Like the ancient tragedies, Shakespeare's Macbeth depicts a fall that evokes, according to Aristotle's prescription in the Poetics, both pity and terror. Though ancient playwrights believed in different deities and ethical systems, they too depicted humans struggling with the gods, with fate and free will, crime and punishment, guilt and suffering. Sophocles (fifth century B.C.E.), for example, portrays Oedipus, solver of the Sphinx's riddle and King of Thebes, who discovers that all along he has been fulfilling, not fleeing, the curse of Apollo and its dread predictions. "Lead me away, O friends, the utterly lost (ton meg' olethrion), most accursed (ton kataratotaton), and the one among mortals most hated (exthrotaton) by the gods!" (I 341-43). ...

Macbeth is Shakespeare’s great tragedy of a fall into evil. The Norton Critical Edition text is based on the First Folio (1623), the only authoritative text of the play. It is accompanied by an introduction, detailed explanatory annotations, and textual notes.

A rich “Sources and Contexts” section provides readers with an understanding of Macbeth’s origins through the works of Seneca, Raphael Holinshed, and The Slaughter of the Holy Innocents and the Death of Herod. The cultural controversies surrounding the play—free will, predestination, witchcraft, tyrannicide, and equivocation—are debated by various authors. Adaptations of Macbeth are included for comparative reading, among them Welcome Msomi’s recent South African retelling, uMabatha.

Four hundred years of critical interpretation of Macbeth are represented in seventeen judiciously-chosen essays, among them assessments by Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sarah Siddons, A. C. Bradley, Janet Adelman, Derek Jacobi, Stephen Orgel, and Peter Holland.

A Selected Bibliography is also included.

Introduction

A Note on the Text

The Text of Macbeth

Sources and Contexts

　SOURCES

　 N-Town Cycle·[The Slaughter of the Holy Innocents and the Death of Herod]

　 Seneca·Medea

　  Hercules Furens

　  Agamemnon

　CULTURAL CONTROVERSIES

　 Debate on Free Will and Predestination

　　 Martin Luther · [An Attack on Free Will]

　　 Desiderius Erasmus·[A Defense of Free Will]

Debate on Witchcraft

　　 Reginald Scot·The Discovery of Witchcraft

　　 James I·News from Scotland

　　  Daemonology

Debate on Tyrannicide

　　 Church of England·An Homily against Disobedience and Willful Rebellion

　　 Juan de Mariana·[A Defense of Disobedience and Tyrannicide]

　 Debate on Equivocation

 Henry Garnet·A Treatise on Equivocation

 ADAPTATIONS

　　 William Davenant·Macbeth

　　 Macbeth Travesties

　　 Welcome Msomi·uMabatha

Criticism

 Simon Forman·[Eyewitness Account of Macbeth,1611]

 Samuel Johnson·Miscellaneous Observations on the

Tragedy of Macbeth

 Elizabeth Montagu·The Genius of Shakespeare

 Thomas Davies·[On David Garrick's and Hannah

Pritchard's Eighteenth-Century Performances]

 Samuel Taylor Coleridge · [On Macbeth]

 William Hazlitt · [Characters in Macbeth]

 Thomas De Quincey·On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth

 Sarah Siddons·[On Playing Lady Macbeth]

 A. C. Bradley·[The Tragedy of Macbeth]

 Kenneth Muir·Image and Symbol in Macbeth

 Harry Levin·Two Scenes from Macbeth

 Marvin Rosenberg · Culture, Character, and

 　Conscience in Shakespeare

 Janet Adelman·Escaping the Matrix: The

Construction of Masculinity in Macbeth

 A. R. Braunmuller · 'What do you mean?': The

Languages of Macbeth

 DerekJacobi·Macbeth

 Stephen Orgel·Macbeth and the Antic Round

 Peter Holland·"Stands Scotland Where It Did?": The

Location of Macbeth on Film

Selected Bibliography