‘Upon this Blasted Heath’ Macbeth Before and After the Hurricane

Abstract

During the 20th and 21st centuries, writers and performers in the Caribbean have used Shakespeare as a means to give language and form to their experience. One such example is the 2016 Shakespeare in Paradise performance of Macbeth, which both represented the destruction of Hurricane Joaquin and seemed to anticipate the destruction of Hurricane Matthew. The staging of these two hurricanes and their aftermath, I argue, is rooted in both the actual and mythological history of the play. In the Shakespeare in Paradise performance, the advent of natural disaster appeared as images of destruction, the staging of trauma, as well as geographical and material allusions.