Lineages
Every great book stands on older ones. Homer gave Virgil his wanderings and his war; Virgil walked Dante through Hell. Start from a classic and follow its line, one work at a time, across the map.
Its heirs
Herman Melville, AD 1851
Macbeth was the other play Melville marked most. Ahab, like Macbeth, is driven by prophecy and his own will, and Fedallah's riddling predictions of his death, hearses and hemp, recall the witches'.
Source: Wikipedia, Moby-Dick
“This insight was then reinforced by the study of Melville's annotations in his reading copy of Shakespeare, which show that he immersed himself in Shakespeare when he was preparing for Moby-Dick, especially King Lear and Macbeth.” Read it there
Nikolai Leskov, AD 1865
Leskov's title borrows Shakespeare's murderess for a merchant's wife in provincial Russia, Katerina Izmailova, who kills for love and for her place in the house, without any of Lady Macbeth's remorse.
Source: Wikipedia, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (novella)
“Among its themes are the subordinate role expected from women in 19th-century European society, adultery, provincial life (thus drawing comparison with Flaubert's Madame Bovary) and the planning of murder by a woman, hence it having a title inspired by the Shakespearean character Lady Macbeth from his play Macbeth, and echoing the title of Turgenev's story Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District (1859).” Read it there
William Faulkner, AD 1929
Faulkner's title comes from Macbeth's despair on hearing of his wife's death: life is 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'. The first of the novel's four parts is told through Benjy Compson, who has an intellectual disability, as if taking the line at its word.
Source: Wikipedia, The Sound and the Fury
“The final title comes from a soliloquy in Macbeth, in which the title character describes life as "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".” Read it there