The Inevitable Supplementation: Setting, Plot, and Jo Nesbø’s Novel Version of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Year 2026, Issue: 5, 123 - 135, 26.01.2026

Dorian świtała

Abstract

Although the contemporary understanding of adaptation emphasizes intermediality, the term adaptation represents a far larger variety of approaches, such as rewritings of already existing texts without changing their form. This article turns to the most nuanced adaptive practice, novelizations. It discusses the different emergence points of this kind of adaptations, predominantly the Hogarth Shakespeare project, its goals, and its growing public appeal. The argumentation is based upon a detailed analysis of Jo Nesbø’s Macbeth; it discusses his various elaborations on the framework of Shakespeare’s original. Shifting either the medium, or even just the genre, requires a certain level of modification of the source text, and where some tend to shorten it, others need to fill in the blank spaces. Additionally, the article studies an adaptation of an adaptation. Shakespeare creates a play by adapting history, and later Nesbø creates a novel by adapting this play. Therefore, the article focuses on a single example of a modernized retelling of the play in the form of a novelization.

Keywords

Macbeth , novelization , adaptation , setting , change , Hogarth Shakespeare , William Shakespeare , Jo Nesbø

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