BabySinclair said:
While the plots are a bit formulaic, they are well written and are fairly memorable (the histories not withstanding and the better the fool the better the play.)
Shakespeare trivia for you: His fool characters became more sophisticated (Touchstone, for instance) around about 1599 because the former lead comedic actor of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, Will Kempe, left. He was replaced by Robert Armin, and Shakespeare was then writing for someone who had a completely different acting style.
Incidentally, there's some evidence that Kempe and Shakespeare didn't part on good terms, and it's thought that part of Hamlet's speech to the players was aimed at him specifically:
"And let those that play
your clowns speak no more than is set down for them;
for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to
set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
too; though, in the mean time, some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered:
that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it." --
Hamlet, Act III, scene ii
Joccaren said:
MacBeth I didn't mind as much. Wouldn't put it as great, but its not bad either. Some parts of it felt off [MacDuff supposedly not being born of woman as he was born through Caesarean Section as one point], and the language was a pain, but the acting was well done.
The Macduff Caesarean birth thing isn't really Shakespeare's fault, though--it's directly from his source, the 1587 edition of Holinshed's
Chronicles (volume V, page 277):
But Makduffe quicklie auoiding from his horsse, [before] he came at him, answered (with his naked swoord in his hand) saieng: "It is true Makbeth, and now shall thine insatiable crueltie haue an end, for I am euen he that thy wizzards haue told thee of, who was neuer borne of my mother, but ripped out of her wombe:" therewithall he stept vnto him, and slue him in the place.