Macbeth

The other pole of Shakespearean tragedy — Hamlet thinks too much and cannot act; Macbeth acts too quickly and cannot think. Together they define the parameters of tragic agency

Another great warrior manipulated into destruction by someone who tells him what his desire already wants to hear — Iago is the human equivalent of the witches

The same experiment run in novel form: a man who believes himself exceptional commits murder to prove it, then is destroyed by guilt from within rather than justice from without

Power acquired through violence creates paranoia and requires more violence to maintain — Shakespeare's thesis, condensed and modernized

Willy Loman is Macbeth without the blood — a man who constructed a false identity and discovers it was never real; both plays ask what we owe ourselves versus what we owe our constructed self-image

Kurosawa's 1957 film adaptation — the most acclaimed Shakespeare adaptation in cinema, demonstrating the story's universality by transplanting it entirely to feudal Japan without losing its essence