I, too, thought of MacBeth when reading about the Ents' attack on Isengard and the Witch King/Eowyn battle. My English Major friends and I have had numerous conversations about it and concluded (purely on speculation--we're bad that way) that it's highly likely that both Shakespeare and Tolkien were pulling from the same older sources. (Saucepan Man, I believe, already suggested something similar.) Anybody know of any legends/myths etc older than Shakes with these same motifs?
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"Art is our way of keeping track of what we know and have known, secretly, from the beginning."--John Gardner
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