1. Macbeth
Poster from the RSC production (1976): Ian Mckellen as Macbeth and Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth

2. Macbeth begins tumultuously, with the meeting of three witches in a thunderstorm. The witches, or Weird Sisters, make plans to reconvene shortly in order to meet Macbeth.
Macbeth by Wiktor Sadowski, 1985

3. Henry Fuseli 'The Three Witches' After 1783
This startling scene functions as an important introduction to the play's main plot. For this scene immerses its audience in a world presided over by enigmatic and terrifying forces.

4. The Three Witches as they appear in the 2006 film of Macbeth
The association between the witches and the storm makes thematic sense as well, for both represent a kind of threatening power beyond human control.
The Three Witches as they appear in the 2006 film of Macbeth

5. The violence of the reported battle, the tangible evidence of bloodshed provided by the wounded captain, and the general air of anxiety hanging over the camp, make the second scene as unsettling as the first.
Macbeth , Banquo and a soldier - bowing before King Duncan on their successful return from battle.

6. The first and the second scene give the distinct impression that the world of the play is in a general state of upheaval, as if the storm, the witches, and the political rebellion are all somehow associated with one another.
Ian McKellen (Macbeth) on second visit with the three witches (Susan Dury, Judith Harte, Marie Keane).

7. Macbeth
The psychic costs of the murderous ambition are considerable, and in fact become one of the major themes of the play. Having imagined the murder of Duncan, Macbeth is immediately stricken by what we today would call a crisis of conscience.
Macbeth (Ian Mckellen) and Lady Macbeth (Judi Dench)

8. Macbeth’s ambition comes into conflict with a powerfully felt sense of duty. The speeches in which he articulates his ambivalence is choppy and often confusing, manifesting the real difficulty of Macbeth's inner conflict.
Macbeth (1993) in Royal Shakespeare Company.

9. Lady Macbeth
Macbeth is ambitious, but an idealist. Lady Macbeth is ambitious also, as the whole soliloquy sufficiently shows. But the tone of contempt in "holily"—extraordinary word!—tells us that she not only possesses no such double nature herself but complains of it in him.
Macbeth (Ian Mckellen) and Lady Macbeth (Judi Dench)

10. She is unscrupulous.
No doubts beset her, except about the steadfastness of her accomplice. Single-natured, she is even willing to lose the nature she has ("unsex me here") in order to accomplish her purpose.
Macbeth (Sir Derek Jacobi) and Lady Macbeth (Cheryl Campbell)

11. Macbeth by Ian Mckellen and Judi Dench
The critic Michael Billington describes this play as “basically a two-character play rather than a company piece.”
The Trevor Nunn's legendary 1976 production is originally staged at The Other Place theatre in Stratford for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and stripped down to barest essentials, with a cast of twelve sitting on a 'magic circle' of crates around an almost empty stage.

12. When adapting the production for television, Nunn and Philip Casson recreated the theatrical claustrophobia by means of extreme close-ups, the actors performing against a background suggesting infinite darkness (there is just one aerial shot of the entire stage, at the very beginning).
Ian Mckellen as Macbeth

13. Sound effects are similarly sparse and equally effective - Macbeth's daggers clink with the uncontrollable trembling of his blood-drenched hands, and Lady Macbeth (Judi Dench) lets out an unearthly scream partway through her sleepwalking soliloquy.
Ian Mckellen and Judi Dench as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

14. Screenonline: Macbeth (1979)
Jacobi Macbeth