholm critic thought it astonishing that this most topical of Shakespeare’s plays had not been performed at other theatres. He was not aware, apparently, that the director, Ingmar Bergman, had produced Macbeth at a student theatre in Stockholm at the beginning of the war.

All through his career, Bergman has constantly returned to certain classical authors such as Ibsen, Moliere and Strindberg, and to some of their works in particular. However, it is equally striking that he has produced very little Shakespeare. An amateur production in 1941 of A Midsummer Night's Dream and productions in 1975 and 1979 of Twelfth Night are the only works he has directed apart from Macbeth.