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			{{Short description|Play by William Shakespeare}}
	{{About|Shakespeare's play|the historical Scottish king|Macbeth, King of Scotland|the title character of the play|Macbeth (character)|other uses}}		{{About|Shakespeare's play|the historical Scottish king|Macbeth, King of Scotland|the title character of the play|Macbeth (character)|other uses}}
			{{Redirect|The Tragedy of Macbeth|the film|The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021 film){{!}}''The Tragedy of Macbeth'' (2021 film)}}
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	] 1884 American production of ''Macbeth'', starring Thomas W. Keene. Depicted, anticlockwise from top-left, are: Macbeth and Banquo meet the ]es; just after the murder of ]; Banquo's ghost; Macbeth duels Macduff; and Macbeth.]]
			| name = The Tragedie of Macbeth
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			| set_in = ] and ] (Act IV, Scene III)
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			| wikisource = Macbeth (Shakespeare)
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			]. Depicted, counter-clockwise from top-left, are: Macbeth and Banquo meet the witches; just after the murder of ]; Banquo's ghost; Macbeth duels Macduff; and Macbeth.]]
	'''''Macbeth''''' ({{IPAc-en|m|ə|k|ˈ|b|ɛ|θ}}; full title '''''The Tragedy of Macbeth''''') is a ] by ]; it is thought to have been first performed in ].<ref>For the first performance in 1606, see Gurr (1992, 238), Thomson (1992, 64), and Wickham (1969, 231); for the date of composition, see Brooke (1990, 1) and Clark and Mason (2015, 13).</ref> It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the ], who was patron of Shakespeare's ], ''Macbeth'' most clearly reflects the playwright's relationship with his sovereign.<ref>Wickham (1969, 231).</ref> It was first published in the ], possibly from a ], and is his shortest tragedy.<ref>Clark (2015, 1)</ref>		'''''The Tragedy of Macbeth''''', often shortened to '''''Macbeth''''' ({{IPAc-en|m|ə|k|ˈ|b|ɛ|θ}}), is a ] by ]. It is thought to have been first performed in ].{{efn|For the first performance in 1607, see {{harvnb|Gurr|2009|p=293}}, {{harvnb|Thomson|1992|p=64}}, and {{harvnb|Wickham|1969|p=231}}. For the date of composition, see {{harvnb|Brooke|2008|p=1}} and {{harvnb|Clark|Mason|2015|p=13}}}} It dramatises the physically violent and damaging psychological effects of political ambitions to power. It was first published in the ], possibly from a ], and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy.{{sfn|Clark|Mason|2015|p=1}} Scholars believe ''Macbeth'', of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the ] of ], contains the most ]s to James, patron of Shakespeare's ].{{sfn|Wickham|1969|p=231}}
	A brave Scottish general named ] receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become ]. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.		In the play, a brave Scottish general named ] receives a prophecy from a ] that one day he will become ]. Consumed by ambition and spurred to violence by ], Macbeth murders the king and takes the Scottish throne for himself. Then, racked with guilt and ], he commits more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, soon becoming a ]. The bloodbath swiftly takes Macbeth and his wife towards madness and death.
	Shakespeare's source for the story is the account of ]; ]; and ] in '']'' (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth. The events of the tragedy are usually associated with the execution of ] for complicity in the ] of 1605.<ref name="Harold Bloom p. 41">Bloom (2008, 41).</ref>		Shakespeare's source for the story is the account of ], ], and ] in '']'' (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth. The events of the tragedy have been associated with the execution of ] for complicity in the ] of 1605.{{sfn|Bloom|2008|p=41}}
	In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed, and will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as "]". Over the course of many centuries, the play has attracted some of the most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. It has been adapted to film, television, ], novels, comics, and other media.		In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed and will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as "]". The play has attracted some of the most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and has been adapted to film, television, opera, novels, comics, and other media.
	==Characters==		==Characters==
	{{div col|cols=2}}		{{div col|colwidth=20em|rules=yes}}
	* ] – King of ]		* ]{{snd}}king of ]
	** ] – Duncan's elder son		* ]{{snd}}Duncan's elder son
	** ] – Duncan's younger son		* ]{{snd}}Duncan's younger son
	* ] – a general in the army of King Duncan; originally ] of ], then Thane of ], and later King of Scotland		* ]{{snd}}a general in the army of King Duncan; originally ] of ], then Thane of ], and later king of Scotland
	* ] – Macbeth's wife, and later Queen of Scotland		* ]{{snd}}Macbeth's wife, and later queen of Scotland
	* ] – Macbeth's friend and a general in the army of King Duncan		* ]{{snd}}Macbeth's friend and a general in the army of King Duncan
	** ] – Banquo's son		* ]{{snd}}Banquo's son
	* ] – Thane of ]		* ]{{snd}}Thane of ]
	** ] – Macduff's wife		* ]{{snd}}Macduff's wife
	** ]		* ]{{snd}}a young boy
	* Ross, Lennox, Angus, Menteith, Caithness – Scottish Thanes		* Ross, Lennox, Angus, Menteith, Caithness{{snd}}Scottish thanes
	* ] – general of the English forces		* ]{{snd}}general of the English forces
	** ] – Siward's son		* ]{{snd}}Siward's son
	* Seyton – Macbeth's armourer		* Seyton{{snd}}Macbeth's armourer and chief servant
	* ] – Queen of the witches		* ]{{snd}}queen of the witches
	* ]		* ]{{snd}}three mysterious women who approach Macbeth and prophesy his fate
	* Captain – in the Scottish army		* Captain{{snd}}in the Scottish army
	* Three Murderers – employed by Macbeth		* Murderers{{snd}}employed by Macbeth
			** First and Second Murderers
	**]
			** ]{{snd}}sent by Macbeth to assist the first two murderers
	* Two Murderers – attack Lady Macduff
	* Porter – gatekeeper at Macbeth's home		* Porter{{snd}}gatekeeper at Macbeth's home
	* Doctor – Lady Macbeth's doctor		* Doctor{{snd}}Lady Macbeth's doctor
	* Doctor – at the English court		* Doctor{{snd}}at the English court
	* Gentlewoman – Lady Macbeth's caretaker		* Gentlewoman{{snd}}Lady Macbeth's caretaker
	* Lord – opposed to Macbeth		* Lord{{snd}}opposed to Macbeth
	* First Apparition – armed head		* First Apparition{{snd}}armed head
	* Second Apparition – bloody child		* Second Apparition{{snd}}bloody child
	* Third Apparition – crowned child		* Third Apparition{{snd}}crowned child
	* Attendants, Messengers, Servants, Soldiers		* Attendants, Messengers, Servants, Soldiers
	{{div col end}}		{{div col end}}
	==Plot==		==Plot==
	]
	===Act I===		===Act I===
			]
	The play opens amidst thunder and lightning, and the Three Witches decide that their next meeting shall be with Macbeth. In the following scene, a wounded sergeant reports to King Duncan of Scotland that his generals{{mdash}}Macbeth, who is the Thane of Glamis, and Banquo{{mdash}}have just defeated the allied forces of Norway and Ireland, who were led by the traitorous Macdonwald, the Thane of ]. Macbeth, the King's kinsman, is praised for his bravery and fighting prowess.		Amid thunder and lightning, three witches decide that their next meeting will be with Macbeth, the ] (Lord) of ]. In the following scene, soldiers report to King Duncan of Scotland that his generals Banquo and Macbeth have just defeated a rebellion allied with forces from Norway and Ireland and led by the traitorous Thane of ]. Duncan praises his kinsmen for their bravery and fighting prowess.
	In the following scene, Macbeth and Banquo discuss the weather and their victory. As they wander onto a heath, the Three Witches enter and greet them with prophecies. Though Banquo challenges them first, they address Macbeth, hailing him as "Thane of Glamis," "Thane of Cawdor," and that he shall "be King hereafter." Macbeth appears to be stunned to silence. When Banquo asks of his own fortunes, the witches respond paradoxically, saying that he will be less than Macbeth, yet happier, less successful, yet more. He will father a line of kings though he himself will not be one. While the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the witches vanish, and another thane, ], arrives and informs Macbeth of his newly bestowed title: Thane of Cawdor. The first prophecy is thus fulfilled, and Macbeth, previously skeptical, immediately begins to harbour ambitions of becoming king.		As Macbeth and Banquo wander on a ], the three witches appear and hail Macbeth as "Thane of Glamis" and "Thane of Cawdor", next saying he shall "be king hereafter". When Banquo asks of his own fortunes, the witches respond that Banquo will father a line of kings, though he himself will not be one. The witches vanish, and the Thane of Ross arrives, informing Macbeth of his newly bestowed title from the king: Thane of Cawdor. The witches' first prophecy is thus fulfilled, and Macbeth, previously sceptical, immediately begins to harbour nervous ambitions of becoming king. King Duncan himself soon welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, declaring that he will spend the night at Macbeth's castle in ]; Duncan also names his son Malcolm as his heir. Macbeth sends a letter ahead to his wife, telling her about the witches' pronouncements. Lady Macbeth is resolute that she and her husband should murder Duncan in order for Macbeth to obtain the crown. When Macbeth arrives in Inverness, she persuades him to kill the king that very night. They plan to get Duncan's two chamber attendants drunk so that they will black out; thus, the next morning they can frame the attendants for the murder.
	King Duncan welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, and declares that he will spend the night at Macbeth's castle at ]; he also names his son Malcolm as his heir. Macbeth sends a message ahead to his wife, Lady Macbeth, telling her about the witches' prophecies. Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husband's uncertainty and wishes him to murder Duncan in order to obtain kingship. When Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she overrides all of her husband's objections by challenging his manhood and successfully persuades him to kill the king that very night. He and Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncan's two chamberlains drunk so that they will black out; the next morning they will blame the chamberlains for the murder. They will be defenseless as they will remember nothing.
	===Act II===		===Act II===
			That night, despite his doubts and a number of supernatural portents, including a hallucination of a blood-smeared dagger,{{Efn|This scene is open to various interpretations from readers and has been interpreted differently in adaptations.}} Macbeth goes offstage and stabs the sleeping Duncan to death. Returning, he is so shaken that Lady Macbeth finds him accidentally still holding the bloody daggers, which she scolds him for, reminding him they must be left on Duncan's sleeping servants. She takes the knives and places them back in Duncan's chamber. When the Macbeths hear knocking at the castle gate, they hurry to bed.
	While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and a number of supernatural portents, including a hallucination of a bloody dagger. He is so shaken that Lady Macbeth has to take charge. In accordance with her plan, she frames Duncan's sleeping servants for the murder by placing bloody daggers on them. Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish nobleman, and Macduff, the loyal Thane of ], arrive. A porter opens the gate and Macbeth leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff discovers Duncan's body. Macbeth murders the guards to prevent them from professing their innocence, but claims he did so in a fit of anger over their misdeeds. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland, respectively, fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires their demise as well. The rightful heirs' flight makes them suspects and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new ] as a kinsman of the dead king. Banquo reveals this to the audience, and while sceptical of the new King Macbeth, he remembers the witches' prophecy about how his own descendants would inherit the throne; this makes him suspicious of Macbeth.		A drunken porter opens the gate, admitting a nobleman named Lennox and Macduff, the Thane of Fife. Macbeth then greets them and leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff is shocked to discover Duncan's body. Macbeth and Lennox rush into the chamber, where Macbeth (offstage) impulsively kills the attendants to prevent them from professing their innocence, but he soon after announces that he did so in a fit of anger as revenge for them murdering Duncan. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland, respectively, fearing that they will be killed next. Their flight makes them the main suspects in the king's death, and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland offstage, being Duncan's next of kin. Banquo remembers the witches' prophecy about how his own descendants would inherit the throne; this makes him suspicious that Macbeth might be Duncan's true killer.
	] (1819–1856), ''Macbeth seeing the Ghost of Banquo,'' 1854]]
	===Act III===		===Act III===
			Despite his success, Macbeth, also aware of the prophecy relating to Banquo, remains uneasy. Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal ] and discovers that Banquo and his young son Fleance will be riding out that night. Macbeth arranges to have Banquo and Fleance murdered, by hiring two men and later adding a ] to the plan. During the ambush, the murderers succeed in killing Banquo, but Fleance escapes. Macbeth is furious that an heir of Banquo remains alive.
			At the banquet, Macbeth has invited his lords and Lady Macbeth to a night of drinking and merriment, though Macduff has refused to come. Banquo's ] enters and sits in Macbeth's place. Macbeth raves fearfully, startling his guests, as the ghost is visible only to him. The others panic at the sight of Macbeth raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady Macbeth lies that her husband is merely afflicted with a harmless lifelong illness. The ghost departs and returns once more, causing the same riotous anger and fear in Macbeth. This time, Lady Macbeth demands that the visitors to leave. Elsewhere, ], queen of witchcraft, scolds the three witches for helping Macbeth, especially without consulting her. Hecate instructs the witches to next give Macbeth a false sense of security and overconfidence.{{Efn|Some scholars believe that the Hecate scene was not part of the original Macbeth script.}} Through ], Lennox reveals to another lord his suspicions that Macbeth is a murdering tyrant and they discuss how Macduff, refusing to attend Macbeth's banquet, has gone to England to find allies who will help overthrow Macbeth.
	Despite his success, Macbeth, also aware of this part of the prophecy, remains uneasy. Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal ], where he discovers that Banquo and his young son, Fleance, will be riding out that night. Fearing Banquo's suspicions, Macbeth arranges to have him murdered, by hiring two men to kill them, later sending a ]. The assassins succeed in killing Banquo, but Fleance escapes. Macbeth becomes furious: he fears that his power remains insecure as long as an heir of Banquo remains alive.
	At a banquet, Macbeth invites his lords and Lady Macbeth to a night of drinking and merriment. Banquo's ] enters and sits in Macbeth's place. Macbeth raves fearfully, startling his guests, as the ghost is only visible to himself. The others panic at the sight of Macbeth raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady Macbeth tells them that her husband is merely afflicted with a familiar and harmless malady. The ghost departs and returns once more, causing the same riotous anger and fear in Macbeth. This time, Lady Macbeth tells the lords to leave, and they do so.
			===Act IV===
	]]]		]]]
			Macbeth visits the three witches and asks them to reveal the truth of their prophecies to him. They summon horrible apparitions, each of which offers predictions and further prophecies to put Macbeth's fears at rest. First, they conjure an armoured head, which tells him to beware of Macduff (IV.i.72). Second, a bloody child tells him that no one born of a woman will be able to harm him. Thirdly, a crowned child holding a tree states that Macbeth will be safe until ] comes to ]. Macbeth is relieved and feels secure because he knows that all men are born of women and forests cannot possibly move. However, the witches also conjure a procession of eight crowned kings, the last carrying a mirror that reflects even more kings, and finally the ghost of Banquo pointing to the procession. Macbeth realises that these are all Banquo's descendants who will acquire kingships in numerous countries.
	===Act IV===
			Macbeth orders the disobedient Macduff's castle seized and sends assassins who slaughter all its inhabitants, including ] and ]. Macduff, meanwhile, is meeting with Prince Malcolm in England to discuss Macbeth's tyrannical regime. Malcolm, who must be cautious for any traps, confesses that he would be a terrible leader if the crown were restored to him, but this is merely a lie to see how Macduff will react. Macduff shows that he is more loyal to Scotland than any particular leader, impressing Malcolm, who now reveals the lie and says Macduff has won his trust. The Thane of Ross arrives to deliver the horrible news to Macduff that his "castle is surprised, your wife and babes / Savagely slaughter'd" (IV.iii.204–205). With this news of his family's murders, Macduff is stricken with grief, but he is quickly provoked to vengeance by Malcolm who explains that he, with the help of the ], has raised an army. Together, they can take back the Scottish throne.
	Macbeth, disturbed, visits the three witches once more and asks them to reveal the truth of their prophecies to him. To answer his questions, they summon horrible apparitions, each of which offers predictions and further prophecies to put Macbeth's fears at rest. First, they conjure an armoured head, which tells him to beware of Macduff (IV.i.72). Second, a bloody child tells him that no one born of a woman shall be able to harm him. Thirdly, a crowned child holding a tree states that Macbeth will be safe until ] comes to ]. Macbeth is relieved and feels secure because he knows that all men are born of women and forests cannot move. Macbeth also asks if Banquo's sons will ever reign in Scotland: the witches conjure a procession of eight crowned kings, all similar in appearance to Banquo, and the last carrying a mirror that reflects even more kings. Macbeth realises that these are all Banquo's descendants having acquired kingship in numerous countries. After the witches perform a mad dance and leave, Lennox enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England. Macbeth orders Macduff's castle be seized, and, most cruelly, sends murderers to slaughter Macduff, as well as Macduff's wife and children. Although Macduff is no longer in the castle, everyone in Macduff's castle is put to death, including ] and ].
			===Act V===
	]]]		]]]
			At night, in the royal palace at Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady Macbeth's sudden frightening habit of sleepwalking. Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a candle in her hand, bemoaning the recent murders and trying to wash off imaginary bloodstains from her hands. Her observers marvel at her guilt-ridden confessions. Meanwhile, Prince Malcolm's allied forces plan to join up at Birnam Wood, additionally supported by Macduff and defecting Scottish thanes alarmed by Macbeth's barbarities. While encamped in Birnam Wood, Malcolm orders his soldiers to cut down and carry tree boughs to camouflage their numbers.
	===Act V===
			As Macbeth readies for the attack, he receives news that his wife has suddenly died, causing him to deliver a despairing and now-famous "]" ] (V.v.17–28). Still, he is emboldened by the witches' seeming guarantee of his invincibility against any "man of woman born", until a servant reports that Malcolm's army is advancing on Dunsinane in the form of moving trees. As the invaders take his castle, Macbeth is confronted by Macduff, whom he taunts for not being born of a woman. Macduff reveals that he was born by ] and thus did not have a natural childbirth. In the ensuing duel with Macduff, Macbeth is killed offstage. Macduff reappears with Macbeth's severed head, and Malcolm discusses how order has been restored. He implies that Lady Macbeth's death was a suicide, declares his benevolent intentions for the country, promotes his thanes to ]s, and invites all to see him crowned at ].
	Meanwhile, Lady Macbeth becomes wracked with guilt from the crimes she and her husband have committed. At night, in the king's palace at Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady Macbeth's strange habit of sleepwalking. Suddenly, Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a candle in her hand. Bemoaning the murders of Duncan, Lady Macduff, and Banquo, she tries to wash off imaginary bloodstains from her hands, all the while speaking of the terrible things she knows she pressed her husband to do. She leaves, and the doctor and gentlewoman marvel at her descent into madness. Her belief that nothing can wash away the blood on her hands is an ironic reversal of her earlier claim to Macbeth that " little water clears us of this deed" (II.ii.66).
			== Sources for the play ==
	In England, Macduff is informed by Ross that his "castle is surprised; wife and babes / Savagely slaughter'd" (IV.iii.204&ndash;5). When this news of his family's execution reaches him, Macduff is stricken with grief and vows revenge. Prince Malcolm, Duncan's son, has succeeded in raising an army in England, and Macduff joins him as he rides to Scotland to challenge Macbeth's forces. The invasion has the support of the Scottish nobles, who are appalled and frightened by Macbeth's tyrannical and murderous behaviour. Malcolm leads an army, along with Macduff and Englishmen ] (the Elder), the ], against Dunsinane Castle. While encamped in Birnam Wood, the soldiers are ordered to cut down and carry tree limbs to camouflage their numbers.
			]'']]
			]'s ''Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande'', printed in 1577]]
			]'' (1577){{sfn|Orgel|2002|p=33}}]]
			A principal source comes from the '']'' of King James published in 1597 which included a news pamphlet titled '']'' that detailed the famous ] of 1590.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The annotated Daemonologie : a critical edition|last=King of England|first=James I|date=2016|publisher=CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform|others=Warren, Brett. R|isbn=978-1-5329-6891-4|location=|pages=|oclc=1008940058}}</ref> The publication of ''Daemonologie'' came just a few years before the tragedy of ''Macbeth'' with the themes and setting in a direct and comparative contrast with King James' personal obsessions with witchcraft, which developed following his conclusion that the stormy weather that threatened his passage from Denmark to Scotland was a targeted attack. Not only did the subsequent trials take place in Scotland, the women accused were recorded, under torture, of having conducted rituals with the same mannerisms as the three witches. One of the evidenced passages is referenced when the women under trial confessed to attempt the use of witchcraft to raise a tempest and sabotage the boat King James and his queen were on board during their return trip from ]. The three witches discuss the raising of winds at sea in the opening lines of Act 1 Scene 3.{{sfn|Warren|2016|p=107}}
	Before Macbeth's opponents arrive, he receives news that Lady Macbeth has killed herself, causing him to sink into a deep and pessimistic despair and deliver his "]" ] (V.v.17–28). Though he reflects on the brevity and meaninglessness of life, he nevertheless awaits the English and fortifies Dunsinane. He is certain that the witches' prophecies guarantee his invincibility, but is struck with fear when he learns that the English army is advancing on Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam Wood, in apparent fulfillment of one of the prophecies.
			''Macbeth'' has been compared to Shakespeare's ''].'' As characters, both Antony and Macbeth seek a new world, even at the cost of the old one. Both fight for a throne and have a 'nemesis' to face to achieve that throne. For Antony, the nemesis is Octavius; for Macbeth, it is Banquo. At one point Macbeth even compares himself to Antony, saying "under Banquo / My Genius is rebuk'd, as it is said / Mark Antony's was by Caesar." Lastly, both plays contain powerful and manipulative female figures: Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth.{{sfn|Coursen|1997|pp=11–13}}
	A battle culminates in Macduff's confrontation with Macbeth, who kills Young Siward in combat. The English forces overwhelm his army and castle. Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, for he cannot be killed by any man born of woman. Macduff declares that he was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd" (V.8.15–16), (''i.e.,'' born by ]) and is not "of woman born" (an example of a ]), fulfilling the second prophecy. Macbeth realises too late that he has misinterpreted the witches' words. Though he realises that he is doomed, he continues to fight. Macduff kills and beheads him, thus fulfilling the remaining prophecy.
			Shakespeare borrowed the story from several tales in '']'', a popular history of the British Isles well known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In ''Chronicles'', a man named Donwald finds several of his family put to death by his king, ], for dealing with witches. After being pressured by his wife, he and four of his servants kill the king in his own house. In ''Chronicles'', Macbeth is portrayed as struggling to support the kingdom in the face of King Duncan's ineptitude. He and Banquo meet the three witches, who make exactly the same prophecies as in Shakespeare's version. Macbeth and Banquo then together plot the murder of Duncan, at Lady Macbeth's urging. Macbeth has a long, ten-year reign before eventually being overthrown by Macduff and Malcolm. The parallels between the two versions are clear. However, some scholars think that ]'s ''Rerum Scoticarum Historia'' matches Shakespeare's version more closely. Buchanan's work was available in Latin in Shakespeare's day.{{sfn|Coursen|1997|pp=15–21}}
	Macduff carries Macbeth's head onstage and Malcolm discusses how order has been restored. His last reference to Lady Macbeth, however, reveals "'tis thought, by self and violent hands / Took off her life" (V.ix.71–72), but the method of her suicide is undisclosed. Malcolm, now the King of Scotland, declares his benevolent intentions for the country and invites all to see him crowned at ].
			No medieval account of the reign of Macbeth mentions the Weird Sisters, Banquo, or Lady Macbeth, and with the exception of the latter none actually existed.{{sfn|Thrasher|2002|p=37}} The characters of Banquo, the Weird Sisters, and Lady Macbeth were first mentioned in 1527 by a Scottish historian ] in his book '']'' (''History of the Scottish People'') who wanted to denigrate Macbeth in order to strengthen the claim of the House of Stewart to the Scottish throne.{{sfn|Thrasher|2002|p=37}} Boece portrayed Banquo as an ancestor of the Stewart kings of Scotland, adding in a "prophecy" that the descendants of Banquo would be the rightful kings of Scotland while the Weird Sisters served to give a picture of King Macbeth as gaining the throne via dark supernatural forces.{{sfn|Thrasher|2002|p=37}} Macbeth did have a wife, but it is not clear if she was as power-hungry and ambitious as Boece portrayed her, which served his purpose of having even Macbeth realise he lacked a proper claim to the throne, and only took it at the urging of his wife.{{sfn|Thrasher|2002|p=37}} Holinshed accepted Boece's version of Macbeth's reign at face value and included it in his ''Chronicles''.{{sfn|Thrasher|2002|p=37}} Shakespeare saw the dramatic possibilities in the story as related by Holinshed, and used it as the basis for the play.{{sfn|Thrasher|2002|p=37}}
	Although Malcolm, and not Fleance, is placed on the throne, the witches' prophecy concerning Banquo ("Thou shalt get kings") was known to the audience of Shakespeare's time to be true: James VI of Scotland (later also ]) was supposedly a descendant of Banquo.<ref>Muir, Kenneth, ed. (1984) ''Macbeth''. The Arden Shakespeare, Second Series, 11th ed., p. xxxvi.</ref>
			No other version of the story has Macbeth kill the king in Macbeth's own castle. Scholars have seen this change of Shakespeare's as adding to the darkness of Macbeth's crime as the worst violation of hospitality. Versions of the story that were common at the time had Duncan being killed in an ambush at ], not in a castle. Shakespeare conflated the story of Donwald and King Duff in what was a significant change to the story.{{sfn|Coursen|1997|p=17}}
	==Sources==
	]]]
	]'s ''Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande'', printed in 1577.]]
	]'' (1577)<ref>Orgel (2002, 33)</ref>]]
	A principal source comes from the '']'' of ] published in 1597 which included a news pamphlet titled '']'' that detailed the infamous ] of 1590. The publication of ''Daemonologie'' came just a few years before the tragedy of ''Macbeth'' with the themes and setting in a direct and comparative contrast with King James' personal experiences with witchcraft. Not only had this trial taken place in Scotland, the witches involved were recorded to have also conducted rituals with the same mannerisms as the three witches. One of the evidenced passages is referenced when the witches involved in the trial confessed to attempt the use of witchcraft to raise a tempest and sabotage the very boat King James and his queen were on board during their return trip from ]. This was significant as one ship sailing with King James' fleet actually sank in the storm. The following quote from ''Macbeth'' is one such reference:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Warren |first1=Brett |title=The Annotated Daemonology of King James. A Critical Edition. In Modern English. 2016 |isbn=1-5329-6891-4 |page=107 |quote=Moreover she confessed that at the time when his Majesty was in Denmark, she being accompanied with the parties before specially named, took a Cat and christened it, and afterward bound to each part of that Cat, the cheefest parts of a dead man, and several joints of his body, and that in the night following the said Cat was conveyed into the midst of the sea by all these witches sailing in their riddles or Cues as aforesaid, and so left the said Cat right before the Town of Leith in Scotland: this done, there did arise such a tempest in the Sea, as a greater has not been seen: which tempest was the cause of the perishing of a Boat or vessel coming over from the town of Brunt Island to the town of Leith, of which was many Jewels and rich gifts, which should have been presented to the current Queen of Scotland, at her Majesty’s coming to Leith. Again it is confessed, that the said christened Cat was the cause that the King Majesty’s Ship at his coming forth of Denmark, had a contrary wind to the rest of his Ships, then being in his company, which thing was most strange and true, as the King’s Majesty acknowledges - Daemonologie, Newes from Scotland... If this sounds familiar, Shakespeare took inspiration from this very passage and applied the same methods of witchcraft to his play Macbeth just a few years after the publication of Dæmonologie. All of the inhabitants of England and Scotland would have been familiar with this case and as the play of Macbeth is also set in Scotland, many quotes from King James' dissertation are taken as inspiration. The three witches of the play thus cast their spells in the same manor.}}</ref>
			Shakespeare made another important change. In ''Chronicles'', Banquo is an accomplice in Macbeth's murder of King Duncan, and plays an important part in ensuring that Macbeth, not Malcolm, takes the throne in the coup that follows.{{sfn|Nagarajan|1956}} In Shakespeare's day, Banquo was thought to be an ancestor of the ] King James I.{{sfn|Palmer|1886}} (In the 19th century it was established that Banquo is an unhistorical character; the Stuarts are actually descended from a Breton family which migrated to Scotland slightly later than Macbeth's time.) The Banquo portrayed in earlier sources is significantly different from the Banquo created by Shakespeare. Critics have proposed several reasons for this change. First, to portray the king's ancestor as a murderer would have been risky. Other authors of the time who wrote about Banquo, such as ] in his ''Stuartide'', also changed history by portraying Banquo as a noble man, not a murderer, probably for the same reasons.{{sfn|Maskell|1971}} Second, Shakespeare may have altered Banquo's character simply because there was no dramatic need for another accomplice to the murder; there was, however, a need to give a dramatic contrast to Macbeth—a role which many scholars argue is filled by Banquo.{{sfn|Nagarajan|1956}}
	<blockquote>''purposely to be cassin into the sea to raise winds for destruction of ships.''- Macbeth, I. iii. 15-25.</blockquote>
			Other scholars maintain that a strong argument can be made for associating the tragedy with the ] of 1605.{{sfn|Doran|2024|p=375}} As presented by Harold Bloom in 2008: "cholars cite the existence of several topical references in ''Macbeth'' to the events of that year, namely the execution of the Father Henry Garnet for his alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, as referenced in the porter's scene."{{sfn|Bloom|2008|p=41}} Those arrested for their role in the Gunpowder Plot refused to give direct answers to the questions posed to them by their interrogators, which reflected the influence of the Jesuit practice of ].{{sfn|Thrasher|2002|p=42}} Shakespeare, by having Macbeth say that demons "palter...in a double sense" and "keep the promise to our ear/And break it to our hope", confirmed James's belief that equivocation was a "wicked" practice, which reflected in turn the "wickedness" of the Catholic Church.{{sfn|Thrasher|2002|p=42}} Garnet had in his possession ''A Treatise on Equivocation'', and in the play the Weird Sisters often engage in equivocation, for instance telling Macbeth that he could never be overthrown until "Great Birnan wood to high Dunsinane hill/Shall Come".{{sfn|Thrasher|2002|pp=38–39}} Macbeth interprets the prophecy as meaning never, but in fact, the Three Sisters refer only to branches of the trees of Great Birnam coming to Dunsinane hill.{{sfn|Thrasher|2002|p=38}} The inspiration for this prophecy may have originated with the ]; both that battle and ''Macbeth'' may have, in turn, inspired ]'s tree herders, the ]s in his novels '']''.
	''Macbeth'' has been compared to Shakespeare's ''].'' Both Antony and Macbeth as characters seek a new world, even at the cost of the old one. Both are fighting for a throne and have a 'nemesis' to face to achieve that throne. For Antony, the nemesis is Octavius; for Macbeth, it is Banquo. At one point Macbeth even compares himself to Antony, saying "under Banquo / My Genius is rebuk'd, as it is said / Mark Antony's was by Caesar." Lastly, both plays contain powerful and manipulative female figures: Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth.<ref>Coursen (1997, 11–13)</ref>
			==Date and text==
	Shakespeare borrowed the story from several tales in '']'', a popular history of the British Isles well known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In ''Chronicles'', a man named Donwald finds several of his family put to death by his king, King Duff, for dealing with witches. After being pressured by his wife, he and four of his servants kill the King in his own house. In ''Chronicles'', Macbeth is portrayed as struggling to support the kingdom in the face of King Duncan's ineptitude. He and Banquo meet the three witches, who make exactly the same prophecies as in Shakespeare's version. Macbeth and Banquo then together plot the murder of Duncan, at Lady Macbeth's urging. Macbeth has a long, ten-year reign before eventually being overthrown by Macduff and Malcolm. The parallels between the two versions are clear. However, some scholars think that ]'s ''Rerum Scoticarum Historia'' matches Shakespeare's version more closely. Buchanan's work was available in Latin in Shakespeare's day.<ref>Coursen (1997, 15–21)</ref>
			]
			''Macbeth'' cannot be dated precisely, but it is usually taken to be contemporaneous to the other canonical tragedies: '']'', '']'', and '']''.{{sfn|Wells|Taylor|2005|pp=909, 1153}} While some scholars have placed the original writing of the play as early as 1599,{{sfn|Bloom|2008|p=41}} most believe that the play is unlikely to have been composed earlier than 1603 as the play is widely seen to celebrate King James' ancestors and the Stuart accession to the throne in 1603 (James believed himself to be descended from ]),{{sfn|Braunmuller|1997|pp=2–3}} suggesting that the parade of eight kings—which the witches show Macbeth in a vision in Act IV—is a compliment to King James. Many scholars think the play was written in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, citing possible internal allusions to the 1605 plot and its ensuing trials.{{sfn|Brooke|2008|pp=59–64}} In fact, there are a great number of allusions and possible pieces of evidence alluding to the Plot, and, for this reason, a great many critics agree that ''Macbeth'' was written in the year 1606.{{sfn|Wills|1996|p=7}}{{sfn|Muir|1985|p=48}}{{sfn|Taylor|Jowett|1993|p=85}} Lady Macbeth's instructions to her husband, "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't" (1.5.74–75), may be an allusion to a medal that was struck in 1605 to commemorate King James' escape that depicted a serpent hiding among lilies and roses.{{sfn|Paul|1950|p=227}}
	No other version of the story has Macbeth kill the king in Macbeth's own castle. Scholars have seen this change of Shakespeare's as adding to the darkness of Macbeth's crime as the worst violation of hospitality. Versions of the story that were common at the time had Duncan being killed in an ambush at ], not in a castle. Shakespeare conflated the story of Donwald and King Duff in what was a significant change to the story.<ref>Coursen (1997, 17)</ref>
			Particularly, the Porter's speech (2.3.1–21) in which he welcomes an "equivocator", a farmer, and a tailor to hell (2.3.8–13), has been argued to be an allusion to the 28 March 1606 trial and execution on 3 May 1606 of the Jesuit ], who used the alias "Farmer", with "equivocator" referring to Garnet's defence of ].{{sfn|Kermode|1974|p=1308}}{{sfn|Braunmuller|1997|pp=5–8}}{{efn|For details on Garnet, see Perez Zagorin's article, "The Historical Significance of Lying and Dissimulation" (1996), in '']''.{{sfn|Zagorin|1996}}}} The porter says that the equivocator "committed treason enough for God's sake" (2.3.9–10), which specifically connects equivocation and treason and ties it to the Jesuit belief that equivocation was only lawful when used "for God's sake", strengthening the allusion to Garnet. The porter goes on to say that the equivocator "yet could not equivocate to heaven" (2.3.10–11), echoing grim jokes that were current on the eve of Garnet's execution: i.e. that Garnet would be "hanged without equivocation" and at his execution he was asked "not to equivocate with his last breath".{{sfn|Rogers|1965|pp=44–45}} The "English tailor" the porter admits to hell (2.3.13), has been seen as an allusion to Hugh Griffin, a tailor who was questioned by the ] on 27 November and 3 December 1607 for the part he played in Garnet's "miraculous straw", an infamous head of straw that was stained with Garnet's blood that had congealed into a form resembling Garnet's portrait, which was hailed by Catholics as a miracle. The tailor Griffin became notorious and the subject of verses published with his portrait on the title page.{{sfn|Rogers|1965|pp=45–47}}
	Shakespeare made another important change. In ''Chronicles'', Banquo is an accomplice in Macbeth's murder of King Duncan, and plays an important part in ensuring that Macbeth, not Malcolm, takes the throne in the coup that follows.<ref name = note/> In Shakespeare's day, Banquo was thought to be an ancestor of the ] King James I.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Palmer |first=J. Foster |title=The Celt in Power: Tudor and Cromwell |journal=Transactions of the Royal Historical Society |year=1886 |volume=3 |pages=343–370 |doi=10.2307/3677851}}</ref> (In the 19th century it was established that Banquo is an unhistorical character, the Stuarts are actually descended from a Breton family which migrated to Scotland slightly later than Macbeth's time.) The Banquo portrayed in earlier sources is significantly different from the Banquo created by Shakespeare. Critics have proposed several reasons for this change. First, to portray the king's ancestor as a murderer would have been risky. Other authors of the time who wrote about Banquo, such as ] in his ''Stuartide'', also changed history by portraying Banquo as a noble man, not a murderer, probably for the same reasons.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Maskell |first=D. W. |title=The Transformation of History into Epic: The 'Stuartide' (1611) of Jean de Schelandre |journal=The Modern Language Review |year=1971 |volume=66 |issue=1 |pages=53–65 |jstor=3722467 }}</ref> Second, Shakespeare may have altered Banquo's character simply because there was no dramatic need for another accomplice to the murder; there was, however, a need to give a dramatic contrast to Macbeth—a role which many scholars argue is filled by Banquo.<ref name = note>{{cite journal |last=Nagarajan |first=S. |title=A Note on Banquo |journal=Shakespeare Quarterly |year=1956 |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=371–376 |jstor=2866356 | doi = 10.2307/2866356 }}</ref>
			When James ], a feeling of uncertainty settled over the nation. James was a Scottish king and the son of ], a staunch Catholic and English traitor. In the words of critic ], "''Macbeth'' was a play for a post-Elizabethan England facing up to what it might mean to have a Scottish king. England seems comparatively benign, while its northern neighbour is mired in a bloody, monarch-killing past. ... ''Macbeth'' may have been set in medieval Scotland, but it was filled with material of interest to England and England's ruler."{{sfn|Crawford|2010}} Critics argue that the content of the play is clearly a message to James, the new Scottish King of England. Likewise, the critic Andrew Hadfield noted the contrast the play draws between the saintly King Edward the Confessor of England who has the power of the royal touch to cure scrofula and whose realm is portrayed as peaceful and prosperous versus the bloody chaos of Scotland.{{sfn|Hadfield|2004|pp=84–85}} James in his 1598 book ''The Trew Law of Free Monarchies'' had asserted that kings are always right, if not just, and his subjects owe him total loyalty at all times, writing that even if a king is a tyrant, his subjects must never rebel and just endure his tyranny for their own good.{{sfn|Hadfield|2004|p=84}} James had argued that the tyranny was preferable to the problems caused by rebellion which were even worse; Shakespeare by contrast in ''Macbeth'' argued for the right of the subjects to overthrow a tyrant king, in what appeared to be an implied criticism of James's theories if applied to England.{{sfn|Hadfield|2004|p=84}} Hadfield also noted a curious aspect of the play in that it implies that primogeniture is the norm in Scotland, but Duncan has to nominate his son Malcolm to be his successor while Macbeth is accepted without protest by the Scottish lords (thanes) as their king despite being an usurper.{{sfn|Hadfield|2004|p=85}} Hadfield argued this aspect of the play with the thanes apparently choosing their king was a reference to the Stuart claim to the English throne, and the attempts of the English Parliament to block the succession of James's Catholic mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, from succeeding to the English throne.{{sfn|Hadfield|2004|p=86}} Hadfield argued that Shakespeare implied that James was indeed the rightful king of England, but owed his throne not to divine favour as James would have it, but rather due to the willingness of the English Parliament to accept the Protestant son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, as their king.{{sfn|Hadfield|2004|p=86}}
	Other scholars maintain that a strong argument can be made for associating the tragedy with the ] of 1605.<ref name="Harold Bloom p. 41"/> As presented by Harold Bloom in 2008: "cholars cite the existence of several topical references in ''Macbeth'' to the events of that year, namely the execution of the Rev. Henry Garnett for his alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, as referenced in the porter's scene."<ref name="Harold Bloom p. 41"/>
			Garry Wills provides further evidence that ''Macbeth'' is a Gunpowder Play (a type of play that emerged immediately following the events of the Gunpowder Plot). He points out that every Gunpowder Play contains "a necromancy scene, regicide attempted or completed, references to equivocation, scenes that test loyalty by use of deceptive language, and a character who sees through plots—along with a vocabulary similar to the Plot in its immediate aftermath (words like ''train, blow, vault'') and an ironic recoil of the Plot upon the Plotters (who fall into the pit they dug)."{{sfn|Wills|1996|p=7}}
	==Date and text==
	''Macbeth'' cannot be dated precisely but it is usually dated as contemporaneous to the other canonical tragedies (''King Lear'', ''Hamlet'', and ''Othello'').<ref>{{Harvnb|Wells|Taylor|Jowett|Montgomery|2005|loc=909, 1153}}</ref> Some scholars have placed the original writing of the play as early as 1599.<ref name="Harold Bloom p. 41"/> As the play is widely seen to celebrate King James' ancestors and the ] accession to the throne in 1603 (James believed himself to be descended from ]),<ref>{{cite book |last=Braunmuller |title=Macbeth |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1997 |pages=2–3 |url=http://www.cambridge.org/servlet/file/store6/item2395545/version1/item_9780521294553_excerpt.pdf |isbn=0-521-29455-X }}</ref> most scholars believe that the play is unlikely to have been composed earlier than 1603 and suggest that the parade of eight kings—which the witches show Macbeth in a vision in Act IV—is a compliment to King James. Many scholars think the play was written in 1606 in the aftermath of the ] because of possible internal allusions to the 1605 plot and its ensuing trials.<ref>Brooke (2008, 59–64)</ref> In fact, there are a great deal of allusions and possible pieces of evidence alluding to the Plot, and, for this reason, a great number of critics agree that "Macbeth" was written in the year 1606.<ref name="Wills, Garry 1995">Wills, Garry. Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's Macbeth. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Print.</ref><ref>Crawford, Robert. "Review: NON-FICTION: Signifying Nothing: The Whole Truth about Macbeth is Not enough for Robert Crawford: Macbeth, A True Story by Fiona Watson 320pp, Quercus, Pounds 20." The Guardian: 8. Mar 13, 2010. ProQuest.Web. 16 Mar. 2015.</ref><ref>Muir, Kenneth. Shakespeare. 1st ed. ed. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1985. Web.</ref><ref>Taylor, Gary and Jowett, John. Shakespeare Reshaped, 1606-1623. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. 85. Print.</ref> Lady Macbeth's instructions to her husband, "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't" (1.5.74&ndash;5), may be an allusion to a medal that was struck in 1605 to commemorate King James' escape that depicted a serpent hiding among lilies and roses .<ref>{{cite book |first=Henry Neill |last=Paul |title= The Royal Play of Macbeth: When, Why, and How It Was Written by Shakespeare |year=1950 |location=New York |publisher= Macmillan |page=227}}</ref>
			The play utilizes a few key words that the audience at the time would recognize as allusions to the Plot. In one sermon in 1605, ] stated, regarding the failure of the Plotters on God's day, "Be they fair or foul, glad or sad (as the poet calleth Him) the great Diespiter, 'the Father of days' hath made them both."{{sfn|Harris|2007|pp=473–474}} Shakespeare begins the play by using the words "fair" and "foul" in the first speeches of the witches and Macbeth. In the words of Jonathan Gil Harris, the play expresses the "horror unleashed by a supposedly loyal subject who seeks to kill a king and the treasonous role of equivocation. The play even echoes certain keywords from the scandal—the 'vault' beneath the House of Parliament in which Guy Fawkes stored thirty kegs of gunpowder and the 'blow' about which one of the conspirators had secretly warned a relative who planned to attend the House of Parliament on 5 November...Even though the Plot is never alluded to directly, its presence is everywhere in the play, like a pervasive odor."{{sfn|Harris|2007|pp=473–474}}
	Particularly, the Porter's speech (2.3.1–21) in which he welcomes an "equivocator", a farmer, and a tailor to hell (2.3.8&ndash;13), has been argued to be an allusion to the 28 March 1606 trial and execution on 3 May 1606 of the Jesuit ], who used the alias "Farmer", with "equivocator" referring to Garnet's defence of ].<ref>{{cite book |first=Frank |last=Kermode |chapter=Macbeth |title=The Riverside Shakespeare |location=Boston |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |year=1974 |page=1308 |isbn=0-395-04402-2 }} For details on Garnet, see {{cite journal |first=Perez |last=Zagorin |title=The Historical Significance of Lying and Dissimulation—Truth-Telling, Lying, and Self-Deception |journal=] |year=1996 |volume=63 |issue=3 |pages=863–912 }}</ref><ref>Braunmuller (1997) pp. 5–8.</ref> The porter says that the equivocator "committed treason enough for God's sake" (2.3.9&ndash;10), which specifically connects equivocation and treason and ties it to the Jesuit belief that equivocation was only lawful when used "for God's sake", strengthening the allusion to Garnet. The porter goes on to say that the equivocator "yet could not equivocate to heaven" (2.3.10&ndash;11), echoing grim jokes that were current on the eve of Garnet's execution: i.e. that Garnet would be "hanged without equivocation" and at his execution he was asked "not to equivocate with his last breath."<ref>Rogers, H. L. "An English Tailor and Father Garnet's Straw". ''Review of English Studies'' '''16''': 61 (February 1965), 44&ndash;9; pp. 44&ndash;5.</ref> The "English tailor" the porter admits to hell (2.3.13), has been seen as an allusion to Hugh Griffin, a tailor who was questioned by the ] on 27 November and 3 December 1607 for the part he played in Garnet's "miraculous straw", an infamous head of straw that was stained with Garnet's blood that had congealed into a form resembling Garnet's portrait, which was hailed by Catholics as a miracle. The tailor Griffin became notorious and the subject of verses published with his portrait on the title page.<ref>Rogers (1965) pp. 45&ndash;7.</ref>
			]
	When James became king of England, a feeling of uncertainty settled over the nation. James was a Scottish king and the son of ], a staunch Catholic and English traitor. In the words of critic Jonathan Gil Harris, "Macbeth was a play for a post-Elizabethan England facing up to what it might mean to have a Scottish king. England seems comparatively benign while its northern neighbour is mired in a bloody, monarch-killing past...Macbeth may have been set in medieval Scotland, but it was filled with material of interest to England and England's ruler."<ref>Crawford, Robert. "Review: NON-FICTION: Signifying Nothing: The Whole Truth about Macbeth is Not enough for Robert Crawford: Macbeth, A True Story by Fiona Watson 320pp, Quercus, Pounds 20." The Guardian: 8. Mar 13, 2010. ProQuest.Web. 16 Mar. 2015 .</ref> Critics argue that the content of the play is clearly a message to James, the new Scottish King of England. Garry Wills provides further evidence that "Macbeth" is a Gunpowder Play (a type of play that emerged immediately following the events of the Gunpowder Plot). He points out that every Gunpowder Play contains "a necromancy scene, regicide attempted or completed, references to equivocation, scenes that test loyalty by use of deceptive language, and a character who sees through plots—along with a vocabulary similar to the Plot in its immediate aftermath (words like ''train, blow, vault'') and an ironic recoil of the Plot upon the Plotters (who fall into the pit they dug)."<ref name="Wills, Garry 1995"/>
			Scholars also cite an entertainment seen by King James at ] in the summer of 1605 that featured three "]s" like the weird sisters; Kermode surmises that Shakespeare could have heard about this and alluded to it with the weird sisters.{{sfn|Kermode|1974|p=1308}} However, A. R. Braunmuller in the New Cambridge edition finds the 1605–06 arguments inconclusive, and argues only for an earliest date of 1603.{{sfn|Braunmuller|1997|pp=5–8}}
	The play utilizes a few key words that the audience at the time would recognize as allusions to the Plot. In one sermon in 1605, ] stated, regarding the failure of the Plotters on God's day, "Be they fair or foul, glad or sad (as the poet calleth Him) the great Diespiter, 'the Father of days' hath made them both." Shakespeare begins the play by using the words "fair" and "foul" in the first speeches of the witches and Macbeth. In the words of Jonathan Gil Harris, the play expresses the "horror unleashed by a supposedly loyal subject who seeks to kill a king and the treasonous role of equivocation. The play even echoes certain keywords from the scandal-the 'vault' beneath the House of Parliament in which Guy Fawkes stored thirty kegs of gunpowder and the 'blow' about which one of the conspirators had secretly warned a relative who planned to attend the House of Parliament on 5 November...Even though the Plot is never alluded to directly, its presence is everywhere in the play, like a pervasive odor."<ref>Harris, Jonathan Gil. "The Smell of "Macbeth"." Shakespeare Quarterly 58.4 (2007): 465-86. Print.</ref> Further, the play could not have been written after this time, due to references to it seen in other works, notably ]'s '']'', which was written in 1607-1608. Lines 21-30 are a clear allusion to the scene in which Banquo's ghost visits and haunts Macbeth at the dinner table:
			One suggested allusion supporting a date in late 1606 is the first witch's dialogue about a sailor's wife: "'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries./Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the ''Tiger''" (1.3.6–7). This has been thought to allude to the ''Tiger'', a ship that returned to England 27 June 1606 after a disastrous voyage in which many of the crew were killed by pirates. A few lines later the witch speaks of the sailor, "He shall live a man forbid:/Weary se'nnights nine times nine" (1.3.21–22). The real ship was at sea 567 days, the product of 7x9x9, which has been taken as a confirmation of the allusion, which if correct, confirms that the witch scenes were either written or amended later than July 1606.{{sfn|Loomis|1956}}{{sfn|Brooke|2008|pp=59–64}}
	<blockquote><poem>In any place, but I will visit thee
	With ghastly looks, and put into thy mind
	The great offences which thou didst to me:
	When thou art at thy table with thy friends,
	Merry in heart, and filled with swelling wine,
	I'll come in midst of all thy pride and mirth,
	Invisible to all men but thyself,
	And whisper such a sad tale in thine ear
	Shall make thee let the cup fall from thy hand,
	And stand as mute and pale as death itself.<ref>Beaumont, Francis. The Knight of the Burning Pestle. ed. Hattaway, Michael. Ernest Benn, 1969. 100.</ref></poem></blockquote>
			The play is not considered to have been written any later than 1607, since, as Kermode notes, there are "fairly clear allusions to the play in 1607".{{sfn|Kermode|1974|p=1308}} One notable reference is in ]'s '']'', first performed in 1607.{{sfn|Whitted|2012}}{{sfn|Smith|2012}} The following lines (Act V, Scene 1, 24–30) are, according to scholars,{{sfn|Dyce|1843|p=216}}{{sfn|Sprague|1889|p=12}} a clear allusion to the scene in which Banquo's ghost haunts Macbeth at the dinner table:
	]Scholars also cite an entertainment seen by King James at ] in the summer of 1605 that featured three "]s" like the weird sisters; Kermode surmises that Shakespeare could have heard about this and alluded to it with the weird sisters.<ref name="Kermode, 1308">Kermode, ''Riverside Shakespeare,'' p. 1308.</ref> However, A. R. Braunmuller in the New Cambridge edition finds the 1605–6 arguments inconclusive, and argues only for an earliest date of 1603.<ref>Braunmuller (1997), pp. 5–8</ref> The play is not considered to have been written any later than 1607, since, as Kermode notes, there are "fairly clear allusions to the play in 1607."<ref name="Kermode, 1308"/>
			{{blockquote|<poem>
	In addition, one suggested allusion supporting a date in late 1606 is the first witch's dialogue about a sailor's wife: "'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries./Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the ''Tiger''" (1.6&ndash;7). This has been thought to allude to the ''Tiger'', a ship that returned to England 27 June 1606 after a disastrous voyage in which many of the crew were killed by pirates. A few lines later the witch speaks of the sailor, "He shall live a man forbid:/Weary se'nnights nine times nine" (1.21&ndash;2). The real ship was at sea 567 days, the product of 7x9x9, which has been taken as a confirmation of the allusion, which if correct, confirms that the witch scenes were either written or amended later than July 1606.<ref>Loomis, E.A. "The Master of the Tiger", ''Shakespeare Quarterly'', 7:4 (Winter, 1956); Brooke (2008, 59-64)</ref>
			When thou art at thy table with thy friends,
			Merry in heart, and filled with swelling wine,
			I'll come in midst of all thy pride and mirth,
			Invisible to all men but thyself,
			And whisper such a sad tale in thine ear
			Shall make thee let the cup fall from thy hand,
			And stand as mute and pale as death itself.{{sfn|Hattaway|1969|p=100}}</poem>}}
	''Macbeth'' was first printed in the ] of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text. Some scholars contend that the Folio text was abridged and rearranged from an earlier manuscript or prompt book.<ref>Clark (2015, 321)</ref> Often cited as interpolation are stage cues for two songs, whose lyrics are not included in the Folio but are included in ]'s play '']'', which was written between the accepted date for ''Macbeth'' (1606) and the printing of the Folio.<ref>Clark (2015, 325)</ref> Many scholars believe these songs were editorially inserted into the Folio, though whether they were Middleton's songs or preexisting songs is not certain.<ref>Clark (2015, 326-329)</ref> It is also widely believed that the character of ], as well as some lines of the First Witch (4.1 124-31), were not part of Shakespeare's original play but were added by the Folio editors and possibly written by Middleton,<ref>Brooke (2008, 57)</ref> though "there is no completely objective proof" of such interpolation.<ref>Clark, 329-335</ref>		''Macbeth'' was first printed in the ] of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text. Some scholars contend that the Folio text was abridged and rearranged from an earlier manuscript or ].{{sfn|Clark|Mason|2015|p=321}} Often cited as interpolation are stage cues for two songs, whose lyrics are not included in the Folio but are included in ]'s play '']'', which was written between the accepted date for ''Macbeth'' (1606) and the printing of the Folio.{{sfn|Clark|Mason|2015|p=325}} Many scholars believe these songs were editorially inserted into the Folio, though whether they were Middleton's songs or preexisting songs is not certain.{{sfn|Clark|Mason|2015|pp=326–329}} It is also widely believed that the character of ], as well as some lines of the First Witch (4.1 124–131), were not part of Shakespeare's original play but were added by the Folio editors and possibly written by Middleton,{{sfn|Brooke|2008|p=57}} though "there is no completely objective proof" of such interpolation.{{sfn|Clark|Mason|2015|pp=329–335}}
			==Themes and motifs==
	== Pronunciations ==
			{{quote box|width=23em|"'''Macbeth'''<br>The ]! That is a step<br>On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,<br>For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;<br>Let not light see my black and deep desires.<br>The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be<br>Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."|—''Macbeth'', Act I, Scene IV}}
			''Macbeth'' is an anomaly among Shakespeare's tragedies in certain critical ways. It is short: more than a thousand lines shorter than ''Othello'' and ''King Lear'', and only slightly more than half as long as ''Hamlet''. This brevity has suggested to many critics that the received version is based on a heavily cut source, perhaps a prompt-book for a particular performance. This would reflect other Shakespeare plays existing in both Quarto and the Folio, where the Quarto versions are usually longer than the Folio versions. ''Macbeth'' was first printed in the First Folio, but has no Quarto version&nbsp;– if there were a Quarto, it would probably be longer than the Folio version.<ref>Bradley, AC, ''Shakespearean Tragedy''</ref> That brevity has also been connected to other unusual features: the fast pace of the first act, which has seemed to be "stripped for action"; and the comparative flatness of the characters other than Macbeth.{{sfn|Stoll|1943|p=26}}<!-- Arthur Quiller-Couch, cited in Stoll, discusses this at more length. --> ], in considering this question, concluded the play "always was an extremely short one", noting the witch scenes and battle scenes would have taken up some time in performance, remarking, "I do not think that, in reading, we ''feel'' ''Macbeth'' to be short: certainly we are astonished when we hear it is about half as long as ''Hamlet''. Perhaps in the Shakespearean theatre too it seemed to occupy a longer time than the clock recorded."<ref>Bradley, AC, ''Shakespearean Tragedy''</ref>
	The 'reconstructive movement' was concerned with the recreation of Elizabethan acting conditions, and would eventually lead to the creation of ] and similar replicas. One of the movement's offshoots was in the reconstruction of Elizabethan pronunciation: for example ]' 1951 ''Macbeth'', for which linguists from ] were employed to create a transcript of the play in Elizabethan<!-- This is the term used in the source: I don't think the slight anachronism (Elizabeth died before Macbeth was written) needs any comment or correction in the body text. --> English, then an audio recording of that transcription, from which the actors, in turn, learned their lines.<ref>O'Connor (2002, 83 and 92&ndash;93)</ref>
			===As a tragedy of character===
	The pronunciation of many words evolves over time. In Shakespeare's day, for example, "heath" was pronounced as "heth" ("or a slightly elongated 'e' as in the modern 'get'"<ref name= "Dem">{{cite book |last= Shakespeare |first= William |authorlink= William Shakespeare |chapter= |title= The Tragedie of Macbeth: A Frankly Annotated First Folio Edition |editor= Demitra Papadinis |location= Jefferson, North Carolina |publisher= McFarland |year= 2012 |page= 31 |ISBN= 978-0-7864-6479-1}}</ref>), so it rhymed with "Macbeth" in the sentences by the Witches at the beginning of the play:<ref name= "EP">{{cite web |url= http://bloggingshakespeare.com/reviewing-shakespeare/macbeth-original-pronunciation-shakespeares-globe-sam-wanamaker-playhouse-2014/ |author= Price, Eoin |date= 2014 |title= Macbeth in Original Pronunciation (Shakespeare's Globe) @ Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, 2014 |publisher= Reviewing Shakespeare |quote= The heth / Macbeth rhyme certainly has much to recommend it and chimes well with many of other couplets, but there's something attractive too about the slight discordancy to the modern half-rhyme. |accessdate= December 3, 2014}}</ref>
			At least since the days of ], analysis of the play has centred on the question of Macbeth's ambition, commonly seen as so dominant a trait that it defines the character.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Whalen |first=Richard F. |date=2014 |title=What Happens in Macbeth: An Originalist Reading of the Play |url=https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/wp-content/uploads/Whalen.Originalist.Macbeth.pdf |journal=Brief Chronicles V |pages=61–68}}</ref> Johnson asserted that Macbeth, though esteemed for his military bravery, is wholly reviled.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sherbo |first=Arthur |date=1951 |title=Dr. Johnson on Macbeth: 1745 and 1765 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/511908 |journal=The Review of English Studies |volume=2 |issue=5 |pages=40–47 |doi=10.1093/res/II.5.40 |jstor=511908 |issn=0034-6551}}</ref>
			This opinion recurs in critical literature, and, according to ], is supported by Shakespeare himself, who apparently intended to degrade his hero by vesting him with clothes unsuited to him and to make Macbeth look ridiculous by several exaggerations he applies: his garments seem either too big or too small for him&nbsp;– as his ambition is too big and his character too small for his new and unrightful role as king. After Macbeth is unexpectedly greeted with his new title as Thane of Cawdor as prophesied by the witches, Banquo comments:
	<blockquote>'''Second Witch''': Upon the heath.<br/>'''Third Witch''': There to meet with Macbeth.</blockquote>
			{{Poem quote|New honours come upon him,
	A scholar of antique pronunciation writes, "''Heath'' would have made a close (if not exact) rhyme with the "-eth" of ''Macbeth'', which was pronounced with a short 'i' as in 'it'."<ref name= "Dem" />
			Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould,
			But with the aid of use|I, 3, ll. 145–146}}
			And, at the end, when the tyrant is at bay at Dunsinane, Caithness sees him as a man trying in vain to fasten a large garment on him with too small a belt:
	In the theatre programme notes, "much was made of how OP performance reintroduces lost rhymes such as the final couplet: 'So thanks to all at once, and each to one, / Whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone'" (5.11.40-1) where 'one' sounds like 'own'. The Witches, the play's great purveyors of rhyme, benefited most in this regard. So, 'babe' (4.1.30) sounded like 'bab' and rhymed with 'drab' (4.1.31)..."<ref name= "EP" />
			{{Poem quote|He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
	Eoin Price wrote, "I found the OP rendition of Banquo's brilliant question 'Or have we eaten on the insane root / That takes the ''raison'' prisoner?' unduly amusing"; and he adds,
			Within the belt of rule|V, 2, ll. 14–15}}
			while Angus sums up what everybody thinks ever since Macbeth's accession to power:
	<blockquote>:... 'fear' had two pronunciations: the standard modern pronunciation being one, and 'fair' being the other. Mostly, the actors seemed to pronounce it in a way which accords with the modern standard, but during one speech, Macbeth said 'fair'. This seems especially significant in a play determined to complicate the relationship between 'fair' and 'foul'. I wonder, then, if the punning could be extended throughout the production. Would Banquo's lines, 'Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear / Things that do sound so fair?' (1.3.49-50) be fascinatingly illuminated, or merely muddled, by this punning? Perhaps this is a possibility the cast already experimented with and chose to discard, but, for sure, an awareness of the possibility of a 'fair/fear' pun can have interesting ramifications for the play.</blockquote>
			{{Poem quote|now does he feel his title
	==Themes and motifs==
			Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
	{{quote box|width=23em|"'''Macbeth'''<br>The ]! That is a step<br>On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,<br>For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;<br>Let not light see my black and deep desires.<br>The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be<br>Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."|—''Macbeth'', Act I, Scene IV}}
			upon a dwarfish thief|V, 2, ll. 18–20).{{sfn|Spurgeon|1935|pp=324–327}}}}
			Like ], but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall. As Kenneth Muir writes, "Macbeth has not a predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown."{{Sfn|Muir|1984|p=xlviii}} Some critics, such as E. E. Stoll, explain this characterisation as a holdover from Senecan or medieval tradition. Shakespeare's audience, in this view, expected villains to be wholly bad, and Senecan style, far from prohibiting a villainous protagonist, all but demanded it.{{sfn|Stoll|1943|p=26}}<!-- Stoll doesn't make this connection explicit: he discusses Macbeth as a tragic hero that commits villainous acts, and discusses Aristotelan (Senecan, in practice) primacy of plot over character (Stoll is responding to psychological readings), but doesn't, here, say that Shakespeare was writing to an audience expectation of a villainous protagonist. He makes that connection elsewhere though (From Shakespeare to Joyce, Shakespeare and Other Masters). -->
	''Macbeth'' is an anomaly among Shakespeare's tragedies in certain critical ways. It is short: more than a thousand lines shorter than '']'' and '']'', and only slightly more than half as long as '']''. This brevity has suggested to many critics that the received version is based on a heavily cut source, perhaps a prompt-book for a particular performance. That brevity has also been connected to other unusual features: the fast pace of the first act, which has seemed to be "stripped for action"; the comparative flatness of the characters other than Macbeth; and the oddness of Macbeth himself compared with other Shakespearean tragic heroes.{{clarify|reason=Why is he odd? Needs elaboration|date=September 2014}}
			Yet for other critics, it has not been so easy to resolve the question of Macbeth's motivation. ], for instance, perceived a paradox: a character able to express such convincing horror before Duncan's murder would likely be incapable of committing the crime.{{sfn|Muir|1984|p=xlvi}} For many critics, Macbeth's motivations in the first act appear vague and insufficient. ] hypothesised that Shakespeare's original text had an extra scene or scenes where husband and wife discussed their plans.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}} This interpretation is not fully provable; however, the motivating role of ambition for Macbeth is universally recognised. The evil actions motivated by his ambition seem to trap him in a cycle of increasing evil, as Macbeth himself recognises:
	===As a tragedy of character===
	At least since the days of ] and ], analysis of the play has centred on the question of Macbeth's ambition, commonly seen as so dominant a trait that it defines the character. Johnson asserted that Macbeth, though esteemed for his military bravery, is wholly reviled. This opinion recurs in critical literature, and, according to Caroline Spurgeon, is supported by Shakespeare himself, who apparently intended to degrade his hero by vesting him with clothes unsuited to him and to make Macbeth look ridiculous by several ]s he applies: His garments seem either too big or too small for him&nbsp;– as his ambition is too big and his character too small for his new and unrightful role as king. When he feels as if "dressed in borrowed robes", after his new title as Thane of Cawdor, prophesied by the witches, has been confirmed by Ross (I, 3, ll. 108–109), Banquo comments: "New honours come upon him, / Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould, / But with the aid of use" (I, 3, ll. 145–146). And, at the end, when the tyrant is at bay at Dunsinane, Caithness sees him as a man trying in vain to fasten a large garment on him with too small a belt: "He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause / Within the belt of rule" (V, 2, ll. 14–15), while Angus, in a similar nimism, sums up what everybody thinks ever since Macbeth's accession to power: "now does he feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe / upon a dwarfish thief" (V, 2, ll. 18–20).<ref>Caroline Spurgeon, ''Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us''. In: John Wain (ed.): ''Shakespeare. Macbeth. A Casebook''. Bristol: Western Printing Services (1968), pp. 168–177</ref>
			{{Poem quote|I am in blood
	Like ], but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall. As Kenneth Muir writes, "Macbeth has not a predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown." Some critics, such as E. E. Stoll, explain this characterisation as a holdover from Senecan or medieval tradition. Shakespeare's audience, in this view, expected villains to be wholly bad, and Senecan style, far from prohibiting a villainous protagonist, all but demanded it.
			Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
			Returning were as tedious as go o'er.|III, 4, ll. 165–167}}
			While working on Russian translations of Shakespeare's works, ] compared Macbeth to ], the protagonist of '']'' by ]. Pasternak argues that "neither Macbeth or Raskolnikov is a born criminal or a villain by nature. They are turned into criminals by faulty rationalizations, by deductions from false premises." He goes on to argue that Lady Macbeth is "feminine&nbsp;... one of those active, insistent wives" who becomes her husband's "executive, more resolute and consistent than he is himself". According to Pasternak, she is only helping Macbeth carry out his own wishes, to her own detriment.{{sfn|Pasternak|1959|pp=150–152}}
	Yet for other critics, it has not been so easy to resolve the question of Macbeth's motivation. ], for instance, perceived a paradox: a character able to express such convincing horror before Duncan's murder would likely be incapable of committing the crime. For many critics, Macbeth's motivations in the first act appear vague and insufficient. ] hypothesised that Shakespeare's original text had an extra scene or scenes where husband and wife discussed their plans. This interpretation is not fully provable; however, the motivating role of ambition for Macbeth is universally recognised. The evil actions motivated by his ambition seem to trap him in a cycle of increasing evil, as Macbeth himself recognises: "I am in blood/Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go o'er."
	While working on Russian translations of Shakespeare's works, ] compared Macbeth to ], the protagonist of '']'' by ]. Pasternak argues that "neither Macbeth or Raskolnikov is a born criminal or a villain by nature. They are turned into criminals by faulty rationalizations, by deductions from false premises." He goes on to argue that Lady Macbeth is "feminine&nbsp;... one of those active, insistent wives" who becomes her husband's "executive, more resolute and consistent than he is himself." According to Pasternak, she is only helping Macbeth carry out his own wishes, to her own detriment.<ref>Boris Pasternak, ''I Remember: Sketch for an Autobiography''. Tr. Manya Harari. New York: Pantheon (1959), pp. 150–152</ref>
	===As a tragedy of moral order===		===As a tragedy of moral order===
			{{Unreferenced section|date=February 2018}}
	The disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not limited to him. Almost from the moment of the murder, the play depicts Scotland as a land shaken by inversions of the natural order. Shakespeare may have intended a reference to the ], although the play's images of disorder are mostly not specific enough to support detailed intellectual readings. He may also have intended an elaborate compliment to James's belief in the ], although this hypothesis, outlined at greatest length by Henry N. Paul, is not universally accepted. As in '']'', though, perturbations in the political sphere are echoed and even amplified by events in the material world. Among the most often depicted of the inversions of the natural order is sleep. Macbeth's announcement that he has "murdered sleep" is figuratively mirrored in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking.
			The disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not limited to him. Almost from the moment of the murder, the play depicts Scotland as a land shaken by inversions of the natural order. Shakespeare may have intended a reference to the ], although the play's images of disorder are mostly not specific enough to support detailed intellectual readings. He may also have intended an elaborate compliment to James's belief in the ],{{clarify|reason=Explanation needed. Chaos was the last thing discussed, so what's the compliment?|date=December 2024}} although this hypothesis, outlined at greatest length by Henry N. Paul, is not universally accepted. As in '']'', though, perturbations in the political sphere are echoed and even amplified by events in the material world. Among the most often depicted of the inversions of the natural order is sleep. Macbeth's announcement that he has "murdered sleep" is figuratively mirrored in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking.
	Macbeth's generally accepted indebtedness to medieval tragedy is often seen as significant in the play's treatment of moral order. Glynne Wickham connects the play, through the Porter, to a ] on the ]. Howard Felperin argues that the play has a more complex attitude toward "orthodox Christian tragedy" than is often admitted; he sees a kinship between the play and the ] within the medieval liturgical drama.		''Macbeth''{{'}}s generally accepted indebtedness to medieval tragedy is often seen as significant in the play's treatment of moral order. Glynne Wickham connects the play, through the Porter, to a ] on the ]. Howard Felperin argues that the play has a more complex attitude toward "orthodox Christian tragedy" than is often admitted; he sees a kinship between the play and the ] within the medieval liturgical drama.
	The theme of androgyny is often seen as a special aspect of the theme of disorder. Inversion of normative gender roles is most famously associated with the witches and with Lady Macbeth as she appears in the first act. Whatever Shakespeare's degree of sympathy with such inversions, the play ends with a thorough return to normative gender values. Some ] ] critics, such as Janet Adelman, have connected the play's treatment of gender roles to its larger theme of inverted natural order. In this light, Macbeth is punished for his violation of the moral order by being removed from the cycles of nature (which are figured as female); nature itself (as embodied in the movement of Birnam Wood) is part of the restoration of moral order.		The theme of androgyny is often seen as a special aspect of the theme of disorder. Inversion of normative gender roles is most famously associated with the witches and with Lady Macbeth as she appears in the first act. Whatever Shakespeare's degree of sympathy with such inversions, the play ends with a thorough return to normative gender values. Some ] ] critics, such as Janet Adelman, have connected the play's treatment of gender roles to its larger theme of inverted natural order. In this light, Macbeth is punished for his violation of the moral order by being removed from the cycles of nature (which are figured as female); nature itself (as embodied in the movement of Birnam Wood) is part of the restoration of moral order.
	===As a poetic tragedy===		===As a poetic tragedy===
	Critics in the early twentieth century reacted against what they saw as an excessive dependence on the study of character in criticism of the play. This dependence, though most closely associated with ], is clear as early as the time of ], who offered precise, if fanciful, accounts of the predramatic lives of Shakespeare's female leads. She suggested, for instance, that the child Lady Macbeth refers to in the first act died during a foolish military action.		Critics in the early twentieth century reacted against what they saw as an excessive dependence on the study of character in criticism of the play. This dependence, though most closely associated with ], is clear as early as the time of ], who offered precise, if fanciful, accounts of the predramatic lives of Shakespeare's female leads. She suggested, for instance, that the child Lady Macbeth refers to in the first act died during a foolish military action.<ref name="Byler2015">{{cite journal|author=Lauren Byler|title=Loose characters in Mary Cowden Clarke's The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines in a Series of Tales |journal=Texas Studies in Literature and Language |volume=57 |issue=3 |date=2015 |page=343 |doi=10.7560/TSLL57305 |s2cid=162081047 |issn=0040-4691}}</ref>
	===Witchcraft and evil===		===Witchcraft and evil===
	]]]		]]]
	In the play, the Three Witches represent darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses.<ref name="Kliman14">Kliman, 14.</ref> Their presence communicates treason and impending doom. During Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as worse than rebels, "the most notorious traytor and rebell that can be."<ref name="Perkins">{{Cite book|last=Perkins |first=William |title=A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft, So Farre forth as it is revealed in the Scriptures, and manifest by true experience |publisher=Cantrell Legge, Printer to the Universitie of Cambridge |location=London |year=1618 |page=53 |url=http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=witch;idno=wit075 |accessdate=24 June 2009}}</ref> They were not only political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well. Much of the confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to straddle the play's borders between reality and the supernatural. They are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear whether they control fate, or whether they are merely its agents. They defy logic, not being subject to the rules of the real world.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Coddon |first=Karin S. |title='Unreal Mockery': Unreason and the Problem of Spectacle in Macbeth |journal=ELH |year=1989 |volume=56 |issue=3 |pages=485–501 |jstor=2873194 }}</ref> The witches' lines in the first act: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air" are often said to set the tone for the rest of the play by establishing a sense of confusion. Indeed, the play is filled with situations where evil is depicted as good, while good is rendered evil. The line "Double, double toil and trouble," communicates the witches' intent clearly: they seek only trouble for the mortals around them.<ref name = tempt/> The witches' spells are remarkably similar to the spells of the witch Medusa in Anthony Munday's play '']'' published in 1584, and Shakespeare may have been influenced by these.		In the play, the Three Witches represent darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses.{{sfn|Kliman|Santos|2005|p=14}} Their presence communicates treason and impending doom. During Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as worse than rebels, "the most notorious traytor and rebell that can be".{{sfn|Perkins|1610|p=53}} They were not only political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well. Much of the confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to straddle the play's borders between reality and the supernatural. They are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear whether they control fate, or whether they are merely its agents. They defy logic, not being subject to the rules of the real world.{{sfn|Coddon|1989|p=491}} The witches' lines in the first act: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air" are often said to set the tone for the rest of the play by establishing a sense of confusion. Indeed, the play is filled with situations where evil is depicted as good, while good is rendered evil. The line "Double, double toil and trouble," communicates the witches' intent clearly: they seek only trouble for the mortals around them.{{sfn|Frye|1987}}{{page needed|date=January 2018}} The witches' spells are remarkably similar to the spells of the witch Medusa in Anthony Munday's play '']'' published in 1584, and Shakespeare may have been influenced by these.
	While the witches do not tell Macbeth directly to kill King Duncan, they use a subtle form of temptation when they tell Macbeth that he is destined to be king. By placing this thought in his mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his own destruction. This follows the pattern of temptation used at the time of Shakespeare. First, they argued, a thought is put in a man's mind, then the person may either indulge in the thought or reject it. Macbeth indulges in it, while Banquo rejects.<ref name = tempt>{{cite journal |last=Frye |first=Roland Mushat |title=Launching the Tragedy of Macbeth: Temptation, Deliberation, and Consent in Act I |journal=The Huntington Library Quarterly |year=1987 |volume=50 |issue=3 |pages=249–261 |doi= 10.2307/3817399}}</ref>		While the witches do not tell Macbeth directly to kill King Duncan, they use a subtle form of temptation when they tell Macbeth that he is destined to be king. By placing this thought in his mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his own destruction. This follows the pattern of temptation used at the time of Shakespeare. First, they argued, a thought is put in a man's mind, then the person may either indulge in the thought or reject it. Macbeth indulges in it, while Banquo rejects.{{sfn|Frye|1987}}{{page needed|date=January 2018}}
	According to J. A. Bryant Jr., Macbeth also makes use of Biblical parallels, notably between King Duncan's murder and the murder of ]:		According to J. A. Bryant Jr., ''Macbeth'' also makes use of Biblical parallels, notably between King Duncan's murder and the murder of ]:
	{{quote|No matter how one looks at it, whether as history or as tragedy, Macbeth is distinctively Christian. One may simply count the Biblical allusions as Richmond Noble has done; one may go further and study the parallels between Shakespeare's story and the Old Testament stories of ] and ] as Miss Jane H. Jack has done; or one may examine with W. C. Curry the progressive degeneration of Macbeth from the point of view of medieval theology.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/hippolytasviewso012763mbp/hippolytasviewso012763mbp_djvu.txt |title=Full text of "Hippolyta S View Some Christian Aspects of Shakespeare S Plays" |publisher=Archive.org |date=28 August 1960 |accessdate=1 November 2009}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/hippolytasviewso012763mbp |title=Internet Archive: Free Download: Hippolyta S View Some Christian Aspects Of Shakespeare S Plays |publisher=Archive.org |accessdate=1 November 2009}}</ref>}}		{{blockquote|No matter how one looks at it, whether as history or as tragedy, ''Macbeth'' is distinctively Christian. One may simply count the Biblical allusions as Richmond Noble has done; one may go further and study the parallels between Shakespeare's story and the Old Testament stories of ] and ] as Miss Jane H. Jack has done; or one may examine with W. C. Curry the progressive degeneration of Macbeth from the point of view of medieval theology.{{sfn|Bryant|1961|p=153}}|sign=|source=}}
	== Superstition and "The Scottish Play" ==		==Superstition and "The Scottish Play"==
			{{Main|The Scottish Play}}
			While many today would say that any misfortune surrounding a production is mere coincidence, actors and others in the theatre industry often consider it bad luck to mention ''Macbeth'' by name while inside a theatre, and sometimes refer to it indirectly, for example as "]",{{sfn|Faires|2000}} or "MacBee", or when referring to the characters and not the play, "Mr. and Mrs. M", or "The Scottish King".
	{{Main article|The Scottish Play}}
			This is because Shakespeare (or the play's revisers) is said to have used the spells of real witches in his text, purportedly angering the witches and causing them to curse the play.{{sfn|Tritsch|1984}}{{better source needed|date=January 2018}} Thus, to say the name of the play inside a theatre is believed to doom the production to failure, and perhaps cause physical injury or death to cast members. There are stories of accidents, misfortunes and even deaths taking place during runs of ''Macbeth''.{{sfn|Faires|2000}}
	While many today would say that any misfortune surrounding a production is mere coincidence, actors and other theatre people often consider it bad luck to mention ''Macbeth'' by name while inside a theatre, and sometimes refer to it indirectly, for example as "]",<ref name="faires">Robert Faires, "", ''Austin Chronicle,'' 13 October 2000.</ref> or "MacBee", or when referring to the character and not the play, "Mr. and Mrs. M", or "The Scottish King".
			According to the actor Sir ], in his ] TV series '']''
	This is because Shakespeare (or the play's revisers) are said to have used the spells of real witches in his text, purportedly angering the witches and causing them to curse the play.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://pretallez.com/onstage/theatre/broadway/macbeth/macbeth_curse.html |title=The Curse of 'Macbeth'. Is there an evil spell on this ill-starred play? |first=Dina |last=Tritsch |date=April 1984 |publisher=pretallez.com |accessdate=28 November 2010}}</ref> Thus, to say the name of the play inside a theatre is believed to doom the production to failure, and perhaps cause physical injury or death to cast members. There are stories of accidents, misfortunes and even deaths taking place during runs of ''Macbeth''.<ref name="faires" />
	According to the actor Sir ], in his ] TV series '']'', <blockquote>contrary to popular myth, Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth is not the unluckiest play as superstition likes to portray it. Exactly the opposite! The origin of the unfortunate moniker dates back to repertory theatre days when each town and village had at least one theatre to entertain the public. If a play was not doing well, it would invariably get 'pulled' and replaced with a sure-fire audience pleaser &ndash; Macbeth guaranteed full-houses. So when the weekly theatre newspaper, '']'' was published, listing what was on in each theatre in the country, it was instantly noticed what shows had NOT worked the previous week, as they had been replaced by a definite crowd-pleaser. More actors have died during performances of Hamlet than in the "Scottish play" as the profession still calls it. It is forbidden to quote from it backstage as this could cause the current play to collapse and have to be replaced, causing possible unemployment.<ref>''Great West End Theatres'' Sky Arts. 10 August 2013</ref></blockquote>		{{blockquote|Contrary to popular myth, Shakespeare's tragedy ''Macbeth'' is not the unluckiest play as superstition likes to portray it. Exactly the opposite! The origin of the unfortunate moniker dates back to repertory theatre days when each town and village had at least one theatre to entertain the public. If a play was not doing well, it would invariably get 'pulled' and replaced with a sure-fire audience pleaser&nbsp;– ''Macbeth'' guaranteed full-houses. So when the weekly theatre newspaper, '']'' was published, listing what was on in each theatre in the country, it was instantly noticed what shows had ''not'' worked the previous week, as they had been replaced by a definite crowd-pleaser. More actors have died during performances of ''Hamlet'' than in the "Scottish play" as the profession still calls it. It is forbidden to quote from it backstage as this could cause the current play to collapse and have to be replaced, causing possible unemployment.<ref>''Great West End Theatres'' Sky Arts. 10 August 2013</ref>}}<!-- FIXME: this quote is somewhat excessive, and Sir Donald, bless him, is not a particularly scholarly source. -->
			Several methods exist to dispel the curse, depending on the actor. One, attributed to ], is to immediately leave the building the stage is in with the person who uttered the name, walk around it three times, spit over their left shoulders, say an obscenity then wait to be invited back into the building.{{sfn|Straczynski|2006}}{{page needed|date=January 2018}} A related practice is to spin around three times as fast as possible on the spot, sometimes accompanied by spitting over their shoulder, and uttering an obscenity. Another popular "ritual" is to leave the room, knock three times, be invited in, and then quote a line from ''Hamlet''. Yet another is to recite lines from '']'', thought to be a lucky play.{{sfn|Garber|2008|p=77}}
	One particular incident that lent itself to the superstition was the ]. The cause of the riots was based on a conflict over two performances of ''Macbeth,'' and is usually ascribed to the curse.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4222 |title=Toil and Trouble: The Curse of Macbeth |author=Dunning, Brian|date=7 September 2010 |publisher=skeptoid.com |accessdate=28 November 2010}}</ref>
			Sir ], on the radio program ''Ask Me Another'', asserted "if you have played the role of the Scottish thane, then you are allowed to say the title, any time anywhere".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.npr.org/2015/08/20/432887463/brush-up-your-shakespeare |title=Brush Up Your Shakespeare |series=Ask Me Another |publisher=] |date=20 August 2015 |access-date=31 August 2021 |url-status=live |archive-date=26 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210826215404/https://www.npr.org/2015/08/20/432887463/brush-up-your-shakespeare }}</ref>
	Several methods exist to dispel the curse, depending on the actor. One, attributed to ], is to immediately leave the building the stage is in with the person who uttered the name, walk around it three times, spit over their left shoulders, say an obscenity then wait to be invited back into the building.<ref>''Babylon 5&nbsp;– The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, Volume 6'' by ], Synthetic Labs Publishing (2006).</ref> A related practice is to spin around three times as fast as possible on the spot, sometimes accompanied by spitting over their shoulder, and uttering an obscenity. Another popular "ritual" is to leave the room, knock three times, be invited in, and then quote a line from '']''. Yet another is to recite lines from '']'', thought to be a lucky play.<ref name="Garber">{{Cite book|last=Garber|first=Marjorie B.|title=Profiling Shakespeare|publisher=Routledge|year=2008|page=77|isbn=978-0-415-96446-3}}</ref> Other sources cite '']'' as being a similarly lucky play.
			==Performance history==
	==Legacy==
			===Shakespeare's day to the Interregnum===
			The only eyewitness account of ''Macbeth'' in Shakespeare's lifetime was recorded by ], who saw a performance at ] on 20 April 1610.{{sfn|Brooke|2008|p=36}}{{sfn|Clark|Mason|2015|p=337}} Scholars have noted discrepancies between Forman's account and the play as it appears in the Folio. For example, he makes no mention of the apparition scene, or of Hecate,{{sfn|Clark|Mason|2015|p=324}} of the man not of woman born, or of Birnam Wood.{{sfn|Orgel|2002|p=33}}{{sfn|Brooke|2008|p=36}} However, Clark{{sfn|Clark|Mason|2015|p=301}} observes that Forman's accounts were often inaccurate and incomplete (for instance omitting the statue scene from '']'') and his interest did not seem to be in "giving full accounts of the productions".{{sfn|Clark|Mason|2015|p=324}}
			As mentioned above, the Folio text is thought by some to be an alteration of the original play. This has led to the theory that the play in the Folio was an adaptation for indoor performance at the ] (which was operated by the King's Men from 1608)&nbsp;– and even speculation that it represents a specific performance before King James.{{sfn|Brooke|2008|pp=34–36}}{{sfn|Orgel|2002|pp=158–161}}{{sfn|Taylor|2002|p=2}} The play contains more musical ] than any other play in the canon as well as a significant use of ]s.{{sfn|Brooke|2008|pp=35–36}}
	===Performance history===
			===Restoration and eighteenth century===
	====Shakespeare's day to the Interregnum====
			{{quote box|width=23em|The chill of the grave seemed about you when you looked on her; there was the hush and damp of the charnel house at midnight ... your flesh crept and your breathing became uneasy ... the scent of blood became palpable to you.|—Sheridan Knowles on ]' sleepwalking scene{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=119}}}}
	The only eyewitness account of ''Macbeth'' in Shakespeare's lifetime was recorded by ], who saw a performance at ] in 1611.<ref>Brooke (2008, 36)</ref><ref>Clark (2015, 337)</ref> Scholars have noted discrepancies between Forman's account and the play as it appears in the Folio. For example, he makes no mention of the apparition scene, or of Hecate,<ref name="Clark 2015, 324">Clark (2015, 324)</ref> of the man not of woman born, or of Birnam Wood.<ref>Brooke (2008, 36); Orgel (2002, 33)</ref> However, Clark<ref>Clark (2015, 301)</ref> observes that Forman's accounts were often inaccurate and incomplete (for instance omitting the statue scene from '']'') and his interest did not seem to be in "giving full accounts of the productions."<ref name="Clark 2015, 324"/>
			All theatres were closed down by the ] government on 6 September 1642. Upon the ] of the monarchy in 1660, two ] (the ] and the ]) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them.{{sfn|Marsden|2002|p=21}} ], founder of the Duke's Company, adapted Shakespeare's play to the tastes of the new era, and his version would dominate on stage for around eighty years. Among the changes he made were the expansion of the role of the witches, introducing new songs, dances and 'flying', and the expansion of the role of Lady Macduff as a foil to Lady Macbeth.{{sfn|Tatspaugh|2003|pp=526–527}} There were, however, performances outside the patent companies: among the evasions of the Duke's Company's monopoly was a puppet version of ''Macbeth''.{{sfn|Lanier|2002|pp=28–29}}
	As mentioned above, the Folio text is thought by some to be an alteration of the original play. This has led to the theory that the play as we know it from the Folio was an adaptation for indoor performance at the ] (which was operated by the King's Men from 1608) &ndash; and even speculation that it represents a specific performance before King James.<ref>Brooke (2008, 34&ndash;36); Orgel (2002, 158&ndash;161); Taylor (2002, 2)</ref> The play contains more musical ] than any other play in the canon as well as a significant use of ]s.<ref>Brooke (2008, 35&ndash;36)</ref>
			''Macbeth'' was a favourite of the seventeenth-century diarist ], who saw the play on 5 November 1664 ("admirably acted"), 28 December 1666 ("most excellently acted"), ten days later on 7 January 1667 ("though I saw it lately, yet appears a most excellent play in all respects"), on 19 April 1667 ("one of the best plays for a stage ... that ever I saw"), again on 16 October 1667 ("was vexed to see Young, who is but a bad actor at best, act Macbeth in the room of ], who, poor man! is sick"), and again three weeks later on 6 November 1667 (" ''Macbeth'', which we still like mightily"), yet again on 12 August 1668 ("saw ''Macbeth'', to our great content"), and finally on 21 December 1668, on which date the ] and court were also present in the audience.{{sfn|Orgel|2002|p=155}}
	====Restoration and eighteenth century====
			The first professional performances of ''Macbeth'' in North America were probably those of ].{{sfn|Morrison|2002|pp=231–232}}
	{{quote box|width=23em|"The chill of the grave seemed about you when you looked on her; there was the hush and damp of the charnel house at midnight ... your flesh crept and your breathing became uneasy ... the scent of blood became palpable to you."|—Sheridan Knowles on ]' sleepwalking scene<ref>Williams (2002, 119)</ref>}}
			In 1744, ] revived the play, abandoning Davenant's version and instead advertising it "as written by Shakespeare". In fact this claim was largely false: he retained much of Davenant's more popular business for the witches, and himself wrote a lengthy death speech for Macbeth. And he cut more than 10% of Shakespeare's play, including the drunken porter, the murder of Lady Macduff's son, and Malcolm's testing of Macduff.{{sfn|Orgel|2002|p=246}} ] was his greatest stage partner, having her premiere as his Lady Macbeth in 1747. He would later drop the play from his repertoire upon her retirement from the stage.{{sfn|Potter|2001|p=188}} Mrs. Pritchard was the first actress to achieve acclaim in the role of Lady Macbeth&nbsp;– at least partly due to the removal of Davenant's material, which made irrelevant moral contrasts with Lady Macduff.{{sfn|Gay|2002|p=158}} Garrick's portrayal focused on the inner life of the character, endowing him with an innocence vacillating between good and evil, and betrayed by outside influences. He portrayed a man capable of observing himself, as if a part of him remained untouched by what he had done, the play moulding him into a man of sensibility, rather than him descending into a tyrant.{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=124}}
	All theatres were closed down by the ] government on 6 September 1642. Upon the ] of the monarchy in 1660, two ] (the ] and the ]) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them.<ref>Marsden (2002, 21).</ref> ], founder of the Duke's Company, adapted Shakespeare's play to the tastes of the new era, and his version would dominate on stage for around eighty years. Among the changes he made were the expansion of the role of the witches, introducing new songs, dances and 'flying', and the expansion of the role of Lady Macduff as a foil to Lady Macbeth.<ref>Tatspaugh (2003, 526&ndash;527)</ref> There were, however, performances outside the patent companies: among the evasions of the Duke's Company's monopoly was a puppet version of ''Macbeth''.<ref>Lanier (2002, 28&ndash;29)</ref>
			] first played Macbeth in 1778.{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=125}} Although usually regarded as the antithesis of Garrick, Kemble nevertheless refined aspects of Garrick's portrayal into his own.{{sfn|Williams|2002|pp=124–125}} However it was the "towering and majestic" ] (Kemble's sister) who became a legend in the role of Lady Macbeth.{{sfn|Potter|2001|p=189}}{{sfn|Williams|2002|pp=125–126}} In contrast to Hannah Pritchard's savage, demonic portrayal, Siddons' Lady Macbeth, while terrifying, was nevertheless&nbsp;– in the scenes in which she expresses her regret and remorse&nbsp;– tenderly human.{{sfn|Moody|2002|p=43}} And in portraying her actions as done out of love for her husband, Siddons deflected from him some of the moral responsibility for the play's carnage.{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=125}} Audiences seem to have found the sleepwalking scene particularly mesmerising: ] said of it that "all her gestures were involuntary and mechanical ... She glided on and off the stage almost like an apparition."{{sfn|Gay|2002|p=159}}
	''Macbeth'' was a favourite of the seventeenth-century diarist ], who saw the play on 5 November 1664 ("admirably acted"), 28 December 1666 ("most excellently acted"), ten days later on 7 January 1667 ("though I saw it lately, yet appears a most excellent play in all respects"), on 19 April 1667 ("one of the best plays for a stage ... that ever I saw"), again on 16 October 1667 ("was vexed to see Young, who is but a bad actor at best, act Macbeth in the room of ], who, poor man! is sick"), and again three weeks later on 6 November 1667 (" ''Macbeth'', which we still like mightily"), yet again on 12 August 1668 ("saw ''Macbeth'', to our great content"), and finally on 21 December 1668, on which date the ] and court were also present in the audience.<ref>Orgel (2002, 155)</ref>
			In 1794, Kemble dispensed with the ghost of Banquo altogether, allowing the audience to see Macbeth's reaction as his wife and guests see it, and relying upon the fact that the play was so well known that his audience would already be aware that a ghost enters at that point.{{sfn|McLuskie|2005|pp=256–257}}
	The first professional performances of ''Macbeth'' in North America were probably those of ].<ref>Morrison (2002, 231&ndash;232)</ref>
			Ferdinand Fleck, notable as the first German actor to present Shakespeare's tragic roles in their fullness, played Macbeth at the Berlin National Theatre from 1787. Unlike his English counterparts, he portrayed the character as achieving his stature after the murder of Duncan, growing in presence and confidence: thereby enabling stark contrasts, such as in the banquet scene, which he ended babbling like a child.{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=126}}
	In 1744, ] revived the play, abandoning Davenant's version and instead advertising it "as written by Shakespeare". In fact this claim was largely false: he retained much of Davenant's more popular business for the witches, and himself wrote a lengthy death speech for Macbeth. And he cut more than 10% of Shakespeare's play, including the drunken porter, the murder of Lady Macduff's son, and Malcolm's testing of Macduff.<ref>Orgel (2002, 246)</ref> ] was his greatest stage partner, having her premiere as his Lady Macbeth in 1747. He would later drop the play from his repertoire upon her retirement from the stage.<ref>Potter (2001, 188)</ref> Mrs. Pritchard was the first actress to achieve acclaim in the role of Lady Macbeth &ndash; at least partly due to the removal of Davenant's material, which made irrelevant moral contrasts with Lady Macduff.<ref>Gay (2002, 158)</ref> Garrick's portrayal focused on the inner life of the character, endowing him with an innocence vacillating between good and evil, and betrayed by outside influences. He portrayed a man capable of observing himself, as if a part of him remained untouched by what he had done, the play moulding him into a man of sensibility, rather than him descending into a tyrant.<ref>Williams (2002, 124)</ref>
			===Nineteenth century===
	] first played Macbeth in 1778.<ref name="Williams 2002, 125">Williams (2002, 125)</ref> Although usually regarded as the antithesis of Garrick, Kemble nevertheless refined aspects of Garrick's portrayal into his own.<ref>Williams (2002, 124&ndash;125)</ref> However it was the "towering and majestic" ] (Kemble's sister) who became a legend in the role of Lady Macbeth.<ref>Potter (2001, 189); Williams (2002, 125&ndash;126)</ref> In contrast to Hannah Pritchard's savage, demonic portrayal, Siddons' Lady Macbeth, while terrifying, was nevertheless &ndash; in the scenes in which she expresses her regret and remorse &ndash; tenderly human.<ref>Moody (2002, 43)</ref> And in portraying her actions as done out of love for her husband, Siddons deflected from him some of the moral responsibility for the play's carnage.<ref name="Williams 2002, 125"/> Audiences seem to have found the sleepwalking scene particularly mesmerising: ] said of it that "all her gestures were involuntary and mechanical ... She glided on and off the stage almost like an apparition."<ref name="Gay 2002, 159">Gay (2002, 159)</ref>
			{{quote box|width=23em|Everyone seems to think Mrs McB is a ''Monstrousness'' & ''I'' can only see she's a ''woman''&nbsp;– a mistaken woman&nbsp;– & ''weak''&nbsp;– not a Dove&nbsp;– of course not&nbsp;– ''but first of all a wife.''|—]{{sfn|Gay|2002|p=167}}}}
			Performances outside the patent theatres were instrumental in bringing the monopoly to an end. ], for example, produced a popular adaptation of ''Macbeth'' in 1809 at the ] described in its publicity as "this matchless piece of pantomimic and choral performance", which circumvented the illegality of speaking Shakespeare's words through mimed action, singing, and doggerel verse written by J. C. Cross.{{sfn|Holland|2007|pp=38–39}}{{sfn|Moody|2002|pp=38–39}}
	In 1794, Kemble dispensed with the ghost of Banquo altogether, allowing the audience to see Macbeth's reaction as his wife and guests see it, and relying upon the fact that the play was so well known that his audience would already be aware that a ghost enters at that point.<ref>McLuskie (2005, 256&ndash;257)</ref>
			] and ] as the Macbeths, in historically accurate costumes, for an 1858 production]]
	], notable as the first German actor to present Shakespeare's tragic roles in their fullness, played Macbeth at the Berlin National Theatre from 1787. Unlike his English counterparts, he portrayed the character as achieving his stature after the murder of Duncan, growing in presence and confidence: thereby enabling stark contrasts, such as in the banquet scene, which he ended babbling like a child.<ref>Williams (2002, 126)</ref>
			] playing Macbeth, from a mid-19th century performance]]
			In 1809, in an unsuccessful attempt to take ] upmarket, ] installed private boxes, increasing admission prices to pay for the improvements. The inaugural run at the newly renovated theatre was ''Macbeth'', which was disrupted for over two months with cries of "Old prices!" and "No private boxes!" until Kemble capitulated to the protestors' demands.{{sfn|Lanier|2002|p=37}}
	====Nineteenth century====
			] at ] gave a psychological portrayal of the central character, with a common touch, but was ultimately unsuccessful in the role. However he did pave the way for the most acclaimed performance of the nineteenth century, that of William Charles Macready. Macready played the role over a 30-year period, firstly at Covent Garden in 1820 and finally in his retirement performance. Although his playing evolved over the years, it was noted throughout for the tension between the idealistic aspects and the weaker, venal aspects of Macbeth's character. His staging was full of spectacle, including several elaborate royal processions.{{sfn|Williams|2002|pp=126–127}}
	{{quote box|width=23em|"Everyone seems to think Mrs McB is a ''Monstrousness'' & ''I'' can only see she's a ''woman'' &ndash; a mistaken woman &ndash; & ''weak'' &ndash; not a Dove &ndash; of course not &ndash; ''but first of all a wife.''"|—]<ref>Gay (2002, 167)</ref>}}
			In 1843 the ] finally brought the patent companies' monopoly to an end.{{sfn|Moody|2002|p=38}} From that time until the end of the ], London theatre was dominated by the ]s, and the style of presentation was "pictorial"&nbsp;– ] stages filled with spectacular stage-pictures, often featuring complex scenery, large casts in elaborate costumes, and frequent use of ].{{sfn|Schoch|2002|pp=58–59}}{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=128}} ] (son of Edmund), at London's ] from 1850 to 1859, took an antiquarian view of Shakespeare performance, setting his ''Macbeth'' in a historically accurate eleventh-century Scotland.{{sfn|Schoch|2002|pp=61–62}} His leading lady, ], created a sense of the character's inner life: '']''{{'}} critic saying "The countenance which she assumed ... when luring on Macbeth in his course of crime, was actually appalling in intensity, as if it denoted a hunger after guilt."{{sfn|Gay|2002|pp=163–164}} At the same time, special effects were becoming popular: for example in ]' ''Macbeth'' the witches performed behind green ], enabling them to appear and disappear using stage lighting.{{sfn|Schoch|2002|p=64}}
	Performances outside the patent theatres were instrumental in bringing the monopoly to an end. ], for example, produced a popular adaptation of ''Macbeth'' in 1809 at the ] described in its publicity as "this matchless piece of pantomimic and choral performance", which circumvented the illegality of speaking Shakespeare's words through mimed action, singing, and doggerel verse written by J. C. Cross.<ref>Holland (2007, 38&ndash;39); Moody (2002, 38&ndash;39)</ref>
			In 1849, rival performances of the play sparked the ] in ]. The popular American actor ], whose Macbeth was said to be like "the ferocious chief of a barbarous tribe"{{sfn|Morrison|2002|p=237}} played the central role at the Broadway Theatre to popular acclaim, while the "cerebral and patrician"{{sfn|Lanier|2002|p=37}} English actor ], playing the same role at the ], suffered constant heckling. The existing enmity between the two men (Forrest had openly hissed Macready at a recent performance of '']'' in Britain) was taken up by Forrest's supporters&nbsp;– formed from the working class and lower middle class and anti-British agitators, keen to attack the upper-class pro-British patrons of the Opera House and the colonially-minded Macready. Nevertheless, Macready performed the role again three days later to a packed house while an angry mob gathered outside. The militia tasked with controlling the situation fired into the mob. In total, 31 rioters were killed and over 100 injured.{{sfn|Lanier|2002|p=37}}{{sfn|Booth|2001|pp=311–312}}{{sfn|Holland|2002|p=202}}{{sfn|Morrison|2002|p=238}}<!-- Note that these sources are in disagreement about the number of casualties: Lanier says 21. --><!-- And, yes, you do need all four of these sources to get every point made in this paragraph! -->
	] and ] as the Macbeths, in historically accurate costumes]]
			] is unique among nineteenth century interpreters of Shakespeare in achieving stardom in roles of both genders. Her New York debut was as Lady Macbeth in 1836, and she would later be admired in London in the same role in the mid-1840s.{{sfn|Morrison|2002|p=239}}{{sfn|Gay|2002|p=162}} ] was considered the embodiment of early-Victorian notions of femininity. But for this reason she largely failed when she eventually played Lady Macbeth in 1864: her serious attempt to embody the coarser aspects of Lady Macbeth's character jarred harshly with her public image.{{sfn|Gay|2002|pp=161–162}} ], the great Italian actress, brought her Lady Macbeth to London in 1863 in Italian, and again in 1873 in an English translation cut in such a way as to be, in effect, Lady Macbeth's tragedy.{{sfn|Gay|2002|p=164}}
	In 1809, in an unsuccessful attempt to take ] upmarket, ] installed private boxes, increasing admission prices to pay for the improvements. The inaugural run at the newly renovated theatre was ''Macbeth'', which was disrupted for over two months with cries of "Old prices!" and "No private boxes!" until Kemble capitulated to the protestors' demands.<ref name="Lanier 2002, 37">Lanier (2002, 37)</ref>
			] as Lady Macbeth, an 1888 production]]
	] at ] gave a psychological portrayal of the central character, with a common touch, but was ultimately unsuccessful in the role. However he did pave the way for the most acclaimed performance of the nineteenth century, that of ].<ref>Williams (2002, 126&ndash;127)</ref> Macready played the role over a 30-year period, firstly at Covent Garden in 1820 and finally in his retirement performance. Although his playing evolved over the years, it was noted throughout for the tension between the idealistic aspects and the weaker, venal aspects of Macbeth's character.<ref name="Williams 2002, 127">Williams (2002, 127)</ref> His staging was full of spectacle, including several elaborate royal processions.<ref name="Williams 2002, 127"/>
			] was the most successful of the late-Victorian ]s, but his ''Macbeth'' failed to curry favour with audiences. His desire for psychological credibility reduced certain aspects of the role: He described Macbeth as a brave soldier but a moral coward, and played him untroubled by conscience&nbsp;– clearly already contemplating the murder of Duncan before his encounter with the witches.{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=129}}{{efn|Similar criticisms were made of {{ill|Friedrich Mitterwurzer|de}} in Germany, whose performances of ''Macbeth'' had many unintentional parallels with Irving's.{{sfn|Williams|2002|pp=129–130}}}} Irving's leading lady was ], but her Lady Macbeth was unsuccessful with the public, for whom a century of performances influenced by Sarah Siddons had created expectations at odds with Terry's conception of the role.{{sfn|Gay|2002|pp=166–167}}{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=130}}
	] playing Macbeth, from a mid-19th century performance]]
	In 1843 the ] finally brought the patent companies' monopoly to an end.<ref>Moody (2002, 38)</ref> From that time until the end of the ], London theatre was dominated by the ]s, and the style of presentation was "pictorial" &ndash; ] stages filled with spectacular stage-pictures, often featuring complex scenery, large casts in elaborate costumes, and frequent use of ].<ref>Schoch (2002, 58&ndash;59); Williams (2002, 128)</ref> ] (son of Edmund), at London's ] from 1850 to 1859, took an antiquarian view of Shakespeare performance, setting his ''Macbeth'' in a historically accurate eleventh-century Scotland.<ref>Schoch (2002, 61&ndash;62)</ref> His leading lady, ], created a sense of the character's inner life: '']''{{'}} critic saying "The countenance which she assumed ... when luring on Macbeth in his course of crime, was actually appalling in intensity, as if it denoted a hunger after guilt."<ref>'']'' 14 June 1853, cited by Gay (2002, 163&ndash;164)</ref> At the same time, special effects were becoming popular: for example in ]' ''Macbeth'' the witches performed behind green ], enabling them to appear and disappear using stage lighting.<ref>Schoch (2002, 64)</ref>
			Late nineteenth-century European Macbeths aimed for heroic stature, but at the expense of subtlety: ] in Italy and Adalbert Matkowsky in Germany were said to inspire awe, but elicited little pity.{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=130}}
	In 1849, rival performances of the play sparked the ] in ]. The popular American actor ], whose Macbeth was said to be like "the ferocious chief of a barbarous tribe"<ref>Morrison (2002, 237)</ref> played the central role at the Broadway Theatre to popular acclaim, while the "cerebral and patrician"<ref name="Lanier 2002, 37"/> English actor ], playing the same role at the ], suffered constant heckling. The existing enmity between the two men (Forrest had openly hissed Macready at a recent performance of '']'' in Britain) was taken up by Forrest's supporters &ndash; formed from the working class and lower middle class and anti-British agitators, keen to attack the upper-class pro-British patrons of the Opera House and the colonially-minded Macready. Nevertheless, Macready performed the role again three days later to a packed house while an angry mob gathered outside. The militia tasked with controlling the situation fired into the mob. In total, 31 rioters were killed and over 100 injured.<ref>Lanier (2002, 37); Booth (1995, 311&ndash;312); Holland (2002, 202); Morrison (2002, 238)</ref><!-- Note that these sources are in disagreement about the number of casualties: Lanier says 21. --><!-- And, yes, you do need all four of these sources to get every point made in this paragraph! -->
			===20th century to present===
	] as Lady Macbeth, an 1888 production]]
			{{quote box|width=23em|And then Lady Macbeth says 'He that's coming / Must be provided for.' It's an amazing line. She's going to play hostess to Duncan at Dunsinane, and 'provide' is what gracious hostesses always do. It's a wonder of a line to play because the reverberations do the acting for you, make the audience go "Aaaagh!"|—]{{sfn|McLuskie|2005|p=253}}}}
	] is unique among nineteenth century interpreters of Shakespeare in achieving stardom in roles of both genders. Her New York debut was as Lady Macbeth in 1836, and she would later be admired in London in the same role in the mid-1840s.<ref>Morrison (2002, 239); Gay (2002,162)</ref> ] was considered the embodiment of early-Victorian notions of femininity. But for this reason she largely failed when she eventually played Lady Macbeth in 1864: her serious attempt to embody the coarser aspects of Lady Macbeth's character jarred harshly with her public image.<ref>Gay (2002, 161&ndash;2)</ref> ], the great Italian actress, brought her Lady Macbeth to London in 1863 in Italian, and again in 1873 in an English translation cut in such a way as to be, in effect, Lady Macbeth's tragedy.<ref>Gay (2002, 164)</ref>
			Two developments changed the nature of ''Macbeth'' performance in the 20th century: first, developments in the craft of acting itself, especially the ideas of ] and ]; and second, the rise of the dictator as a political icon. The latter has not always assisted the performance: it is difficult to sympathise with a Macbeth based on Hitler, Stalin, or Idi Amin.{{sfn|Williams|2002|pp=130–131}}
	] was the most successful of the late-Victorian actor-managers, but his ''Macbeth'' failed to curry favour with audiences. His desire for psychological credibility reduced certain aspects of the role: He described Macbeth as a brave soldier but a moral coward, and played him untroubled by conscience &ndash; clearly already contemplating the murder of Duncan before his encounter with the witches.<ref>Williams (2002, 129)</ref> (Similar criticisms were made of ] in Germany, whose performances of ''Macbeth'' had many unintentional parallels with Irving's.<ref>Williams (2002, 129&ndash;130)</ref>) Irving's leading lady was ], but her Lady Macbeth was unsuccessful with the public, for whom a century of performances influenced by Sarah Siddons had created expectations at odds with Terry's conception of the role.<ref>Gay (2002, 166&ndash;167); Williams (2002, 130)</ref>
			], at the ] in 1923, was the first of the 20th-century directors to costume ''Macbeth'' in ].{{sfn|Smallwood|2002|p=102}}
	Late nineteenth-century European Macbeths aimed for heroic stature, but at the expense of subtlety: ] in Italy and ] in Germany were said to inspire awe, but elicited little pity.<ref>Williams (2002, 130)</ref>
			] and ] in the ] production that came to be known as the '']'' (1936)]]
	====Twentieth century to present====
	{{quote box|width=23em|"And then Lady Macbeth says 'He that's coming / Must be provided for.' It's an amazing line. She's going to play hostess to Duncan at Dunsinane, and 'provide' is what gracious hostesses always do. It's a wonder of a line to play because the reverberations do the acting for you, make the audience go 'Aaaagh!'"|—]<ref>McLuskie (2005, 253)</ref>}}
			In 1936, a decade before his film adaptation of the play, ] directed ''Macbeth'' for the ] of the ] at the ] in Harlem, using black actors and setting the action in Haiti: with drums and ] rites to establish the Witches scenes. The production, dubbed ''The ]'', proved inflammatory in the aftermath of the ], accused of making fun of black culture and as "a campaign to burlesque negroes" until Welles persuaded crowds that his use of black actors and voodoo made important cultural statements.{{sfn|Forsyth|2007|p=284}}{{sfn|Hawkes|2003|p=577}}
	Two developments changed the nature of ''Macbeth'' performance in the twentieth century: firstly developments in the craft of acting itself, especially the ideas of ] and ], and secondly the rise of the dictator as a political icon. The latter has not always assisted the performance: it is difficult to sympathise with a Macbeth based on Hitler, Stalin, or Idi Amin.<ref>Williams (2002, 130&ndash;131)</ref>
			]
	], at the ] in 1923, was the first of the twentieth-century directors to costume ''Macbeth'' in ].<ref>Smallwood (2002, 102)</ref>
			A performance which is frequently referenced as an example of the play's curse was the outdoor production directed by ] in 1953 in the ] of ], starring ]. Using the imposing spectacle of ] as a key element of the set, the production was plagued by a host of mishaps, including Charlton Heston being burned when his tights caught fire.{{sfn|Hardy|2014}}{{sfn|Bernews|2013}}
	] and Edna Thomas in the ] production that came to be known as the '']'' (1936)]]
			Some critics contend there were three great Macbeths on the English-speaking stage in the 20th century, all of them commencing at ]: ] in 1955, ] in 1976 and ] in 1999.{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=131}} Olivier's portrayal (directed by ], with ] as Lady Macbeth) was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. ] said it succeeded because Olivier built the role to a climax at the end of the play, whereas most actors spend all they have in the first two acts.{{sfn|Williams|2002|pp=130–131}}{{sfn|Brooke|2008|pp=47–48}}
	In 1936, a decade before his film adaptation of the play, ] directed ''Macbeth'' for the ] of the ] at the ] in Harlem, using black actors and setting the action in Haiti: with drums and ] rituals to establish the Witches scenes. The production, dubbed ''The ]'', proved inflammatory in the aftermath of the ], accused of making fun of black culture and as "a campaign to burlesque negroes" until Welles persuaded crowds that his use of black actors and voodoo made important cultural statements.<ref>Forsyth (2000, 284); Hawkes (2003, 577)</ref>
			The play caused difficulties for the ], especially at the (then) ]. ]'s 1967 production was (in Michael Billington's words) "an acknowledged disaster" with the use of real leaves from Birnham Wood getting first-night laughs, and ]'s 1974 production was (Billington again) "an over-elaborate religious spectacle".{{sfn|Billington|2003|p=599}}
	]
	A performance which is frequently referenced as an example of the play's curse was the outdoor production directed by ] in 1953 in the ] of Bermuda, and starring ]. Using the imposing spectacle of ]'s as a key element of the set, the production was plagued by a host of mishaps, including Charlton Heston being burned when his tights caught fire.<ref>`http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20141016/ISLAND/141019781 ""In Bermuda, Shakespeare in all his glory'', by Jessie Moniz Hardy. The Royal Gazette. 16 Coctober, 2014</ref><ref></ref>
			But Nunn achieved success for the RSC in his 1976 production at the intimate ], with ] and ] in the central roles.{{sfn|Billington|2003|pp=599–600}} A small cast worked within a simple circle, and McKellen's Macbeth had nothing noble or likeable about him, being a manipulator in a world of manipulative characters. They were a young couple, physically passionate, "not monsters but recognisable human beings",{{efn|Michael Billington, cited by Gay.{{sfn|Gay|2002|p=169}}}} but their relationship atrophied as the action progressed.{{sfn|Williams|2002|pp=132–134}}{{sfn|Gay|2002|p=169}}
	The critical consensus is that there have been three great Macbeths on the English-speaking stage in the twentieth century, all of them commencing at ]: ] in 1955, ] in 1976 and ] in 1999.<ref>Williams (2002, 131)</ref> Olivier's portrayal (directed by ], with ] as Lady Macbeth) was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. ] expressed the view that it succeeded because Olivier built the role to a climax at the end of the play, whereas most actors spend all they have in the first two acts.<ref>Williams (2002, 130&ndash;131); Brooke (2008, 47&ndash;48)</ref>
			The ] again achieved critical success in ]'s 1999 production at ], with ] and ] in the central roles, once again demonstrating the suitability of the play for smaller venues.{{sfn|Walter|2002|p=1}}{{sfn|Billington|2003|p=600}} Doran's witches spoke their lines to a theatre in absolute darkness, and the opening visual image was the entrance of Macbeth and Banquo in the berets and fatigues of modern warfare, carried on the shoulders of triumphant troops.{{sfn|Billington|2003|p=600}} In contrast to Nunn, Doran presented a world in which king Duncan and his soldiers were ultimately benign and honest, heightening the deviance of Macbeth (who seems genuinely surprised by the witches' prophecies) and Lady Macbeth in plotting to kill the king. The play said little about politics, instead powerfully presenting its central characters' psychological collapse.{{sfn|Williams|2002|p=134}}
	The play caused grave difficulties for the ], especially at the (then) ]. ]'s 1967 production was (in Michael Billington's words) "an acknowledged disaster" with the use of real leaves from Birnham Wood getting unsolicited first-night laughs, and ]'s 1974 production was (Billington again) "an over-elaborate religious spectacle".<ref>Billington (2003, 599)</ref> But Nunn achieved success for the RSC in his 1976 production at the intimate ], with ] and ] in the central roles.<ref>Billington (2003, 599&ndash;600)</ref> A small cast worked within a simple circle, and McKellen's Macbeth had nothing noble or likeable about him, being a manipulator in a world of manipulative characters. They were a young couple, physically passionate, "not monsters but recognisable human beings,"<ref>Michael Billington, cited by Gay (2002, 169)</ref> but their relationship atrophied as the action progressed.<ref>Williams (2002, 132&ndash;134); Gay (2002, 169)</ref>
			''Macbeth'' returned to the RSC in 2018, when ] played the title role, with ] as his wife, Lady Macbeth.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.rsc.org.uk/macbeth/past-productions/polly-findlay-2018-production|title=Macbeth|website=RSC|access-date=21 May 2019|archive-date=13 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190813084244/https://www.rsc.org.uk/macbeth/past-productions/polly-findlay-2018-production|url-status=live}}</ref> The play later transferred to the Barbican in London.
	In Soviet-controlled Prague in 1977, faced with the illegality of working in theatres, ] adapted ''Macbeth'' into a 75-minute abridgement for five actors, suitable for "bringing a show in a suitcase to people's homes."<ref>Holland (2007, 40) and see also ]'s '']''.</ref>
			In Soviet-controlled Prague in 1977, faced with the illegality of working in theatres, ] adapted ''Macbeth'' into a 75-minute abridgement for five actors, suitable for "bringing a show in a suitcase to people's homes".{{sfn|Holland|2007|p=40}}{{efn|See also ]'s '']''.}}
	Spectacle became unfashionable in Western theatre throughout the twentieth century. In East Asia, however, spectacular productions have achieved great success, including ]'s 1980 production with ] as Macbeth, set in the sixteenth century ].<ref>Williams (2002, 134&ndash;135)</ref> The same director's tour of London in 1987 was widely praised by critics, even though (like most of their audience) they were unable to understand the significance of Macbeth's gestures, the huge Buddhist altar dominating the set, or the petals falling from the cherry trees.<ref>Holland (2002, 207)</ref> ]'s 1980 ] production in Beijing made every effort to be unpolitical (necessary in the aftermath of the ]): yet audiences still perceived correspondences between the central character (who the director had actually modelled on ]) and ].<ref>Gillies (2002, 268)</ref> Shakespeare has often been adapted to indigenous theatre traditions, for example the ''] Macbeth'' of ] performed at the inaugural Chinese Shakespeare Festival of 1986.<ref>Gillies (2002, 270)</ref> Similarly, ]'s ''Barnam Vana'' of 1979 had adapted ''Macbeth'' to the ] tradition of ], India.<ref>Gillies (2002, 276&ndash;278)</ref> In 1997, ] created ''Stage of Blood'' merging a range of martial arts, dance and gymnastic styles from ], performed in Imphal and in England. The stage was literally a raft on a lake.<ref>Gillies (2002, 278&ndash;279)</ref>
			Spectacle was unfashionable in Western theatre throughout the 20th century. In East Asia, however, spectacular productions have achieved great success, including ]'s 1980 production with ] as Macbeth, set in the 16th century ].{{sfn|Williams|2002|pp=134–135}} The same director's tour of London in 1987 was widely praised by critics, even though (like most of their audience) they were unable to understand the significance of Macbeth's gestures, the huge Buddhist altar dominating the set, or the petals falling from the cherry trees.{{sfn|Holland|2002|p=207}}
	The ] again achieved critical success in ]'s 1999 production at ], with ] and ] in the central roles, once again demonstrating the suitability of the play to smaller venues.<ref>Walter (2002, 1); Billington (2003, 600)</ref> Doran's witches spoke their lines to a theatre in absolute darkness and the opening visual image was the entrance of Macbeth and Banquo in the berets and fatigues of modern warfare, carried on the shoulders of triumphant troops.<ref>Billington (2003, 600)</ref> In contrast to Nunn, Doran presented a world in which king Duncan and his soldiers were ultimately benign and honest, heightening the deviance of Macbeth (who seems genuinely surprised by the witches' prophesies) and Lady Macbeth, in plotting to kill the king. The play said little about politics, instead powerfully presenting its central characters' psychological collapse.<ref>Williams (2002, 134)</ref>
			Xu Xiaozhong's 1980 ] production in Beijing made every effort to be unpolitical (necessary in the aftermath of the ]): yet audiences still perceived correspondences between the central character (whom the director had actually modelled on ]) and ].{{sfn|Gillies|Minami|Li|Trivedi|2002|p=268}} Shakespeare has often been adapted to indigenous theatre traditions, for example the ''] Macbeth'' of ] performed at the inaugural Chinese Shakespeare Festival of 1986.{{sfn|Gillies|Minami|Li|Trivedi|2002|p=270}} Similarly, ]'s ''Barnam Vana'' of 1979 had adapted ''Macbeth'' to the ] tradition of ], India.{{sfn|Gillies|Minami|Li|Trivedi|2002|pp=276–278}} In 1997, Lokendra Arambam created ''Stage of Blood'', merging a range of martial arts, dance and gymnastic styles from ], performed in ] and in England. The stage was literally a raft on a lake.{{sfn|Gillies|Minami|Li|Trivedi|2002|pp=278–279}}
	While the play has been translated and performed in various languages in different parts of the world, ''Media Artists'' was the first to stage its ] adaptation in ]. The adaptation by Balram and the play directed by ] have been universally acknowledged as a milestone in Punjabi theatre.<ref>{{cite news | url = http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060613/ldh2.htm | title = Theatre workshop for children| publisher =] | date = 2006-06-13 }}</ref> The unique attempt involved trained theatre experts and the actors taken from rural background in ]. Punjabi folk music imbued the play with the native ethos as the English setting of the Shakespeare's play was transposed into Punjabi milieu.<ref>{{cite news | url = http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040630/cth2.htm | title = Exposing Rural Punjabis to Shakespeare's Magic | author = Aditi Tandon | publisher = ] | date = 2004-06-29 }}</ref>
			'']'' (蜘蛛巣城 Kumonosu-jō, ''Spider Web Castle'') is a 1957 Japanese samurai film co-written and directed by ]. The film transposes ''Macbeth'' from Medieval Scotland to feudal Japan, with stylistic elements drawn from Noh drama. Kurosawa was a fan of the play and planned his own adaptation for several years, postponing it after learning of Orson Welles' ''Macbeth'' (1948). The film won two Mainichi Film Awards.
	=== Screen ===
			The play has been translated and performed in various languages in different parts of the world, and ''Media Artists'' was the first to stage its ] adaptation in ]. The adaptation by Balram and the play directed by ] have been universally acknowledged as a milestone in Punjabi theatre.{{sfn|The Tribune|2006}} The unique attempt involved trained theatre experts and the actors taken from a rural background in ]. Punjabi folk music imbued the play with the native ethos as the Scottish setting of Shakespeare's play was transposed into a Punjabi ].{{sfn|Tandon|2004}}
	{{main article|Macbeth on screen}}
			In 2021, ] starred in ''The Tragedy of Macbeth'' at the ] in London.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Benedict |first1=David |title='The Tragedy of Macbeth' Review: James McArdle and Saoirse Ronan in an Over-Directed and Under-Dramatized Production |url=https://variety.com/2021/legit/reviews/macbeth-review-saoirse-ronan-james-mcardle-1235089573/ |access-date=19 June 2022 |work=Variety |date=14 October 2021 |archive-date=19 June 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220619150704/https://variety.com/2021/legit/reviews/macbeth-review-saoirse-ronan-james-mcardle-1235089573/ |url-status=live }}</ref> The following year a revival production opened on Broadway with ] and ] to middling reviews.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Green |first1=Jesse |title=Review: In a New 'Macbeth,' Something Wonky This Way Comes |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/29/theater/macbeth-review-broadway.html |access-date=19 June 2022 |work=The New York Times |date=29 April 2022 |archive-date=19 June 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220619051154/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/29/theater/macbeth-review-broadway.html |url-status=live }}</ref>
	==== Twentieth century ====
			A new production starring ] and ] ran at London's ] from 8 December 2023 to 10 February 2024. Max Webster directed the production.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gans |first=Andrew |date=8 December 2023 |title=Donmar Warehouse Macbeth, Starring Cush Jumbo and David Tennant, Begins December 8 |url=https://playbill.com/article/donmar-warehouse-macbeth-starring-cush-jumbo-and-david-tennant-begins-december-8 |access-date=25 April 2024 |website=playbill.com}}</ref> The show received 3 ] nominations, including Best Revival.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2024-03-12 |title=Olivier awards 2024: complete list of nominations |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/mar/12/olivier-awards-2024-complete-list-of-nominations |access-date=2024-04-25 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> It transferred to the ] in the ] from 1 October 2024 for a limited run.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-04-23 |title=Macbeth with David Tennant and Cush Jumbo to transfer to the West End |url=https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/macbeth-with-david-tennant-and-cush-jumbo-to-transfer-to-the-west-end_1594569/ |access-date=2024-04-25 |language=en-US}}</ref>
	The earliest known film ''Macbeth'' was 1905's American short ''Death Scene From Macbeth'', and short versions were produced in Italy in 1909 and France in 1910. Two notable early versions are lost: Ludwig Landmann produced a 47-minute version in Germany in 1913, and ] produced a 1916 version in America featuring the noted stage actor ].<ref>Brode (2001, 177)</ref> Tree is said to have had great difficulties adapting to the new medium, and especially in confining himself to the small number of lines in the (silent) screenplay, until an ingenious cameraman allowed him to play his entire part to an empty camera, after which a real camera shot the film.<ref>Freedman (2000, 49)</ref>
			=== Operas ===
	In 1947, ] produced an independent film of ''Macbeth'', intended for distribution to schools, most notable for the designer of its eighty-three costumes: the soon-to-be-famous ].<ref>Brode (2001, 178&ndash;179)</ref>
			''Macbeth'' was adapted into an Italian ] ('']'') by composer ] and librettist ] in 1847 (revised in French in 1865). An English opera adaptation of the play was created by ] in 1927.<ref>{{Cite news |date=1927-12-18 |title=An English "Macbeth." |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1927/12/18/archives/an-english-macbeth.html |access-date=2023-12-20 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
			Contemporary opera adaptations include Luke Styles' ''Macbeth'' (2015)<ref>{{Cite news |last=Hall |first=George |date=2015-09-10 |title=Macbeth review – an audacious operatic reduction |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/10/macbeth-review-luke-styles-opera-shakespeare-linbury-studio |access-date=2023-12-20 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> and ]'s ''Macbeth Underworld'' (2019).<ref>{{Cite web |title='Macbeth Underworld' de Pascal Dusapin. Psychanalyse d'un couple halluciné. Éblouissant ***. |url=https://www.rtbf.be/article/macbeth-underworld-de-pascal-dusapin-psychanalyse-d-un-couple-hallucine-eblouissant-10325447 |access-date=2023-12-20 |website=RTBF |language=fr}}</ref>
	] and ] as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in Welles' 1948 film adaptation of the play.]]
	]' 1948 '']'', in the director's words a "violently sketched charcoal drawing of a great play,"<ref>Orson Wells, cited by Rosenthal (2007, 99)</ref> was filmed in only 23 days and on a budget of just $700,000. These filming conditions allowed only a single abstract set, and eclectic costumes. Dialogue was pre-recorded, enabling the actors to perform very long individual takes, including one of over ten minutes surrounding the death of Duncan.<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 98&ndash;99)</ref> Welles himself played the central character, who dominates the film, measured both by his time on screen, and by physical presence: high-angle and low-angle shots and deep-focus close-ups are used to distort his size in comparison to other characters.<ref>Guntner (2000, 124)</ref> Welles retained from his own 1936 stage production the image of a ] controlling the fate of the central character: and at the end it is the doll we see beheaded.<ref>Forsyth (2000, 284&ndash;285)</ref> The film's allegorical aspect is heightened by Welles' introduction of a non-Shakespearean character, the Holy Father (played by ]),<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 99)</ref> in opposition to the witches, speaking lines taken from Shakespeare's Ross, Angus and the Old Man.<ref>Mason (2000, 188&ndash;189)</ref> Contemporary reviews were largely negative, particularly criticising Welles' unsympathetic portrayal of the central character. ''Newsweek'' commented: "His Macbeth is a static, two-dimensional creature as capable of evil in the first scene as in the final hours of his bloody reign."<ref>Brode (2001, 183)</ref>
			An indirect adaptation is ]'s '']'' (1934), based on ] by ].
	'']'' (], 1955) established the tradition of resetting the ''Macbeth'' story among 20th-century gangsters.<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 100&ndash;102)</ref> Others to do so include '']'' (William Reilly, 1991),<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 110&ndash;111)</ref> '']'' (], 2003)<ref name="Rosenthal 2007, 123-124">Rosenthal (2007, 123&ndash;124)</ref> and ]'s Australian 2006 '']''.<ref name="Rosenthal 2007, 127-128">Rosenthal (2007, 127&ndash;128)</ref>
			==See also==
	In 1957, ] used the ''Macbeth'' story as the basis for the "universally acclaimed"<ref>Guntner (2000, 125)</ref> '']'' (in English known as ''Throne of Blood'' or (the literal translation of its title) ''Spiderweb Castle'').<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 103)</ref> The film is a Japanese period-piece (]), drawing upon elements of ], especially in its depiction of the evil spirit who takes the part of Shakespeare's witches, and of Asaji, the Lady Macbeth character, played by ],<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 103&ndash;104)</ref> and upon ] in its depiction of Washizu, the Macbeth character, played by ].<ref>Howard (2003, 617)</ref> In a twist on Shakespeare's ending, the tyrant (having witnessed Spiderweb Forest come to Spiderweb Castle) is killed by volleys of arrows from his own archers after they come to the realization he also lied about the identity of their former master's murderer.<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 105)</ref>
			* ]
			==Notes and references==
	] directed ] and ] in a ] which later had a limited European theatrical release. (The three had also worked together on the earlier '']'' ].)<ref>McKernan & Terris (1994, 93)</ref> Neither of the central couple was able to adapt their stage acting style to the screen successfully, leading to their roles being described by critics as "recited" rather than "acted".<ref>Brode (2001, 185&ndash;187)</ref>
			{{notelist|30em}}
			== References ==
	]'s 1971 '']'' was the director's first film after the brutal murder of his wife, ], and reflected his determination to "show violence the way it is ... if you don't show it realistically then that's immoral and harmful."<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 107&ndash;108)</ref> His film showed deaths only reported in the play, including the execution of Cawdor, and Macbeth stabbing Duncan,<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 108)</ref> and its violence was "intense and incessant."<ref>Brode (2001, 189)</ref> Made in the aftermath of ]'s youthful '']'', and financed by '']'' mogul ], Polanski's film featured a young sexy lead couple, played by ] (28) and by ] (25), who controversially performed the sleepwalking scene nude.<ref>Brode (2001, 187&ndash;189), Rosenthal (2007, 107&ndash;109)</ref> The unsettling film score, provided by the ], invoked "discord and dissonance."<ref>Sanders (2007, 147)</ref> While using Shakespeare's words, Polanski alters aspects of Shakespeare's story, turning the minor character Ross into a ruthless Machiavellian,<ref>Brode (2001, 191)</ref> and adding an epilogue to the play in which Donalbain (younger son of Duncan) arrives at the witches' lair, indicating that the cycle of violence will begin again.<ref>Guntner (2000, 126&ndash;127)</ref>
			{{refbegin}}
			All references to ''Macbeth'', unless otherwise specified, are taken from the ], second series edition edited by ].{{sfn|Muir|1984}} Under their referencing system, III.I.55 means act 3, scene 1, line 55. All references to other Shakespeare plays are to ] '']'' edited by ] and ].{{sfn|Wells|Taylor|2005}}
			{{refend}}
			{{reflist|20em}}
			==Sources==
	In 1973, the Virginia Museum Theater (VMT, now the ]), presented ''Macbeth,'' starring ]. Dubbed by the ''New York Times'' as the "'Fowler' Macbeth" after director ], it was described by Clive Barnes as "splendidly vigorous, forcefully immediate... probably the goriest Shakespearean production I have seen since Peter Brook's 'Titus Andronicus'."<ref>{{cite web|author=CLIVE BARNES Special to The New York Times |url=http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FB071FF83C54137A93C0A81789D85F478785F9 |title=Stage - Fowler 'Macbeth' - A Vigorous Production Staged in Richmond The Cast - Article - NYTimes.com |publisher=New York Times |date=1973-02-12 |accessdate=2013-04-27}}</ref>
			===Editions of ''Macbeth''===
			{{refbegin|30em}}
	The Nunn/McKellen/Dench ] ] stage performance discussed above was adapted for TV and broadcast by ] (see '']'').<ref>Willems (2000, 36); McKernan & Terris (1994, 99)</ref>
			*{{cite book
			|title = Macbeth
	William Reilly's 1991 '']'', another film to set the ''Macbeth'' story among gangsters, has been praised for its accuracy in depicting ] rituals, said to be more authentic than those in '']'' or '']''. However the film failed to please audiences or critics: Leonard Maltin found it "pretentious" and "unintentionally comic" and Daniel Rosenthal describes it as "providing the most risible chunks of modernised Shakespeare in screen history."<ref>Brode (2001, 193); Rosenthal (2007, 110)</ref> In 1992 ] produced a cel-animated ''Macbeth'' for the series '']'',<ref>Holland (2007, 43)</ref> and in 1997 Jeremy Freeston directed ] and ] in a low budget, fairly full-text, version.<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 112&ndash;3)</ref>
			|last = Shakespeare
			|first = William
	In Shakespeare's script, the actor playing Banquo must enter the stage as a ghost. The major film versions have usually taken the opportunity to provide a double perspective: Banquo visible to the audience from Macbeth's perspective, but invisible from the perspective of other characters. Television versions, however, have often taken the third approach of leaving Banquo invisible to viewers, thereby portraying Banquo's ghost as merely Macbeth's delusion. This approach is taken in the 1978 ] production, ]'s 1983 version for ], and in ]'s 1997 ''Macbeth on the Estate''.<ref name="Forsyth 2000, 289-290">Forsyth (2000, 289&ndash;290)</ref> ''Macbeth on the Estate'' largely dispensed with the supernatural in favour of the drug-crime driven realism of characters living on a ] housing estate: except for the three "weird" (in the modern sense of the word) children who prophesy Macbeth's fate.<ref name="Forsyth 2000, 289-290"/> This production used Shakespeare's language, but encouraged the actors &ndash; many of whom were locals, not professionals &ndash; to speak it naturalistically.<ref>Howard (2003, 618)</ref>
			|author-link = William Shakespeare
			|display-authors = 0
	====Twenty-first century====
			|editor1-last = Bloom
	Twenty-first-century cinema has re-interpreted ''Macbeth'', relocating "Scotland" elsewhere: '']'' to Mumbai, '']'' to Pennsylvania, ]'s '']'' to Melbourne, and Allison L. LiCalsi's 2001 ''Macbeth: The Comedy'' to a location only differentiated from the reality of New Jersey, where it was filmed, through signifiers such as tartan, Scottish flags and bagpipes.<ref>Jess-Cooke (2006, 174&ndash;175)</ref> ]'s 2001 '']'' was set among, and starred, residents of ], a remote fishing community in Madagascar.<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 114&ndash;117)</ref> ]' 2000 '']'' (in English: ''Bleeder'') set the story among Venezuelan bandits and presented a shockingly visualised horror version.<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 118&ndash;120)</ref>
			|editor1-first = Harold
			|editor1-link = Harold Bloom
	]'s '']'' reframes the ''Macbeth'' story as a comedy-thriller set in a 1975 fast-food restaurant, and features ] in the Macbeth role and ] as Pat, the Lady Macbeth character: "We're not bad people, Mac. We're just under-achievers who have to make up for lost time." ] plays vegetarian detective Ernie McDuff who (in the words of Daniel Rosenthal) " his uniquely offbeat menacing delivery to innocuous lines."<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 121&ndash;122)</ref> ''Scotland, PA'''s conceit of resetting the ''Macbeth'' story at a restaurant was followed in ]'s 2005 ] adaptation.<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 122)</ref>
			|series = Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages
			|publisher = Chelsea House
	]'s 2003 '']'', filmed in ] and ] and set in the ], was produced in the ] tradition, but heavily influenced by ''Macbeth'', by ]'s 1972 '']'' and by ]'s 1994 '']''.<ref>Jess-Cooke (2006, 177&ndash;178)</ref> It deviates from the ''Macbeth'' story in making the Macbeth character (Miyan Maqbool, played by ]) a single man, lusting after the mistress (Nimmi, played by ]) of the Duncan character (Jahangir Khan, known as Abbaji, played by ]).<ref name="Rosenthal 2007, 123-124"/> Another deviation is the comparative delay in the murder: Shakespeare's protagonists murder Duncan early in the play, but more than half of the film has passed by the time Nimmi and Miyan kill Abbaji.<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 124)</ref>
			|location = New York
			|year = 2008
	In 2004 an "eccentric" Swedish/Norwegian film, based on ]'s Ice Globe Theatre production of ''Macbeth'', was said by critic Daniel Rosenthal to owe "more to co-director ]'s background in natural history documentaries than to Shakespeare."<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 125&ndash;126)</ref> More conventional adaptations of 21st-century stage productions to television include ]'s ] production filmed in 2001 with ] and ] in the central roles,<ref>Walter (2002, 65)</ref> and ]'s ] '']'' televised in 2010 with ] and ] as the tragic couple. The cast of the latter felt that the history of their stage performance (moving from a ] at Chichester to a ] in London to a ] in Brooklyn) made it easier for them to "re-scale", yet again, their performances for the cameras.<ref>Interview with ] on DVD of ]</ref>
			|isbn = 978-0-7910-9842-4
			|ref = {{harvid|Bloom|2008}}
	In 2006, ] directed a Shakespearean-language, extremely violent '']'' set in the Melbourne underworld. ] played Macbeth. ] played Lady Macbeth and shared the screenplay credits with Wright.<ref name="Rosenthal 2007, 127-128"/> The director considered her portrayal of Lady Macbeth to be the most sympathetic he had ever seen.<ref>Interview with ] in "Making of Documentary" on DVD of ]</ref> In spite of the high level of violence and nudity (Macbeth has sex with the three naked schoolgirl witches as they prophesy his fate), intended to appeal to the young audiences that had flocked to '']'', the film flopped at the box office.<ref>Rosenthal (2007, 127)</ref>
			}}
			*{{cite book
	In 2014, '']'' wove a 10 episode arc placing its characters in the world of Macbeth. The adaptation uses students and a modern-day setting to loosely parallel Shakespeare's play. It starred ], ], ] and ] and embarked on a ] plotline.
			|title = Macbeth
			|last = Shakespeare
	]'s feature-length adaptation '']'', starring ] and ], was released in October 2015.
			|first = William
			|author-link = William Shakespeare
	Also in 2015, Brazilian film ''A Floresta que se Move'' (''The Moving Forest'') premiered at the ].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ffm-montreal.org/en/636-en_the-moving-forest.html | author= | title=A Floresta que se Move / The Moving Forest| work=Montreal World Film Festival webpage | accessdate=11 October 2015}}</ref> Directed by Vinícius Coimbra and starred by ] and ], the film uses a modern-day setting, replacing the throne of Scotland with the presidency of a high-ranked bank.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.peliculacriativa.com.br/2015/08/ana-paula-arosio-volta-ao-cinema-em-a-floresta-que-se-move-de-vinicius-coimbra.html| author=Lynn Colling | title=Ana Paula Arósio volta ao cinema em 'A Floresta que se Move', filme dirigido por Vinícius Coimbra| work=Película Criativa | language=Portuguese| accessdate=11 October 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://cultura.estadao.com.br/noticias/cinema,ana-paula-arosio-volta-as-telas-em-a-floresta-que-se-move,1577970| author=Flavia Guerra | title=Ana Paula Arósio volta às telas em 'A Floresta que se Move' | work=O Estado de São Paulo | language=Portuguese| accessdate=11 October 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://telatela.cartacapital.com.br/ana-paula-arosio-e-lady-macbeth-em-a-floresta-que-se-move/| author=Flavia Guerra | title=Ana Paula Arósio é Lady Macbeth em 'A Floresta que se Move' | work=Carta Capital| language=Portuguese| accessdate=11 October 2015}}</ref>
			|display-authors = 0
			|editor1-last = Braunmuller
	===Other media===
			|editor1-first = Albert R.
			|series = ]
	====Literature====
			|publisher = ]
			|location = Cambridge
	There have been numerous literary adaptations and spin-offs from ''Macbeth''. Russian Novelist ] told a variation of the story from Lady Macbeth's point of view in '']'', which itself became a number of films<ref>Brode (2001, 192)</ref> and ] by ].<ref>Sanders (2007, 156)</ref> ]'s 1911 ''The Rehearsal'' fictionalises ]'s inept rehearsals for ''Macbeth's'' premiere.<ref>Lanier (2002, 119)</ref> Gu Wuwei's 1916 play ''The Usurper of State Power'' adapted both ''Macbeth'' and ''Hamlet'' as a parody of contemporary events in China.<ref>Gillies (2002, 267)</ref> The play has been used as a background for detective fiction (as in ]'s 1976 ''Bullets for Macbeth'')<ref>Osborne (2007, 129)</ref> and, in the case of ]'s last detective novel ], the play takes centre stage as the rehearsal, production and run of a 'flawless' production is described in absorbing detail (so much so that her biographer describes the novel as effectively Marsh's third production of the play).<ref>Margaret Lewis 'Ngaio March: A Life'</ref> But the play was also used as the basis of ]'s parody of the whodunit genre ''The Macbeth Murder Mystery'', in which the protagonist reads ''Macbeth'' applying the conventions of detective stories, and concludes that it must have been Macduff who murdered Duncan.<ref>Lanier (2002, 85)</ref> Comics and graphic novels have utilised the play, or have dramatised the circumstances of its inception: ] himself wrote the play for Shakespeare in the course of one night, in the 1947 ''Shakespeare's Ghost Writer''.<ref>Lanier (2002, 136&ndash;137)</ref> A cyberpunk version of MacBeth titled ''Mac'' appears in the collection ''Sound & Fury: Shakespeare Goes Punk.<ref></ref>
			|year = 1997
			|isbn = 978-0-521-29455-3
	Macbeth has been adapted into plays dealing with the political and cultural concerns of many nations. ]'s '']'' satirised ''Macbeth'' as a meaningless succession of treachery and slaughter.<ref>Hortmann (2002, 219)</ref> ]'s ''A'are Akogun'', first performed in Nigeria in 1968, mixed the English and ] languages.<ref>Banham (2002, 292)</ref> ]'s 1970 play '']'' adapts ''Macbeth'' to Zulu culture, and was said by '']'' to be "more authentic than any modern ''Macbeth''" in presenting a world in which a man's fighting ability is central to his identity.<ref>Banham (2002, 286&ndash;287), citing '']'' 8 August 1997</ref> ] adapted ''Macbeth'' as a battle to take over a powerful corporation in Ghana in his 1972 ''Mambo'' or ''Let's Play Games, My Husband''.<ref>Banham (2002, 296)</ref> ]'s ''Zeneral Macbeff'', first performed in 1982, adapted the story to the local ] and to the ] political situation.<ref>Banham (2002, 289&ndash;292)</ref> (The same author later translated ''Macbeth'' itself into Mauritian creole, as ''Trazedji Makbess''.)<ref>Banham (2002, 289)</ref> And in 2000, Chuck Mike and the Nigerian Performance Studio Workshop produced ''Mukbutu'' as a direct commentary on the fragile nature of Nigerian democracy at the time.<ref>Banham (2002, 297)</ref>
			|ref = {{harvid|Braunmuller|1997}}
			|url-access = registration
	====Music and audio====
			|url = https://archive.org/details/macbeth0000shak_q6u8
	] as it appears in ]]]
			}}
	''Macbeth'' is, with '']'', one of the two most-performed Shakespeare plays on ], with 20 productions between 1923 and 2005.<ref>Greenhalgh (2007, 186 and footnote 39 on 197)</ref>
			*{{cite book
			|title = Macbeth
	The extant version of ''Macbeth'', in the ], contains dancing and music, including the song "Come Away Hecate" which exists in two collections of lute music (both c.1630, one of them being ]) arranged by ].<ref>Brooke (2008, 225)</ref> And, from the Restoration onwards, incidental music has frequently been composed for the play: including works by ] in the eighteenth century.<ref>Sanders (2007, 32)</ref> ]'s use of dance in the witches' scenes was inherited by ], which in turn influenced ] to incorporate a ballet around the witches' cauldron into his opera '']''.<ref>Sanders (2007, 60)</ref> Verdi's first Shakespeare-influenced opera, with libretto by ], incorporated a number of striking arias for Lady Macbeth, giving her a prominence in the early part of the play which contrasts with the character's increasing isolation as the action continues: she ceases to sing duets and her sleepwalking confession is starkly contrasted with the "supported grief" of Macduff in the preceding scene.<ref>Sanders (2007, 83 & 112&ndash;116)</ref> Other music influenced by the play includes ]'s 1890 symphonic poem '']''.<ref>Sanders (2007, 16)</ref> ] and ] incorporated themes depicting the female characters from ''Macbeth'' in the 1957 Shakespearean jazz suite '']'': the weird sisters juxtaposed with Iago (from '']''), and ''Lady Mac'' represented by ragtime piano because, as Ellington put it, "we suspect there was a little ragtime in her soul".<ref>Sanders (2007, 17 & 20)</ref> Another Jazz collaboration to create hybrids of Shakespeare plays was that of ] with ], who in Laine's 1964 ''Shakespeare and All That Jazz'' juxtaposed Titania's instructions to her fairies from '']'' with the witches' chant from ''Macbeth''.<ref>''Macbeth'' 1.1.10&ndash;11; ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' 3.1.154&ndash;166); Sanders (2007, 22&ndash;23)</ref> In 2000, ] produced their heavy metal concept-album retelling '']''.<ref>Lanier (2002, 72)</ref>
			|last = Shakespeare
			|first = William
	====Visual arts====
			|author-link = William Shakespeare
			|display-authors = 0
	The play has inspired numerous works of art. In 1750 and 1760 respectively, the painters ] and ] portrayed Macbeth and Banquo meeting the Three Witches in a scenic landscape, both likely having been inspired by ] 1653&ndash;4 painting ''Landscape in a Storm''. While Wootton's extended visualization was ultimately more significant, Zuccarelli's allegorical version became available to a much wider constituency, through its 1767 exhibition with the ] and its subsequent engraving by ] in 1770.<ref>Sillars (2006, 1&ndash;2, 77&ndash;79)</ref> The scene in which Lady Macbeth seizes the daggers, as performed by ] and ], was a touchstone throughout ]'s career, including works in 1766, 1774 and 1812.<ref name="Orgel 2007, 74">Orgel (2007, 74)</ref> The same performance was the subject of ]'s painting of the Macbeths in 1768.<ref>Orgel (2002, 247&ndash;249)</ref> In 1786, ] announced his intention to found his ]. His chief innovation was to see the works of Shakespeare as history, rather than contemporary, so instead of including the (then fashionable) works depicting the great actors of the day on stage in modern dress, he commissioned works depicting the ''action'' of the plays.<ref>Orgel (2007, 75)</ref> However the most notable works in the collection disregard this historicising principle: such as ]'s depiction of the naked and heroic Macbeth encountering the witches.<ref name="Orgel 2007, 76">Orgel (2007, 76)</ref> ]'s paintings were also influenced by Shakespeare, including his ''Pity'', inspired by Macbeth's "Pity, like a naked new-born babe, striding the blast."<ref name="Macbeth 1 2007">''Macbeth'' 1.7.21&ndash;22; Orgel (2007, 77)</ref> ]' triumph in the role of Lady Macbeth led ] to depict her as ''The Muse of Tragedy''.<ref name="Gay 2002, 159"/>
			|editor1-last = Brooke
			|editor1-first = Nicholas
	<gallery>
			|series = ]
	File:Macbeth and Banquo Meeting the Weird Sisters JW.jpg|]'s 1750 ''Macbeth and Banquo meeting the Weird Sisters.''<ref>Sillars (2006, 158)</ref>
	File:Macbeth and the Witches.jpg|]'s 1760 rendition of ''Macbeth and the Witches.''<ref>Sillars (2006, 77)</ref>
	File:Zoffany-Garrick and Pritchard in Macbeth.jpg|]'s depiction of ] and ] in ''Macbeth''.<ref>Orgel (2002, 248)</ref>
	File:Fuseli Macbeth 1766.jpg|]'s 1766 depiction of ] and ], with the daggers.<ref>Orgel (2007, 74); Orgel (2002, 246&ndash;247)</ref>
	Image:Johann Heinrich Füssli - Lady Macbeth with the Daggers - WGA8338.jpg|]'s later (1812) reworking of ] and ], with the daggers.<ref name="Orgel 2007, 74"/>
	Image:FuseliMacbethBoydell.jpg|James Caldwell's engraving, after ], of Macbeth's encounter with the witches.<ref name="Orgel 2007, 76"/>
	File:Pity by William Blake 1795.jpg|'']'' by ], based on Macbeth's "Pity, like a naked new-born babe, striding the blast."<ref name="Macbeth 1 2007"/>
	File:Mrs Siddons by Joshua Reynolds.jpg|] depicted ] as ''The Muse of Tragedy'', largely due to her triumph in the role of Lady Macbeth.<ref name="Gay 2002, 159"/>
	File:Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth.jpg|]'s painting of ], in a gown decorated with green beetle wings.<ref>Schoch (2002,59)</ref>
	</gallery>
	==Notes==
	===Citations===
	Unless otherwise specified, all citations of ''Macbeth'' refer to Muir (1984), and of other works of Shakespeare refer to Wells and Taylor (2005).
	{{Reflist|30em}}
	===References===
	{{Refbegin|30em}}
	*{{Cite journal |title = ''Macbeth'' and the "Short" Plays
	|last = Bald
	|first = Robert Cecil
	|journal = ]
	|publisher = ]		|publisher = ]
	|volume = os-IV		|location = Oxford
	|issue = 16		|year = 2008
	|year = 1928		|isbn = 978-0-19-953583-5
			|ref = {{harvid|Brooke|2008}}
	|pages = 429–31
	|doi = 10.1093/res/os-IV.16.429
	|issn = 1471-6968
	|ref = harv
	}}		}}
			*{{cite book
	* Banham, Martin; Mooneeram, Roshni and Plastow, Jane ''Shakespeare and Africa'' in Wells and Stanton (2002, 284&ndash;299)
	*{{Cite book |title = Macbeth		|title = Macbeth
	|last = Barnet		|last = Shakespeare
	|first = Sylvan		|first = William
			|author-link = William Shakespeare
	|editor-last = Barnet
	|editor-first = Sylvan		|display-authors = 0
			|editor1-last = Clark
	|authorlink = Sylvan Barnet
			|editor1-first = Sandra
	|chapter = Macbeth on Stage and Screen
			|editor2-last = Mason
	|publisher = ]
			|editor2-first = Pamela
	|series = Signet Classics
			|series = ], third series
	|year = 1998
			|publisher = ]
	|pages = 186–200
	|isbn = 978-0451524447		|location = London
	|ref = harv		|year = 2015
			|isbn = 978-1-904271-40-6
			|ref = {{harvid|Clark|Mason|2015}}
	}}		}}
			*{{cite book
	* {{Cite book|title = The Jacobean and Caroline Stage
	| last = Bentley		|title = Macbeth
	| first = Gerald Eades		|last = Shakespeare
			|first = William
	| author-link = Gerald Eades Bentley
			|author-link = William Shakespeare
	| year = 1941
	| volume = 6		|display-authors = 0
			|editor1-last = Kermode
	| publisher = ]
	| oclc =		|editor1-first = Frank
			|editor1-link = Frank Kermode
	| isbn =
			|series = ]
	| ref = harv
			|publisher = ]
			|location = Boston
			|year = 1974
			|isbn = 0-395-04402-2
			|ref = {{harvid|Kermode|1974}}
			|url = https://archive.org/details/riversideshakesp00shak
	}}		}}
			*{{cite book
	* Billington, Michael ''Shakespeare and the Modern British Theatre'' in Wells and Orlin (2003, 595&ndash;606)
			|title = Macbeth
	*{{Cite book |title = Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
	|last = Bloom		|last = Shakespeare
	|first = Harold		|first = William
			|author-link = William Shakespeare
	|authorlink = Harold Bloom
	|publisher =		|display-authors = 0
	|year = 1999		|editor-last = Muir
			|editor-first = Kenneth
	|isbn = 1-57322-751-X
			|editor-link = Kenneth Muir (scholar)
	|ref = harv
			|edition = 11th
			|publisher = ], second series
			|year = 1984
			|orig-year = 1951
			|isbn = 978-1-903436-48-6
			|ref = {{harvid|Muir|1984}}
			|url = https://archive.org/details/macbeth00will
			}}
			*{{cite book
			|title = The Tragedie of Macbeth: A Frankly Annotated First Folio Edition
			|last = Shakespeare
			|first = William
			|author-link = William Shakespeare
			|display-authors = 0
			|editor1-last = Papadinis
			|editor1-first = Demitra
			|publisher = ]
			|location = Jefferson, North Carolina
			|year = 2012
			|isbn = 978-0-7864-6479-1
			|ref = none
	}}		}}
			*{{cite book
	* Bloom, Harold (2008). Introduction. In ''Macbeth: Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages.'' Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House. ISBN 978-0791098424.
			|title = Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth
	* Booth, Michael R. (1995) "Nineteenth-Century Theatre" in Brown (1995, 299&ndash;340)
			|last = Shakespeare
	*{{Cite book |title = Macbeth
	|last = Braunmuller		|first = William
			|series = Silver series of classics
	|first = Albert R.
			|author-link = William Shakespeare
	|editor-last = Braunmuller
	|editor-first = Albert R.		|display-authors = 0
			|editor1-last = Sprague
	|chapter = Introduction
			|editor1-first = Homer B.
	|publisher = ]
			|editor1-link = Homer Sprague
	|year = 1997
			|publisher = Silver, Burdett, & Co.
	|pages = 1–93
	|isbn = 0-521-22340-7		|location = New York
			|year = 1889
	|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=dvn3uent7VcC
	|ref = harv		|hdl = 2027/hvd.hn3mu1
			|hdl-access = free
			|ref = {{harvid|Sprague|1889}}
	}}		}}
			{{refend}}
	*{{cite book |title = Shakespeare at the Movies: From the Silent Era to Today
	|last = Brode
			===Secondary sources===
	|first = Douglas
			{{refbegin|30em}}
	|publisher = Berkley Boulevard
			*{{cite web
			|title = 'Scottish Curse' Struck Heston in Bermuda
			|author = <!-- no byline; staff writers -->
			|website = ]
			|date = 7 April 2013
			|access-date = 30 January 2018
			|url = http://bernews.com/2013/04/scottish-curse-struck-heston-in-bermuda/
			|ref = {{harvid|Bernews|2013}}
			|archive-date = 12 November 2017
			|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20171112052702/http://bernews.com/2013/04/scottish-curse-struck-heston-in-bermuda/
			|url-status = live
			}}
			*{{cite book
			|title = The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre
			|editor-last = Brown
			|editor-first = John Russell
			|publisher = ]
			|location = Oxford
	|year = 2001		|year = 2001
			|isbn = 978-0-19-285442-1
			|ref = none
	}}		}}
			**{{cite book
	* Brooke, Nicholas, ed. (1990). ''The Tragedy of Macbeth.'' By William Shakespeare. The Oxford Shakespeare ser. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199535835.
	*{{cite book |title = The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre		|chapter = Nineteenth-Century Theatre
	|last = Brown		|last = Booth
	|first = John Russell (ed.)		|first = Michael R.
			|pages = 299–340
	|publisher = Oxford University Press
			|title = The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre
	|year = 1995
			|editor-last = Brown
	|isbn = 0-19-285442-9
			|editor-first = John Russell
	}}
			|publisher = ]
	*{{Cite book |title = Shakespeare around the Globe: A Guide to Notable Postwar Revivals
	|last = Brown		|location = Oxford
	|first = Langdon		|year = 2001
			|isbn = 978-0-19-285442-1
	|publisher = Greenwood Press
	|year = 1986
	|isbn =
	|ref = harv
	}}		}}
			*{{cite book
	*{{Cite book |title = Hippolyta's View: Some Christian Aspects of Shakespeare's Plays
			|title = Hippolyta's View: Some Christian Aspects of Shakespeare's Plays
	|last = Bryant, Jr.
			|last = Bryant Jr.
	|first = J. A.		|first = J. A.
	|publisher = ]		|publisher = ]
	|year = 1961		|year = 1961
	|isbn =		|ol = OL5820486M
			|hdl = 2027/mdp.39015001989410
	|url = https://archive.org/details/hippolytasviewso012763mbp		|url = https://archive.org/details/hippolytasviewso012763mbp
			|ref = {{harvid|Bryant|1961}}
	|accessdate = 1 November 2009
	|ref = harv
	}}
	*{{cite book |title = Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century
	|last = Burnett
	|first = Mark Thornton and Wray, Ramona (eds.)
	|publisher = Edinburgh University Press
	|year = 2006
	|isbn = 0 7486 2351 5
	}}
	* {{Cite book|title = The Elizabethan Stage
	| last = Chambers
	| first = E. K.
	| author-link = E. K. Chambers
	| year = 1923
	|volume=2
	| publisher = Clarendon Press
	| oclc = 336379
	| isbn = 0-19-811511-3
	| ref = harv
	}}		}}
			*{{cite journal
	* Clark, Sandra and Pamela Mason, eds. (2015). ''Macbeth.'' By William Shakespeare. Arden Third ser. London: The Arden Shakespeare. ISBN 978-1-9042-7140-6.
	*{{Cite journal |title = 'Unreal Mockery': Unreason and the Problem of Spectacle in Macbeth		|title = 'Unreal Mockery': Unreason and the Problem of Spectacle in ''Macbeth''
	|last = Coddon		|last = Coddon
	|first = Karin S.		|first = Karin S.
	|journal = ]		|journal = ]
	|publisher = ]		|publisher = ]
			|issn = 0013-8304
			|eissn = 1080-6547
	|volume = 56		|volume = 56
	|issue = 3		|issue = 3
Line 487:		Line 550:
	|pages = 485–501		|pages = 485–501
	|doi = 10.2307/2873194		|doi = 10.2307/2873194
	|ref = harv		|jstor = 2873194
	}}		}}
	*{{Cite book |title = Macbeth: A Guide to the Play		*{{cite book
			|title = ''Macbeth'': A Guide to the Play
	|last = Coursen		|last = Coursen
	|first = Herbert R.		|first = Herbert R.
Line 495:		Line 559:
	|year = 1997		|year = 1997
	|isbn = 0-313-30047-X		|isbn = 0-313-30047-X
			|url-access = registration
	|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=OVdlAAAAMAAJ
			|url = https://archive.org/details/macbethguidetopl0000cour
	|ref = harv
	}}		}}
			*{{cite web
	*{{Cite web |title = Toil and Trouble: The Curse of Macbeth
			|title = ''Macbeth, A True Story'' by Fiona Watson: The whole truth about Macbeth is not enough for Robert Crawford
	|last = Dunning
	|first = Brian		|last = Crawford
			|first = Robert
	|url = http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4222
			|author-link = Robert Crawford (Scottish poet)
	|publisher = Skeptoid.com
			|website = ]
	|work = Skeptoid: Critical analysis of Pop Phenomena
	|accessdate = 28 November 2010		|date = 13 March 2010
			|access-date = 28 January 2018
	|ref = harv
			|url = https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/13/macbeth-true-story-fiona-watson
			|archive-date = 29 January 2018
			|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180129004538/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/13/macbeth-true-story-fiona-watson
			|url-status = live
			}}
			*{{cite book
			|title =From Tudor to Stuart: the regime change from Elizabeth I to James I
			|last = Doran
			|first = Susan
			|publisher = Oxford University Press
			|year = 2024
			|isbn = 978-0-19-875464-0
			}}
			*{{cite book
			|title = The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher
			|editor-last = Dyce
			|editor-first = Alexander
			|editor-link = Alexander Dyce
			|year = 1843
			|publisher = Edward Moxen
			|location = London
			|volume = 1
			|ol = 7056519M
			|hdl = 2027/osu.32435063510085
			|hdl-access = free
	}}		}}
			*{{cite web
	*{{Cite news |title = The curse of the play
			|title = The curse of the play
	|last = Faires		|last = Faires
	|first = Robert		|first = Robert
	|work = ]		|website = ]
	|issue =
	|date = 13 October 2000		|date = 13 October 2000
	|pages =
	|url = http://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2000-10-13/78882/		|url = http://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2000-10-13/78882/
	|accessdate = 19 August 2012		|access-date = 19 August 2012
			|archive-date = 27 February 2021
	|ref = harv
			|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210227103319/https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2000-10-13/78882/
			|url-status = live
			}}
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	}}		}}
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			}}
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	* McLuskie, Kathleen ''Shakespeare Goes Slumming: Harlem '37 and Birmingham '97'' in Hodgdon & Worthen (2005, 249&ndash;266)
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	* Morrison, Michael A. ''Shakespeare in North America'' in Wells and Stanton (2002, 230&ndash;258)
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			}}
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	}}		}}
	*{{cite book |title = Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide		*{{cite book
			|title = Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide
	|last = Wells		|editor1-last = Wells
	|first = Stanley and Orlin, Lena Cowen (eds.)		|editor1-first = Stanley
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	|publisher = Oxford University Press
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			|editor2-first = Lena Cowen
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	|year = 2003		|year = 2003
	|isbn = 0-19-924522-3		|isbn = 978-0-19-924522-2
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			|title = Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide
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			|first = Terence
			|pages = 571–581
			|title = Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide
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			}}
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			}}
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			|chapter = Women and Shakespearean performance
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			|title = The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage
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			|title = The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage
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			**{{cite book
			|chapter = Shakespeare in North America
			|last = Morrison
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			|pages = 230–258
			|title = The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage
			|editor1-last = Wells
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			|series = Cambridge Companions to Literature
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			}}
			**{{cite book
			|chapter = Reconstructive Shakespeare: reproducing Elizabethan and Jacobean stages
			|last = O'Connor
			|first = Marion
			|pages = 76–97
			|title = The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage
			|editor1-last = Wells
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			}}
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			|chapter = Pictorial Shakespeare
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			|pages = 58–75
			|title = The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage
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			|chapter = Twentieth-century performance: the Stratford and London companies
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	{{Refend}}		{{refend}}
	==External links==		==External links==
			{{Wikisource|Macbeth (Shakespeare)}}
	{{wikibooks|Introduction to Shakespeare|The Tragedy of Macbeth|The Tragedy of Macbeth}}
	{{Wikisource|The Tragedy of Macbeth}}
	{{Wikiquote}}		{{Wikiquote}}
	{{Commons category|Macbeth}}		{{Commons category|Macbeth}}
			{{wikibooks|Introduction to Shakespeare|The Tragedy of Macbeth|The Tragedy of Macbeth}}
			* , eds. Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. ].
	* – From the Designing Shakespeare resource		* – From the Designing Shakespeare resource
			* {{gutenberg|no=1533|name= Macbeth}}
	* at the British Library		* at the British Library
	*		*
	* directed by ] starring Sir ]		* directed by ] starring Sir ]
	* – annotated HTML version of ''Macbeth.''		* &nbsp;– annotated HTML version of ''Macbeth.''
	* – searchable, annotated HTML version of ''Macbeth.''		* &nbsp;– searchable, annotated HTML version of ''Macbeth.''
	* {{librivox book | title=Macbeth | author=William Shakespeare}}		* {{librivox book | title=Macbeth | author=William Shakespeare}}
	*		*
	*		*
	* '''' - full annotated text aligned to Common Core Standards
	* by Steven Greenblatt		* by Steven Greenblatt
	{{Shakespeare}}		{{Shakespeare}}
	{{Macbeth}}		{{Macbeth}}
	{{Authority control}}		{{Authority control}}
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Latest revision as of 06:07, 26 December 2024

Play by William Shakespeare This article is about Shakespeare's play. For the historical Scottish king, see Macbeth, King of Scotland. For the title character of the play, see Macbeth (character). For other uses, see Macbeth (disambiguation). "The Tragedy of Macbeth" redirects here. For the film, see The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021 film).

The Tragedie of Macbeth

Title page of the part in the First Folio.
Author	William Shakespeare
Language	English
Genre	Shakespearean tragedy Tragedy
Set in	Scotland and England (Act IV, Scene III)
Publisher	Edward Blount and William Jaggard
Publication date	1623
Publication place	London, England
Text	The Tragedie of Macbeth at Wikisource

The Tragedy of Macbeth, often shortened to Macbeth (/məkˈbɛθ/), is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the physically violent and damaging psychological effects of political ambitions to power. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. Scholars believe Macbeth, of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of King James I, contains the most allusions to James, patron of Shakespeare's acting company.

In the play, a brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to violence by his wife, Macbeth murders the king and takes the Scottish throne for himself. Then, racked with guilt and paranoia, he commits more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, soon becoming a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath swiftly takes Macbeth and his wife towards madness and death.

Shakespeare's source for the story is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff, and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth. The events of the tragedy have been associated with the execution of Henry Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed and will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as "The Scottish Play". The play has attracted some of the most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and has been adapted to film, television, opera, novels, comics, and other media.

Characters

• Duncan – king of Scotland
• Malcolm – Duncan's elder son
• Donalbain – Duncan's younger son
• Macbeth – a general in the army of King Duncan; originally Thane of Glamis, then Thane of Cawdor, and later king of Scotland
• Lady Macbeth – Macbeth's wife, and later queen of Scotland
• Banquo – Macbeth's friend and a general in the army of King Duncan
• Fleance – Banquo's son
• Macduff – Thane of Fife
• Lady Macduff – Macduff's wife
• Macduff's son – a young boy
• Ross, Lennox, Angus, Menteith, Caithness – Scottish thanes
• Siward – general of the English forces
• Young Siward – Siward's son
• Seyton – Macbeth's armourer and chief servant
• Hecate – queen of the witches
• Three Witches – three mysterious women who approach Macbeth and prophesy his fate
• Captain – in the Scottish army
• Murderers – employed by Macbeth
  • First and Second Murderers
  • Third Murderer – sent by Macbeth to assist the first two murderers
• Porter – gatekeeper at Macbeth's home
• Doctor – Lady Macbeth's doctor
• Doctor – at the English court
• Gentlewoman – Lady Macbeth's caretaker
• Lord – opposed to Macbeth
• First Apparition – armed head
• Second Apparition – bloody child
• Third Apparition – crowned child
• Attendants, Messengers, Servants, Soldiers

Plot

Act I

Amid thunder and lightning, three witches decide that their next meeting will be with Macbeth, the Thane (Lord) of Glamis. In the following scene, soldiers report to King Duncan of Scotland that his generals Banquo and Macbeth have just defeated a rebellion allied with forces from Norway and Ireland and led by the traitorous Thane of Cawdor. Duncan praises his kinsmen for their bravery and fighting prowess.

As Macbeth and Banquo wander on a heath, the three witches appear and hail Macbeth as "Thane of Glamis" and "Thane of Cawdor", next saying he shall "be king hereafter". When Banquo asks of his own fortunes, the witches respond that Banquo will father a line of kings, though he himself will not be one. The witches vanish, and the Thane of Ross arrives, informing Macbeth of his newly bestowed title from the king: Thane of Cawdor. The witches' first prophecy is thus fulfilled, and Macbeth, previously sceptical, immediately begins to harbour nervous ambitions of becoming king. King Duncan himself soon welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, declaring that he will spend the night at Macbeth's castle in Inverness; Duncan also names his son Malcolm as his heir. Macbeth sends a letter ahead to his wife, telling her about the witches' pronouncements. Lady Macbeth is resolute that she and her husband should murder Duncan in order for Macbeth to obtain the crown. When Macbeth arrives in Inverness, she persuades him to kill the king that very night. They plan to get Duncan's two chamber attendants drunk so that they will black out; thus, the next morning they can frame the attendants for the murder.

Act II

That night, despite his doubts and a number of supernatural portents, including a hallucination of a blood-smeared dagger, Macbeth goes offstage and stabs the sleeping Duncan to death. Returning, he is so shaken that Lady Macbeth finds him accidentally still holding the bloody daggers, which she scolds him for, reminding him they must be left on Duncan's sleeping servants. She takes the knives and places them back in Duncan's chamber. When the Macbeths hear knocking at the castle gate, they hurry to bed.

A drunken porter opens the gate, admitting a nobleman named Lennox and Macduff, the Thane of Fife. Macbeth then greets them and leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff is shocked to discover Duncan's body. Macbeth and Lennox rush into the chamber, where Macbeth (offstage) impulsively kills the attendants to prevent them from professing their innocence, but he soon after announces that he did so in a fit of anger as revenge for them murdering Duncan. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland, respectively, fearing that they will be killed next. Their flight makes them the main suspects in the king's death, and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland offstage, being Duncan's next of kin. Banquo remembers the witches' prophecy about how his own descendants would inherit the throne; this makes him suspicious that Macbeth might be Duncan's true killer.

Act III

Despite his success, Macbeth, also aware of the prophecy relating to Banquo, remains uneasy. Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal banquet and discovers that Banquo and his young son Fleance will be riding out that night. Macbeth arranges to have Banquo and Fleance murdered, by hiring two men and later adding a third murderer to the plan. During the ambush, the murderers succeed in killing Banquo, but Fleance escapes. Macbeth is furious that an heir of Banquo remains alive.

At the banquet, Macbeth has invited his lords and Lady Macbeth to a night of drinking and merriment, though Macduff has refused to come. Banquo's ghost enters and sits in Macbeth's place. Macbeth raves fearfully, startling his guests, as the ghost is visible only to him. The others panic at the sight of Macbeth raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady Macbeth lies that her husband is merely afflicted with a harmless lifelong illness. The ghost departs and returns once more, causing the same riotous anger and fear in Macbeth. This time, Lady Macbeth demands that the visitors to leave. Elsewhere, Hecate, queen of witchcraft, scolds the three witches for helping Macbeth, especially without consulting her. Hecate instructs the witches to next give Macbeth a false sense of security and overconfidence. Through verbal irony, Lennox reveals to another lord his suspicions that Macbeth is a murdering tyrant and they discuss how Macduff, refusing to attend Macbeth's banquet, has gone to England to find allies who will help overthrow Macbeth.

Act IV

Macbeth visits the three witches and asks them to reveal the truth of their prophecies to him. They summon horrible apparitions, each of which offers predictions and further prophecies to put Macbeth's fears at rest. First, they conjure an armoured head, which tells him to beware of Macduff (IV.i.72). Second, a bloody child tells him that no one born of a woman will be able to harm him. Thirdly, a crowned child holding a tree states that Macbeth will be safe until Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill. Macbeth is relieved and feels secure because he knows that all men are born of women and forests cannot possibly move. However, the witches also conjure a procession of eight crowned kings, the last carrying a mirror that reflects even more kings, and finally the ghost of Banquo pointing to the procession. Macbeth realises that these are all Banquo's descendants who will acquire kingships in numerous countries.

Macbeth orders the disobedient Macduff's castle seized and sends assassins who slaughter all its inhabitants, including Macduff's young son and Lady Macduff. Macduff, meanwhile, is meeting with Prince Malcolm in England to discuss Macbeth's tyrannical regime. Malcolm, who must be cautious for any traps, confesses that he would be a terrible leader if the crown were restored to him, but this is merely a lie to see how Macduff will react. Macduff shows that he is more loyal to Scotland than any particular leader, impressing Malcolm, who now reveals the lie and says Macduff has won his trust. The Thane of Ross arrives to deliver the horrible news to Macduff that his "castle is surprised, your wife and babes / Savagely slaughter'd" (IV.iii.204–205). With this news of his family's murders, Macduff is stricken with grief, but he is quickly provoked to vengeance by Malcolm who explains that he, with the help of the English King Edward, has raised an army. Together, they can take back the Scottish throne.

Act V

At night, in the royal palace at Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady Macbeth's sudden frightening habit of sleepwalking. Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a candle in her hand, bemoaning the recent murders and trying to wash off imaginary bloodstains from her hands. Her observers marvel at her guilt-ridden confessions. Meanwhile, Prince Malcolm's allied forces plan to join up at Birnam Wood, additionally supported by Macduff and defecting Scottish thanes alarmed by Macbeth's barbarities. While encamped in Birnam Wood, Malcolm orders his soldiers to cut down and carry tree boughs to camouflage their numbers.

As Macbeth readies for the attack, he receives news that his wife has suddenly died, causing him to deliver a despairing and now-famous "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy (V.v.17–28). Still, he is emboldened by the witches' seeming guarantee of his invincibility against any "man of woman born", until a servant reports that Malcolm's army is advancing on Dunsinane in the form of moving trees. As the invaders take his castle, Macbeth is confronted by Macduff, whom he taunts for not being born of a woman. Macduff reveals that he was born by Caesarean section and thus did not have a natural childbirth. In the ensuing duel with Macduff, Macbeth is killed offstage. Macduff reappears with Macbeth's severed head, and Malcolm discusses how order has been restored. He implies that Lady Macbeth's death was a suicide, declares his benevolent intentions for the country, promotes his thanes to earls, and invites all to see him crowned at Scone.

Sources for the play

A principal source comes from the Daemonologie of King James published in 1597 which included a news pamphlet titled Newes from Scotland that detailed the famous North Berwick witch trials of 1590. The publication of Daemonologie came just a few years before the tragedy of Macbeth with the themes and setting in a direct and comparative contrast with King James' personal obsessions with witchcraft, which developed following his conclusion that the stormy weather that threatened his passage from Denmark to Scotland was a targeted attack. Not only did the subsequent trials take place in Scotland, the women accused were recorded, under torture, of having conducted rituals with the same mannerisms as the three witches. One of the evidenced passages is referenced when the women under trial confessed to attempt the use of witchcraft to raise a tempest and sabotage the boat King James and his queen were on board during their return trip from Denmark. The three witches discuss the raising of winds at sea in the opening lines of Act 1 Scene 3.

Macbeth has been compared to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. As characters, both Antony and Macbeth seek a new world, even at the cost of the old one. Both fight for a throne and have a 'nemesis' to face to achieve that throne. For Antony, the nemesis is Octavius; for Macbeth, it is Banquo. At one point Macbeth even compares himself to Antony, saying "under Banquo / My Genius is rebuk'd, as it is said / Mark Antony's was by Caesar." Lastly, both plays contain powerful and manipulative female figures: Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth.

Shakespeare borrowed the story from several tales in Holinshed's Chronicles, a popular history of the British Isles well known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In Chronicles, a man named Donwald finds several of his family put to death by his king, Duff, for dealing with witches. After being pressured by his wife, he and four of his servants kill the king in his own house. In Chronicles, Macbeth is portrayed as struggling to support the kingdom in the face of King Duncan's ineptitude. He and Banquo meet the three witches, who make exactly the same prophecies as in Shakespeare's version. Macbeth and Banquo then together plot the murder of Duncan, at Lady Macbeth's urging. Macbeth has a long, ten-year reign before eventually being overthrown by Macduff and Malcolm. The parallels between the two versions are clear. However, some scholars think that George Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarum Historia matches Shakespeare's version more closely. Buchanan's work was available in Latin in Shakespeare's day.

No medieval account of the reign of Macbeth mentions the Weird Sisters, Banquo, or Lady Macbeth, and with the exception of the latter none actually existed. The characters of Banquo, the Weird Sisters, and Lady Macbeth were first mentioned in 1527 by a Scottish historian Hector Boece in his book Historia Gentis Scotorum (History of the Scottish People) who wanted to denigrate Macbeth in order to strengthen the claim of the House of Stewart to the Scottish throne. Boece portrayed Banquo as an ancestor of the Stewart kings of Scotland, adding in a "prophecy" that the descendants of Banquo would be the rightful kings of Scotland while the Weird Sisters served to give a picture of King Macbeth as gaining the throne via dark supernatural forces. Macbeth did have a wife, but it is not clear if she was as power-hungry and ambitious as Boece portrayed her, which served his purpose of having even Macbeth realise he lacked a proper claim to the throne, and only took it at the urging of his wife. Holinshed accepted Boece's version of Macbeth's reign at face value and included it in his Chronicles. Shakespeare saw the dramatic possibilities in the story as related by Holinshed, and used it as the basis for the play.

No other version of the story has Macbeth kill the king in Macbeth's own castle. Scholars have seen this change of Shakespeare's as adding to the darkness of Macbeth's crime as the worst violation of hospitality. Versions of the story that were common at the time had Duncan being killed in an ambush at Inverness, not in a castle. Shakespeare conflated the story of Donwald and King Duff in what was a significant change to the story.

Shakespeare made another important change. In Chronicles, Banquo is an accomplice in Macbeth's murder of King Duncan, and plays an important part in ensuring that Macbeth, not Malcolm, takes the throne in the coup that follows. In Shakespeare's day, Banquo was thought to be an ancestor of the Stuart King James I. (In the 19th century it was established that Banquo is an unhistorical character; the Stuarts are actually descended from a Breton family which migrated to Scotland slightly later than Macbeth's time.) The Banquo portrayed in earlier sources is significantly different from the Banquo created by Shakespeare. Critics have proposed several reasons for this change. First, to portray the king's ancestor as a murderer would have been risky. Other authors of the time who wrote about Banquo, such as Jean de Schelandre in his Stuartide, also changed history by portraying Banquo as a noble man, not a murderer, probably for the same reasons. Second, Shakespeare may have altered Banquo's character simply because there was no dramatic need for another accomplice to the murder; there was, however, a need to give a dramatic contrast to Macbeth—a role which many scholars argue is filled by Banquo.

Other scholars maintain that a strong argument can be made for associating the tragedy with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. As presented by Harold Bloom in 2008: "cholars cite the existence of several topical references in Macbeth to the events of that year, namely the execution of the Father Henry Garnet for his alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, as referenced in the porter's scene." Those arrested for their role in the Gunpowder Plot refused to give direct answers to the questions posed to them by their interrogators, which reflected the influence of the Jesuit practice of equivocation. Shakespeare, by having Macbeth say that demons "palter...in a double sense" and "keep the promise to our ear/And break it to our hope", confirmed James's belief that equivocation was a "wicked" practice, which reflected in turn the "wickedness" of the Catholic Church. Garnet had in his possession A Treatise on Equivocation, and in the play the Weird Sisters often engage in equivocation, for instance telling Macbeth that he could never be overthrown until "Great Birnan wood to high Dunsinane hill/Shall Come". Macbeth interprets the prophecy as meaning never, but in fact, the Three Sisters refer only to branches of the trees of Great Birnam coming to Dunsinane hill. The inspiration for this prophecy may have originated with the Battle of Droizy; both that battle and Macbeth may have, in turn, inspired J. R. R. Tolkien's tree herders, the Ents in his novels The Lord of the Rings.

Date and text

Macbeth cannot be dated precisely, but it is usually taken to be contemporaneous to the other canonical tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. While some scholars have placed the original writing of the play as early as 1599, most believe that the play is unlikely to have been composed earlier than 1603 as the play is widely seen to celebrate King James' ancestors and the Stuart accession to the throne in 1603 (James believed himself to be descended from Banquo), suggesting that the parade of eight kings—which the witches show Macbeth in a vision in Act IV—is a compliment to King James. Many scholars think the play was written in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, citing possible internal allusions to the 1605 plot and its ensuing trials. In fact, there are a great number of allusions and possible pieces of evidence alluding to the Plot, and, for this reason, a great many critics agree that Macbeth was written in the year 1606. Lady Macbeth's instructions to her husband, "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't" (1.5.74–75), may be an allusion to a medal that was struck in 1605 to commemorate King James' escape that depicted a serpent hiding among lilies and roses.

Particularly, the Porter's speech (2.3.1–21) in which he welcomes an "equivocator", a farmer, and a tailor to hell (2.3.8–13), has been argued to be an allusion to the 28 March 1606 trial and execution on 3 May 1606 of the Jesuit Henry Garnet, who used the alias "Farmer", with "equivocator" referring to Garnet's defence of "equivocation". The porter says that the equivocator "committed treason enough for God's sake" (2.3.9–10), which specifically connects equivocation and treason and ties it to the Jesuit belief that equivocation was only lawful when used "for God's sake", strengthening the allusion to Garnet. The porter goes on to say that the equivocator "yet could not equivocate to heaven" (2.3.10–11), echoing grim jokes that were current on the eve of Garnet's execution: i.e. that Garnet would be "hanged without equivocation" and at his execution he was asked "not to equivocate with his last breath". The "English tailor" the porter admits to hell (2.3.13), has been seen as an allusion to Hugh Griffin, a tailor who was questioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 27 November and 3 December 1607 for the part he played in Garnet's "miraculous straw", an infamous head of straw that was stained with Garnet's blood that had congealed into a form resembling Garnet's portrait, which was hailed by Catholics as a miracle. The tailor Griffin became notorious and the subject of verses published with his portrait on the title page.

When James became king of England, a feeling of uncertainty settled over the nation. James was a Scottish king and the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, a staunch Catholic and English traitor. In the words of critic Robert Crawford, "Macbeth was a play for a post-Elizabethan England facing up to what it might mean to have a Scottish king. England seems comparatively benign, while its northern neighbour is mired in a bloody, monarch-killing past. ... Macbeth may have been set in medieval Scotland, but it was filled with material of interest to England and England's ruler." Critics argue that the content of the play is clearly a message to James, the new Scottish King of England. Likewise, the critic Andrew Hadfield noted the contrast the play draws between the saintly King Edward the Confessor of England who has the power of the royal touch to cure scrofula and whose realm is portrayed as peaceful and prosperous versus the bloody chaos of Scotland. James in his 1598 book The Trew Law of Free Monarchies had asserted that kings are always right, if not just, and his subjects owe him total loyalty at all times, writing that even if a king is a tyrant, his subjects must never rebel and just endure his tyranny for their own good. James had argued that the tyranny was preferable to the problems caused by rebellion which were even worse; Shakespeare by contrast in Macbeth argued for the right of the subjects to overthrow a tyrant king, in what appeared to be an implied criticism of James's theories if applied to England. Hadfield also noted a curious aspect of the play in that it implies that primogeniture is the norm in Scotland, but Duncan has to nominate his son Malcolm to be his successor while Macbeth is accepted without protest by the Scottish lords (thanes) as their king despite being an usurper. Hadfield argued this aspect of the play with the thanes apparently choosing their king was a reference to the Stuart claim to the English throne, and the attempts of the English Parliament to block the succession of James's Catholic mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, from succeeding to the English throne. Hadfield argued that Shakespeare implied that James was indeed the rightful king of England, but owed his throne not to divine favour as James would have it, but rather due to the willingness of the English Parliament to accept the Protestant son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, as their king.

Garry Wills provides further evidence that Macbeth is a Gunpowder Play (a type of play that emerged immediately following the events of the Gunpowder Plot). He points out that every Gunpowder Play contains "a necromancy scene, regicide attempted or completed, references to equivocation, scenes that test loyalty by use of deceptive language, and a character who sees through plots—along with a vocabulary similar to the Plot in its immediate aftermath (words like train, blow, vault) and an ironic recoil of the Plot upon the Plotters (who fall into the pit they dug)."

The play utilizes a few key words that the audience at the time would recognize as allusions to the Plot. In one sermon in 1605, Lancelot Andrewes stated, regarding the failure of the Plotters on God's day, "Be they fair or foul, glad or sad (as the poet calleth Him) the great Diespiter, 'the Father of days' hath made them both." Shakespeare begins the play by using the words "fair" and "foul" in the first speeches of the witches and Macbeth. In the words of Jonathan Gil Harris, the play expresses the "horror unleashed by a supposedly loyal subject who seeks to kill a king and the treasonous role of equivocation. The play even echoes certain keywords from the scandal—the 'vault' beneath the House of Parliament in which Guy Fawkes stored thirty kegs of gunpowder and the 'blow' about which one of the conspirators had secretly warned a relative who planned to attend the House of Parliament on 5 November...Even though the Plot is never alluded to directly, its presence is everywhere in the play, like a pervasive odor."

Scholars also cite an entertainment seen by King James at Oxford in the summer of 1605 that featured three "sibyls" like the weird sisters; Kermode surmises that Shakespeare could have heard about this and alluded to it with the weird sisters. However, A. R. Braunmuller in the New Cambridge edition finds the 1605–06 arguments inconclusive, and argues only for an earliest date of 1603.

One suggested allusion supporting a date in late 1606 is the first witch's dialogue about a sailor's wife: "'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries./Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger" (1.3.6–7). This has been thought to allude to the Tiger, a ship that returned to England 27 June 1606 after a disastrous voyage in which many of the crew were killed by pirates. A few lines later the witch speaks of the sailor, "He shall live a man forbid:/Weary se'nnights nine times nine" (1.3.21–22). The real ship was at sea 567 days, the product of 7x9x9, which has been taken as a confirmation of the allusion, which if correct, confirms that the witch scenes were either written or amended later than July 1606.

The play is not considered to have been written any later than 1607, since, as Kermode notes, there are "fairly clear allusions to the play in 1607". One notable reference is in Francis Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle, first performed in 1607. The following lines (Act V, Scene 1, 24–30) are, according to scholars, a clear allusion to the scene in which Banquo's ghost haunts Macbeth at the dinner table:

When thou art at thy table with thy friends,
Merry in heart, and filled with swelling wine,
I'll come in midst of all thy pride and mirth,
Invisible to all men but thyself,
And whisper such a sad tale in thine ear
Shall make thee let the cup fall from thy hand,
And stand as mute and pale as death itself.

Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text. Some scholars contend that the Folio text was abridged and rearranged from an earlier manuscript or prompt book. Often cited as interpolation are stage cues for two songs, whose lyrics are not included in the Folio but are included in Thomas Middleton's play The Witch, which was written between the accepted date for Macbeth (1606) and the printing of the Folio. Many scholars believe these songs were editorially inserted into the Folio, though whether they were Middleton's songs or preexisting songs is not certain. It is also widely believed that the character of Hecate, as well as some lines of the First Witch (4.1 124–131), were not part of Shakespeare's original play but were added by the Folio editors and possibly written by Middleton, though "there is no completely objective proof" of such interpolation.

Themes and motifs

"Macbeth
The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."

—Macbeth, Act I, Scene IV

Macbeth is an anomaly among Shakespeare's tragedies in certain critical ways. It is short: more than a thousand lines shorter than Othello and King Lear, and only slightly more than half as long as Hamlet. This brevity has suggested to many critics that the received version is based on a heavily cut source, perhaps a prompt-book for a particular performance. This would reflect other Shakespeare plays existing in both Quarto and the Folio, where the Quarto versions are usually longer than the Folio versions. Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio, but has no Quarto version – if there were a Quarto, it would probably be longer than the Folio version. That brevity has also been connected to other unusual features: the fast pace of the first act, which has seemed to be "stripped for action"; and the comparative flatness of the characters other than Macbeth. A. C. Bradley, in considering this question, concluded the play "always was an extremely short one", noting the witch scenes and battle scenes would have taken up some time in performance, remarking, "I do not think that, in reading, we feel Macbeth to be short: certainly we are astonished when we hear it is about half as long as Hamlet. Perhaps in the Shakespearean theatre too it seemed to occupy a longer time than the clock recorded."

As a tragedy of character

At least since the days of Samuel Johnson, analysis of the play has centred on the question of Macbeth's ambition, commonly seen as so dominant a trait that it defines the character. Johnson asserted that Macbeth, though esteemed for his military bravery, is wholly reviled.

This opinion recurs in critical literature, and, according to Caroline Spurgeon, is supported by Shakespeare himself, who apparently intended to degrade his hero by vesting him with clothes unsuited to him and to make Macbeth look ridiculous by several exaggerations he applies: his garments seem either too big or too small for him – as his ambition is too big and his character too small for his new and unrightful role as king. After Macbeth is unexpectedly greeted with his new title as Thane of Cawdor as prophesied by the witches, Banquo comments:

New honours come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould,
But with the aid of use

— I, 3, ll. 145–146

And, at the end, when the tyrant is at bay at Dunsinane, Caithness sees him as a man trying in vain to fasten a large garment on him with too small a belt:

He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
Within the belt of rule

— V, 2, ll. 14–15

while Angus sums up what everybody thinks ever since Macbeth's accession to power:

now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
upon a dwarfish thief

— V, 2, ll. 18–20).

Like Richard III, but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall. As Kenneth Muir writes, "Macbeth has not a predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown." Some critics, such as E. E. Stoll, explain this characterisation as a holdover from Senecan or medieval tradition. Shakespeare's audience, in this view, expected villains to be wholly bad, and Senecan style, far from prohibiting a villainous protagonist, all but demanded it.

Yet for other critics, it has not been so easy to resolve the question of Macbeth's motivation. Robert Bridges, for instance, perceived a paradox: a character able to express such convincing horror before Duncan's murder would likely be incapable of committing the crime. For many critics, Macbeth's motivations in the first act appear vague and insufficient. John Dover Wilson hypothesised that Shakespeare's original text had an extra scene or scenes where husband and wife discussed their plans. This interpretation is not fully provable; however, the motivating role of ambition for Macbeth is universally recognised. The evil actions motivated by his ambition seem to trap him in a cycle of increasing evil, as Macbeth himself recognises:

I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

— III, 4, ll. 165–167

While working on Russian translations of Shakespeare's works, Boris Pasternak compared Macbeth to Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Pasternak argues that "neither Macbeth or Raskolnikov is a born criminal or a villain by nature. They are turned into criminals by faulty rationalizations, by deductions from false premises." He goes on to argue that Lady Macbeth is "feminine ... one of those active, insistent wives" who becomes her husband's "executive, more resolute and consistent than he is himself". According to Pasternak, she is only helping Macbeth carry out his own wishes, to her own detriment.

As a tragedy of moral order

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The disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not limited to him. Almost from the moment of the murder, the play depicts Scotland as a land shaken by inversions of the natural order. Shakespeare may have intended a reference to the great chain of being, although the play's images of disorder are mostly not specific enough to support detailed intellectual readings. He may also have intended an elaborate compliment to James's belief in the divine right of kings, although this hypothesis, outlined at greatest length by Henry N. Paul, is not universally accepted. As in Julius Caesar, though, perturbations in the political sphere are echoed and even amplified by events in the material world. Among the most often depicted of the inversions of the natural order is sleep. Macbeth's announcement that he has "murdered sleep" is figuratively mirrored in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking.

Macbeth's generally accepted indebtedness to medieval tragedy is often seen as significant in the play's treatment of moral order. Glynne Wickham connects the play, through the Porter, to a mystery play on the harrowing of hell. Howard Felperin argues that the play has a more complex attitude toward "orthodox Christian tragedy" than is often admitted; he sees a kinship between the play and the tyrant plays within the medieval liturgical drama.

The theme of androgyny is often seen as a special aspect of the theme of disorder. Inversion of normative gender roles is most famously associated with the witches and with Lady Macbeth as she appears in the first act. Whatever Shakespeare's degree of sympathy with such inversions, the play ends with a thorough return to normative gender values. Some feminist psychoanalytic critics, such as Janet Adelman, have connected the play's treatment of gender roles to its larger theme of inverted natural order. In this light, Macbeth is punished for his violation of the moral order by being removed from the cycles of nature (which are figured as female); nature itself (as embodied in the movement of Birnam Wood) is part of the restoration of moral order.

As a poetic tragedy

Critics in the early twentieth century reacted against what they saw as an excessive dependence on the study of character in criticism of the play. This dependence, though most closely associated with A. C. Bradley, is clear as early as the time of Mary Cowden Clarke, who offered precise, if fanciful, accounts of the predramatic lives of Shakespeare's female leads. She suggested, for instance, that the child Lady Macbeth refers to in the first act died during a foolish military action.

Witchcraft and evil

In the play, the Three Witches represent darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses. Their presence communicates treason and impending doom. During Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as worse than rebels, "the most notorious traytor and rebell that can be". They were not only political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well. Much of the confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to straddle the play's borders between reality and the supernatural. They are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear whether they control fate, or whether they are merely its agents. They defy logic, not being subject to the rules of the real world. The witches' lines in the first act: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air" are often said to set the tone for the rest of the play by establishing a sense of confusion. Indeed, the play is filled with situations where evil is depicted as good, while good is rendered evil. The line "Double, double toil and trouble," communicates the witches' intent clearly: they seek only trouble for the mortals around them. The witches' spells are remarkably similar to the spells of the witch Medusa in Anthony Munday's play Fidele and Fortunio published in 1584, and Shakespeare may have been influenced by these.

While the witches do not tell Macbeth directly to kill King Duncan, they use a subtle form of temptation when they tell Macbeth that he is destined to be king. By placing this thought in his mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his own destruction. This follows the pattern of temptation used at the time of Shakespeare. First, they argued, a thought is put in a man's mind, then the person may either indulge in the thought or reject it. Macbeth indulges in it, while Banquo rejects.

According to J. A. Bryant Jr., Macbeth also makes use of Biblical parallels, notably between King Duncan's murder and the murder of Christ:

No matter how one looks at it, whether as history or as tragedy, Macbeth is distinctively Christian. One may simply count the Biblical allusions as Richmond Noble has done; one may go further and study the parallels between Shakespeare's story and the Old Testament stories of Saul and Jezebel as Miss Jane H. Jack has done; or one may examine with W. C. Curry the progressive degeneration of Macbeth from the point of view of medieval theology.

Superstition and "The Scottish Play"

Main article: The Scottish Play

While many today would say that any misfortune surrounding a production is mere coincidence, actors and others in the theatre industry often consider it bad luck to mention Macbeth by name while inside a theatre, and sometimes refer to it indirectly, for example as "The Scottish Play", or "MacBee", or when referring to the characters and not the play, "Mr. and Mrs. M", or "The Scottish King".

This is because Shakespeare (or the play's revisers) is said to have used the spells of real witches in his text, purportedly angering the witches and causing them to curse the play. Thus, to say the name of the play inside a theatre is believed to doom the production to failure, and perhaps cause physical injury or death to cast members. There are stories of accidents, misfortunes and even deaths taking place during runs of Macbeth.

According to the actor Sir Donald Sinden, in his Sky Arts TV series Great West End Theatres

Contrary to popular myth, Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth is not the unluckiest play as superstition likes to portray it. Exactly the opposite! The origin of the unfortunate moniker dates back to repertory theatre days when each town and village had at least one theatre to entertain the public. If a play was not doing well, it would invariably get 'pulled' and replaced with a sure-fire audience pleaser – Macbeth guaranteed full-houses. So when the weekly theatre newspaper, The Stage was published, listing what was on in each theatre in the country, it was instantly noticed what shows had not worked the previous week, as they had been replaced by a definite crowd-pleaser. More actors have died during performances of Hamlet than in the "Scottish play" as the profession still calls it. It is forbidden to quote from it backstage as this could cause the current play to collapse and have to be replaced, causing possible unemployment.

Several methods exist to dispel the curse, depending on the actor. One, attributed to Michael York, is to immediately leave the building the stage is in with the person who uttered the name, walk around it three times, spit over their left shoulders, say an obscenity then wait to be invited back into the building. A related practice is to spin around three times as fast as possible on the spot, sometimes accompanied by spitting over their shoulder, and uttering an obscenity. Another popular "ritual" is to leave the room, knock three times, be invited in, and then quote a line from Hamlet. Yet another is to recite lines from The Merchant of Venice, thought to be a lucky play.

Sir Patrick Stewart, on the radio program Ask Me Another, asserted "if you have played the role of the Scottish thane, then you are allowed to say the title, any time anywhere".

Performance history

Shakespeare's day to the Interregnum

The only eyewitness account of Macbeth in Shakespeare's lifetime was recorded by Simon Forman, who saw a performance at the Globe on 20 April 1610. Scholars have noted discrepancies between Forman's account and the play as it appears in the Folio. For example, he makes no mention of the apparition scene, or of Hecate, of the man not of woman born, or of Birnam Wood. However, Clark observes that Forman's accounts were often inaccurate and incomplete (for instance omitting the statue scene from The Winter's Tale) and his interest did not seem to be in "giving full accounts of the productions".

As mentioned above, the Folio text is thought by some to be an alteration of the original play. This has led to the theory that the play in the Folio was an adaptation for indoor performance at the Blackfriars Theatre (which was operated by the King's Men from 1608) – and even speculation that it represents a specific performance before King James. The play contains more musical cues than any other play in the canon as well as a significant use of sound effects.

Restoration and eighteenth century

The chill of the grave seemed about you when you looked on her; there was the hush and damp of the charnel house at midnight ... your flesh crept and your breathing became uneasy ... the scent of blood became palpable to you.

—Sheridan Knowles on Sarah Siddons' sleepwalking scene

All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government on 6 September 1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them. Sir William Davenant, founder of the Duke's Company, adapted Shakespeare's play to the tastes of the new era, and his version would dominate on stage for around eighty years. Among the changes he made were the expansion of the role of the witches, introducing new songs, dances and 'flying', and the expansion of the role of Lady Macduff as a foil to Lady Macbeth. There were, however, performances outside the patent companies: among the evasions of the Duke's Company's monopoly was a puppet version of Macbeth.

Macbeth was a favourite of the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys, who saw the play on 5 November 1664 ("admirably acted"), 28 December 1666 ("most excellently acted"), ten days later on 7 January 1667 ("though I saw it lately, yet appears a most excellent play in all respects"), on 19 April 1667 ("one of the best plays for a stage ... that ever I saw"), again on 16 October 1667 ("was vexed to see Young, who is but a bad actor at best, act Macbeth in the room of Betterton, who, poor man! is sick"), and again three weeks later on 6 November 1667 (" Macbeth, which we still like mightily"), yet again on 12 August 1668 ("saw Macbeth, to our great content"), and finally on 21 December 1668, on which date the king and court were also present in the audience.

The first professional performances of Macbeth in North America were probably those of The Hallam Company.

In 1744, David Garrick revived the play, abandoning Davenant's version and instead advertising it "as written by Shakespeare". In fact this claim was largely false: he retained much of Davenant's more popular business for the witches, and himself wrote a lengthy death speech for Macbeth. And he cut more than 10% of Shakespeare's play, including the drunken porter, the murder of Lady Macduff's son, and Malcolm's testing of Macduff. Hannah Pritchard was his greatest stage partner, having her premiere as his Lady Macbeth in 1747. He would later drop the play from his repertoire upon her retirement from the stage. Mrs. Pritchard was the first actress to achieve acclaim in the role of Lady Macbeth – at least partly due to the removal of Davenant's material, which made irrelevant moral contrasts with Lady Macduff. Garrick's portrayal focused on the inner life of the character, endowing him with an innocence vacillating between good and evil, and betrayed by outside influences. He portrayed a man capable of observing himself, as if a part of him remained untouched by what he had done, the play moulding him into a man of sensibility, rather than him descending into a tyrant.

John Philip Kemble first played Macbeth in 1778. Although usually regarded as the antithesis of Garrick, Kemble nevertheless refined aspects of Garrick's portrayal into his own. However it was the "towering and majestic" Sarah Siddons (Kemble's sister) who became a legend in the role of Lady Macbeth. In contrast to Hannah Pritchard's savage, demonic portrayal, Siddons' Lady Macbeth, while terrifying, was nevertheless – in the scenes in which she expresses her regret and remorse – tenderly human. And in portraying her actions as done out of love for her husband, Siddons deflected from him some of the moral responsibility for the play's carnage. Audiences seem to have found the sleepwalking scene particularly mesmerising: Hazlitt said of it that "all her gestures were involuntary and mechanical ... She glided on and off the stage almost like an apparition."

In 1794, Kemble dispensed with the ghost of Banquo altogether, allowing the audience to see Macbeth's reaction as his wife and guests see it, and relying upon the fact that the play was so well known that his audience would already be aware that a ghost enters at that point.

Ferdinand Fleck, notable as the first German actor to present Shakespeare's tragic roles in their fullness, played Macbeth at the Berlin National Theatre from 1787. Unlike his English counterparts, he portrayed the character as achieving his stature after the murder of Duncan, growing in presence and confidence: thereby enabling stark contrasts, such as in the banquet scene, which he ended babbling like a child.

Nineteenth century

Everyone seems to think Mrs McB is a Monstrousness & I can only see she's a woman – a mistaken woman – & weak – not a Dove – of course not – but first of all a wife.

—Ellen Terry

Performances outside the patent theatres were instrumental in bringing the monopoly to an end. Robert Elliston, for example, produced a popular adaptation of Macbeth in 1809 at the Royal Circus described in its publicity as "this matchless piece of pantomimic and choral performance", which circumvented the illegality of speaking Shakespeare's words through mimed action, singing, and doggerel verse written by J. C. Cross.

In 1809, in an unsuccessful attempt to take Covent Garden upmarket, Kemble installed private boxes, increasing admission prices to pay for the improvements. The inaugural run at the newly renovated theatre was Macbeth, which was disrupted for over two months with cries of "Old prices!" and "No private boxes!" until Kemble capitulated to the protestors' demands.

Edmund Kean at Drury Lane gave a psychological portrayal of the central character, with a common touch, but was ultimately unsuccessful in the role. However he did pave the way for the most acclaimed performance of the nineteenth century, that of William Charles Macready. Macready played the role over a 30-year period, firstly at Covent Garden in 1820 and finally in his retirement performance. Although his playing evolved over the years, it was noted throughout for the tension between the idealistic aspects and the weaker, venal aspects of Macbeth's character. His staging was full of spectacle, including several elaborate royal processions.

In 1843 the Theatres Regulation Act finally brought the patent companies' monopoly to an end. From that time until the end of the Victorian era, London theatre was dominated by the actor-managers, and the style of presentation was "pictorial" – proscenium stages filled with spectacular stage-pictures, often featuring complex scenery, large casts in elaborate costumes, and frequent use of tableaux vivant. Charles Kean (son of Edmund), at London's Princess's Theatre from 1850 to 1859, took an antiquarian view of Shakespeare performance, setting his Macbeth in a historically accurate eleventh-century Scotland. His leading lady, Ellen Tree, created a sense of the character's inner life: The Times' critic saying "The countenance which she assumed ... when luring on Macbeth in his course of crime, was actually appalling in intensity, as if it denoted a hunger after guilt." At the same time, special effects were becoming popular: for example in Samuel Phelps' Macbeth the witches performed behind green gauze, enabling them to appear and disappear using stage lighting.

In 1849, rival performances of the play sparked the Astor Place riot in Manhattan. The popular American actor Edwin Forrest, whose Macbeth was said to be like "the ferocious chief of a barbarous tribe" played the central role at the Broadway Theatre to popular acclaim, while the "cerebral and patrician" English actor Macready, playing the same role at the Astor Place Opera House, suffered constant heckling. The existing enmity between the two men (Forrest had openly hissed Macready at a recent performance of Hamlet in Britain) was taken up by Forrest's supporters – formed from the working class and lower middle class and anti-British agitators, keen to attack the upper-class pro-British patrons of the Opera House and the colonially-minded Macready. Nevertheless, Macready performed the role again three days later to a packed house while an angry mob gathered outside. The militia tasked with controlling the situation fired into the mob. In total, 31 rioters were killed and over 100 injured.

Charlotte Cushman is unique among nineteenth century interpreters of Shakespeare in achieving stardom in roles of both genders. Her New York debut was as Lady Macbeth in 1836, and she would later be admired in London in the same role in the mid-1840s. Helen Faucit was considered the embodiment of early-Victorian notions of femininity. But for this reason she largely failed when she eventually played Lady Macbeth in 1864: her serious attempt to embody the coarser aspects of Lady Macbeth's character jarred harshly with her public image. Adelaide Ristori, the great Italian actress, brought her Lady Macbeth to London in 1863 in Italian, and again in 1873 in an English translation cut in such a way as to be, in effect, Lady Macbeth's tragedy.

Henry Irving was the most successful of the late-Victorian actor-managers, but his Macbeth failed to curry favour with audiences. His desire for psychological credibility reduced certain aspects of the role: He described Macbeth as a brave soldier but a moral coward, and played him untroubled by conscience – clearly already contemplating the murder of Duncan before his encounter with the witches. Irving's leading lady was Ellen Terry, but her Lady Macbeth was unsuccessful with the public, for whom a century of performances influenced by Sarah Siddons had created expectations at odds with Terry's conception of the role.

Late nineteenth-century European Macbeths aimed for heroic stature, but at the expense of subtlety: Tommaso Salvini in Italy and Adalbert Matkowsky in Germany were said to inspire awe, but elicited little pity.

20th century to present

And then Lady Macbeth says 'He that's coming / Must be provided for.' It's an amazing line. She's going to play hostess to Duncan at Dunsinane, and 'provide' is what gracious hostesses always do. It's a wonder of a line to play because the reverberations do the acting for you, make the audience go "Aaaagh!"

—Sinéad Cusack

Two developments changed the nature of Macbeth performance in the 20th century: first, developments in the craft of acting itself, especially the ideas of Stanislavski and Brecht; and second, the rise of the dictator as a political icon. The latter has not always assisted the performance: it is difficult to sympathise with a Macbeth based on Hitler, Stalin, or Idi Amin.

Barry Jackson, at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1923, was the first of the 20th-century directors to costume Macbeth in modern dress.

In 1936, a decade before his film adaptation of the play, Orson Welles directed Macbeth for the Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, using black actors and setting the action in Haiti: with drums and Voodoo rites to establish the Witches scenes. The production, dubbed The Voodoo Macbeth, proved inflammatory in the aftermath of the Harlem riots, accused of making fun of black culture and as "a campaign to burlesque negroes" until Welles persuaded crowds that his use of black actors and voodoo made important cultural statements.

A performance which is frequently referenced as an example of the play's curse was the outdoor production directed by Burgess Meredith in 1953 in the British colony of Bermuda, starring Charlton Heston. Using the imposing spectacle of Fort St. Catherine as a key element of the set, the production was plagued by a host of mishaps, including Charlton Heston being burned when his tights caught fire.

Some critics contend there were three great Macbeths on the English-speaking stage in the 20th century, all of them commencing at Stratford-upon-Avon: Laurence Olivier in 1955, Ian McKellen in 1976 and Antony Sher in 1999. Olivier's portrayal (directed by Glen Byam Shaw, with Vivien Leigh as Lady Macbeth) was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Kenneth Tynan said it succeeded because Olivier built the role to a climax at the end of the play, whereas most actors spend all they have in the first two acts.

The play caused difficulties for the Royal Shakespeare Company, especially at the (then) Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Peter Hall's 1967 production was (in Michael Billington's words) "an acknowledged disaster" with the use of real leaves from Birnham Wood getting first-night laughs, and Trevor Nunn's 1974 production was (Billington again) "an over-elaborate religious spectacle".

But Nunn achieved success for the RSC in his 1976 production at the intimate Other Place, with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in the central roles. A small cast worked within a simple circle, and McKellen's Macbeth had nothing noble or likeable about him, being a manipulator in a world of manipulative characters. They were a young couple, physically passionate, "not monsters but recognisable human beings", but their relationship atrophied as the action progressed.

The RSC again achieved critical success in Gregory Doran's 1999 production at The Swan, with Antony Sher and Harriet Walter in the central roles, once again demonstrating the suitability of the play for smaller venues. Doran's witches spoke their lines to a theatre in absolute darkness, and the opening visual image was the entrance of Macbeth and Banquo in the berets and fatigues of modern warfare, carried on the shoulders of triumphant troops. In contrast to Nunn, Doran presented a world in which king Duncan and his soldiers were ultimately benign and honest, heightening the deviance of Macbeth (who seems genuinely surprised by the witches' prophecies) and Lady Macbeth in plotting to kill the king. The play said little about politics, instead powerfully presenting its central characters' psychological collapse.

Macbeth returned to the RSC in 2018, when Christopher Eccleston played the title role, with Niamh Cusack as his wife, Lady Macbeth. The play later transferred to the Barbican in London.

In Soviet-controlled Prague in 1977, faced with the illegality of working in theatres, Pavel Kohout adapted Macbeth into a 75-minute abridgement for five actors, suitable for "bringing a show in a suitcase to people's homes".

Spectacle was unfashionable in Western theatre throughout the 20th century. In East Asia, however, spectacular productions have achieved great success, including Yukio Ninagawa's 1980 production with Masane Tsukayama as Macbeth, set in the 16th century Japanese Civil War. The same director's tour of London in 1987 was widely praised by critics, even though (like most of their audience) they were unable to understand the significance of Macbeth's gestures, the huge Buddhist altar dominating the set, or the petals falling from the cherry trees.

Xu Xiaozhong's 1980 Central Academy of Drama production in Beijing made every effort to be unpolitical (necessary in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution): yet audiences still perceived correspondences between the central character (whom the director had actually modelled on Louis Napoleon) and Mao Zedong. Shakespeare has often been adapted to indigenous theatre traditions, for example the Kunju Macbeth of Huang Zuolin performed at the inaugural Chinese Shakespeare Festival of 1986. Similarly, B. V. Karanth's Barnam Vana of 1979 had adapted Macbeth to the Yakshagana tradition of Karnataka, India. In 1997, Lokendra Arambam created Stage of Blood, merging a range of martial arts, dance and gymnastic styles from Manipur, performed in Imphal and in England. The stage was literally a raft on a lake.

Throne of Blood (蜘蛛巣城 Kumonosu-jō, Spider Web Castle) is a 1957 Japanese samurai film co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film transposes Macbeth from Medieval Scotland to feudal Japan, with stylistic elements drawn from Noh drama. Kurosawa was a fan of the play and planned his own adaptation for several years, postponing it after learning of Orson Welles' Macbeth (1948). The film won two Mainichi Film Awards.

The play has been translated and performed in various languages in different parts of the world, and Media Artists was the first to stage its Punjabi adaptation in India. The adaptation by Balram and the play directed by Samuel John have been universally acknowledged as a milestone in Punjabi theatre. The unique attempt involved trained theatre experts and the actors taken from a rural background in Punjab. Punjabi folk music imbued the play with the native ethos as the Scottish setting of Shakespeare's play was transposed into a Punjabi milieu.

In 2021, Saoirse Ronan starred in The Tragedy of Macbeth at the Almeida Theatre in London. The following year a revival production opened on Broadway with Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga to middling reviews.

A new production starring David Tennant and Cush Jumbo ran at London's Donmar Warehouse from 8 December 2023 to 10 February 2024. Max Webster directed the production. The show received 3 Laurence Olivier Award nominations, including Best Revival. It transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre in the West End from 1 October 2024 for a limited run.

Operas

Macbeth was adapted into an Italian opera (Macbeth) by composer Giuseppe Verdi and librettist Francesco Maria Piave in 1847 (revised in French in 1865). An English opera adaptation of the play was created by Lawrance Collingwood in 1927.

Contemporary opera adaptations include Luke Styles' Macbeth (2015) and Pascal Dusapin's Macbeth Underworld (2019).

An indirect adaptation is Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1934), based on the novella of the same name by Nikolai Leskov.

See also

• Cultural references to Macbeth

Notes and references

1. For the first performance in 1607, see Gurr 2009, p. 293, Thomson 1992, p. 64, and Wickham 1969, p. 231. For the date of composition, see Brooke 2008, p. 1 and Clark & Mason 2015, p. 13
2. This scene is open to various interpretations from readers and has been interpreted differently in adaptations.
3. Some scholars believe that the Hecate scene was not part of the original Macbeth script.
4. For details on Garnet, see Perez Zagorin's article, "The Historical Significance of Lying and Dissimulation" (1996), in Social Research.
5. Similar criticisms were made of Friedrich Mitterwurzer [de] in Germany, whose performances of Macbeth had many unintentional parallels with Irving's.
6. Michael Billington, cited by Gay.
7. See also Tom Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth.

References

All references to Macbeth, unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Arden Shakespeare, second series edition edited by Kenneth Muir. Under their referencing system, III.I.55 means act 3, scene 1, line 55. All references to other Shakespeare plays are to The Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works of Shakespeare edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor.

1. Clark & Mason 2015, p. 1.
2. Wickham 1969, p. 231.
3. ^ Bloom 2008, p. 41.
4. ^ Orgel 2002, p. 33.
5. King of England, James I (2016). The annotated Daemonologie : a critical edition. Warren, Brett. R. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1-5329-6891-4. OCLC 1008940058.
6. Warren 2016, p. 107.
7. Coursen 1997, pp. 11–13.
8. Coursen 1997, pp. 15–21.
9. ^ Thrasher 2002, p. 37.
10. Coursen 1997, p. 17.
11. ^ Nagarajan 1956.
12. Palmer 1886.
13. Maskell 1971.
14. Doran 2024, p. 375.
15. ^ Thrasher 2002, p. 42.
16. Thrasher 2002, pp. 38–39.
17. Thrasher 2002, p. 38.
18. Wells & Taylor 2005, pp. 909, 1153.
19. Braunmuller 1997, pp. 2–3.
20. ^ Brooke 2008, pp. 59–64.
21. ^ Wills 1996, p. 7.
22. Muir 1985, p. 48.
23. Taylor & Jowett 1993, p. 85.
24. Paul 1950, p. 227.
25. ^ Kermode 1974, p. 1308.
26. ^ Braunmuller 1997, pp. 5–8.
27. Zagorin 1996.
28. Rogers 1965, pp. 44–45.
29. Rogers 1965, pp. 45–47.
30. Crawford 2010.
31. Hadfield 2004, pp. 84–85.
32. ^ Hadfield 2004, p. 84.
33. Hadfield 2004, p. 85.
34. ^ Hadfield 2004, p. 86.
35. ^ Harris 2007, pp. 473–474.
36. Loomis 1956.
37. Whitted 2012.
38. Smith 2012.
39. Dyce 1843, p. 216.
40. Sprague 1889, p. 12.
41. Hattaway 1969, p. 100.
42. Clark & Mason 2015, p. 321.
43. Clark & Mason 2015, p. 325.
44. Clark & Mason 2015, pp. 326–329.
45. Brooke 2008, p. 57.
46. Clark & Mason 2015, pp. 329–335.
47. Bradley, AC, Shakespearean Tragedy
48. ^ Stoll 1943, p. 26.
49. Bradley, AC, Shakespearean Tragedy
50. Whalen, Richard F. (2014). "What Happens in Macbeth: An Originalist Reading of the Play" (PDF). Brief Chronicles V: 61–68.
51. Sherbo, Arthur (1951). "Dr. Johnson on Macbeth: 1745 and 1765". The Review of English Studies. 2 (5): 40–47. doi:10.1093/res/II.5.40. ISSN 0034-6551. JSTOR 511908.
52. Spurgeon 1935, pp. 324–327.
53. Muir 1984, p. xlviii.
54. Muir 1984, p. xlvi.
55. Pasternak 1959, pp. 150–152.
56. Lauren Byler (2015). "Loose characters in Mary Cowden Clarke's The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines in a Series of Tales". Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 57 (3): 343. doi:10.7560/TSLL57305. ISSN 0040-4691. S2CID 162081047.
57. Kliman & Santos 2005, p. 14.
58. Perkins 1610, p. 53.
59. Coddon 1989, p. 491.
60. ^ Frye 1987.
61. Bryant 1961, p. 153.
62. ^ Faires 2000.
63. Tritsch 1984.
64. Great West End Theatres Sky Arts. 10 August 2013
65. Straczynski 2006.
66. Garber 2008, p. 77.
67. "Brush Up Your Shakespeare". Ask Me Another. NPR. 20 August 2015. Archived from the original on 26 August 2021. Retrieved 31 August 2021.
68. ^ Brooke 2008, p. 36.
69. Clark & Mason 2015, p. 337.
70. ^ Clark & Mason 2015, p. 324.
71. Clark & Mason 2015, p. 301.
72. Brooke 2008, pp. 34–36.
73. Orgel 2002, pp. 158–161.
74. Taylor 2002, p. 2.
75. Brooke 2008, pp. 35–36.
76. Williams 2002, p. 119.
77. Marsden 2002, p. 21.
78. Tatspaugh 2003, pp. 526–527.
79. Lanier 2002, pp. 28–29.
80. Orgel 2002, p. 155.
81. Morrison 2002, pp. 231–232.
82. Orgel 2002, p. 246.
83. Potter 2001, p. 188.
84. Gay 2002, p. 158.
85. Williams 2002, p. 124.
86. ^ Williams 2002, p. 125.
87. Williams 2002, pp. 124–125.
88. Potter 2001, p. 189.
89. Williams 2002, pp. 125–126.
90. Moody 2002, p. 43.
91. Gay 2002, p. 159.
92. McLuskie 2005, pp. 256–257.
93. Williams 2002, p. 126.
94. Gay 2002, p. 167.
95. Holland 2007, pp. 38–39.
96. Moody 2002, pp. 38–39.
97. ^ Lanier 2002, p. 37.
98. Williams 2002, pp. 126–127.
99. Moody 2002, p. 38.
100. Schoch 2002, pp. 58–59.
101. Williams 2002, p. 128.
102. Schoch 2002, pp. 61–62.
103. Gay 2002, pp. 163–164.
104. Schoch 2002, p. 64.
105. Morrison 2002, p. 237.
106. Booth 2001, pp. 311–312.
107. Holland 2002, p. 202.
108. Morrison 2002, p. 238.
109. Morrison 2002, p. 239.
110. Gay 2002, p. 162.
111. Gay 2002, pp. 161–162.
112. Gay 2002, p. 164.
113. Williams 2002, p. 129.
114. Williams 2002, pp. 129–130.
115. Gay 2002, pp. 166–167.
116. ^ Williams 2002, p. 130.
117. McLuskie 2005, p. 253.
118. ^ Williams 2002, pp. 130–131.
119. Smallwood 2002, p. 102.
120. Forsyth 2007, p. 284.
121. Hawkes 2003, p. 577.
122. Hardy 2014.
123. Bernews 2013.
124. Williams 2002, p. 131.
125. Brooke 2008, pp. 47–48.
126. Billington 2003, p. 599.
127. Billington 2003, pp. 599–600.
128. ^ Gay 2002, p. 169.
129. Williams 2002, pp. 132–134.
130. Walter 2002, p. 1.
131. ^ Billington 2003, p. 600.
132. Williams 2002, p. 134.
133. "Macbeth". RSC. Archived from the original on 13 August 2019. Retrieved 21 May 2019.
134. Holland 2007, p. 40.
135. Williams 2002, pp. 134–135.
136. Holland 2002, p. 207.
137. Gillies et al. 2002, p. 268.
138. Gillies et al. 2002, p. 270.
139. Gillies et al. 2002, pp. 276–278.
140. Gillies et al. 2002, pp. 278–279.
141. The Tribune 2006.
142. Tandon 2004.
143. Benedict, David (14 October 2021). "'The Tragedy of Macbeth' Review: James McArdle and Saoirse Ronan in an Over-Directed and Under-Dramatized Production". Variety. Archived from the original on 19 June 2022. Retrieved 19 June 2022.
144. Green, Jesse (29 April 2022). "Review: In a New 'Macbeth,' Something Wonky This Way Comes". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 June 2022. Retrieved 19 June 2022.
145. Gans, Andrew (8 December 2023). "Donmar Warehouse Macbeth, Starring Cush Jumbo and David Tennant, Begins December 8". playbill.com. Retrieved 25 April 2024.
146. "Olivier awards 2024: complete list of nominations". The Guardian. 12 March 2024. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 25 April 2024.
147. "Macbeth with David Tennant and Cush Jumbo to transfer to the West End". 23 April 2024. Retrieved 25 April 2024.
148. "An English "Macbeth."". The New York Times. 18 December 1927. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 20 December 2023.
149. Hall, George (10 September 2015). "Macbeth review – an audacious operatic reduction". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 20 December 2023.
150. "'Macbeth Underworld' de Pascal Dusapin. Psychanalyse d'un couple halluciné. Éblouissant ***". RTBF (in French). Retrieved 20 December 2023.
151. Muir 1984.
152. Wells & Taylor 2005.

Sources

Editions of Macbeth

• Bloom, Harold, ed. (2008). Macbeth. Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages. New York: Chelsea House. ISBN 978-0-7910-9842-4.
• Braunmuller, Albert R., ed. (1997). Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29455-3.
• Brooke, Nicholas, ed. (2008). Macbeth. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953583-5.
• Clark, Sandra; Mason, Pamela, eds. (2015). Macbeth. The Arden Shakespeare, third series. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-904271-40-6.
• Kermode, Frank, ed. (1974). Macbeth. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-04402-2.
• Muir, Kenneth, ed. (1984) . Macbeth (11th ed.). The Arden Shakespeare, second series. ISBN 978-1-903436-48-6.
• Papadinis, Demitra, ed. (2012). The Tragedie of Macbeth: A Frankly Annotated First Folio Edition. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-6479-1.
• Sprague, Homer B., ed. (1889). Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth. Silver series of classics. New York: Silver, Burdett, & Co. hdl:2027/hvd.hn3mu1.

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• Coddon, Karin S. (1989). "'Unreal Mockery': Unreason and the Problem of Spectacle in Macbeth". ELH. 56 (3). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 485–501. doi:10.2307/2873194. eISSN 1080-6547. ISSN 0013-8304. JSTOR 2873194.
• Coursen, Herbert R. (1997). Macbeth: A Guide to the Play. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30047-X.
• Crawford, Robert (13 March 2010). "Macbeth, A True Story by Fiona Watson: The whole truth about Macbeth is not enough for Robert Crawford". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 29 January 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
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• Frye, Roland Mushat (1987). "Launching the Tragedy of Macbeth: Temptation, Deliberation, and Consent in Act I". Huntington Library Quarterly. 50 (3). University of Pennsylvania Press: 249–261. doi:10.2307/3817399. eISSN 1544-399X. ISSN 0018-7895. JSTOR 3817399.
• Garber, Marjorie B. (2008). Profiling Shakespeare. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-96446-3.
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External links

• Macbeth, eds. Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Folger Shakespeare Library.
• Performances and Photographs from London and Stratford performances of Macbeth 1960–2000 – From the Designing Shakespeare resource
• Macbeth at Project Gutenberg
• Macbeth at the British Library
• Macbeth on Film
• PBS Video directed by Rupert Goold starring Sir Patrick Stewart
• Annotated Text at The Shakespeare Project – annotated HTML version of Macbeth.
• Macbeth Navigator – searchable, annotated HTML version of Macbeth.
• Macbeth public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Macbeth Analysis and Textual Notes
• Annotated Bibliography of Macbeth Criticism
• Shakespeare and the Uses of Power by Steven Greenblatt

v t e William Shakespeare
Plays	Comedies All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Cymbeline Love's Labour's Lost Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles, Prince of Tyre ✻ The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen ✻ The Winter's Tale Tragedies Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Hamlet Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus and Cressida Histories King John Edward III ✻ Richard II Henry IV 1 2 Henry V Henry VI 1 ✻ 2 3 Richard III Henry VIII ✻ Early editions Quarto publications First Folio Second Folio Related Problem plays Late romances Henriad Characters A–K L–Z Ghost character Chronology Performances Settings Scenes
Poems	Shakespeare's sonnets comparison to Petrarch A Lover's Complaint The Phoenix and the Turtle The Rape of Lucrece Venus and Adonis
Apocrypha	Plays Arden of Faversham The Birth of Merlin Cardenio ✻† Double Falsehood Edmund Ironside Fair Em Locrine The London Prodigal Love's Labour's Won † The Merry Devil of Edmonton Mucedorus The Puritan The Second Maiden's Tragedy Sejanus His Fall Sir John Oldcastle Sir Thomas More ✻ The Spanish Tragedy Thomas Lord Cromwell Thomas of Woodstock Ur-Hamlet † Vortigern and Rowena A Yorkshire Tragedy Poems The Passionate Pilgrim To the Queen
Life and works	Birthplace Bibliography Complete Works Translations Coat of arms Collaborations Editors English Renaissance theatre Globe Theatre Handwriting Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men The Theatre Curtain Theatre Music New Place Portraits Religious views Sexuality Spelling of his name Stratford-upon-Avon Style Will Grave
Legacy	Attribution studies Authorship question Bardolatry Festivals Gardens Influence Memorials Screen adaptations Shakespeare and Star Trek Shakespeare's influence on Tolkien Works titled after Shakespeare Institutions Folger Shakespeare Library Shakespeare Quarterly Royal Shakespeare Company Royal Shakespeare Theatre Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Shakespeare's Globe (replica) Shakespeare Institute
Family	Anne Hathaway (wife) Susanna Hall (daughter) Hamnet Shakespeare (son) Judith Quiney (daughter) Elizabeth Barnard (granddaughter) John Shakespeare (father) Mary Arden (mother) Gilbert Shakespeare (brother) Joan Shakespeare (sister) Edmund Shakespeare (brother) Richard Shakespeare (grandfather) John Hall (son-in-law) Thomas Quiney (son-in-law)
✻ Shakespeare and other authors † Lost Category

v t e William Shakespeare's Macbeth
Characters	Macbeth Lady Macbeth Banquo Macduff King Duncan Malcolm Donalbain Three Witches Fleance Lady Macduff Macduff's son Third Murderer Young Siward
Inspirations	Macbeth, King of Scotland Gruoch of Scotland Duncan I of Scotland Malcolm III of Scotland Donald III of Scotland Siward, Earl of Northumbria King James VI and I
Sources	Daemonologie (1597) The Witch (play) Holinshed's Chronicles Darraðarljóð
Film	1908 1909 (French) 1909 (Italian) 1911 1913 1915 1916 1922 1948 Unfinished 1971 2006 2015 The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) accolades
Television	1954 1960 US TV 1960 Australian TV 1961 1979 1982 1983 1992 2010
TV / film adaptations	The Real Thing at Last (1916) Marmayogi (1951) Joe MacBeth (1955) Throne of Blood (1957) Marmayogi (1964) Macbeth (Verdi opera) (1987) Men of Respect (1990) Scotland, PA (2001) Makibefo (2001) Maqbool (2003) 2005 The Last King of Scotland (2006) Shakespeare Must Die (2012) Thane of East County (2015) Veeram (2016) Joji (2021)
Plays	Khwab-e-Hasti (1909) Voodoo Macbeth (1936) MacBird! (1967) uMabatha (1970) Macbett (1972) Cahoot's Macbeth (1979) MacHomer (1995) Just Macbeth! (2008) Sleep No More (2009) Dunsinane (2010) Sleep No More (2011)
Operas	Macbeth (1847, Verdi) discography Macbeth (1910, Bloch)
Literary adaptations	Wyrd Sisters (1988) The Last King of Scotland (1998) Macbeth (2018)
Albums	Music from Macbeth (1972) Macbeth (1990) Thane to the Throne (2000) Shakespeare's Macbeth – A Tragedy in Steel (2003) Lady Macbeth (2005)
Art	Pity (1795) The Night of Enitharmon's Joy (1795) Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers (1812 painting) Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (1889) Lady Macbeth (1905 sculpture)
Scenes and speeches	"On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth" (1823) Sleepwalking Scene (5.1) "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"
Words and phrases	"What's done is done" "Crack of doom" The Scottish Play Thane of Cawdor
In popular culture	Novels, film and theatre We Work Again Light Thickens The Deadly Affair Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine The Scottish Play Burke & Hare Television "A Witch's Tangled Hare" (1959, Looney Tunes) "The Bellero Shield" (1964, The Outer Limits) "The Movies" (1975, The Goodies) "Sense and Senility" (1987, Blackadder the Third) "Sleeping with the Enemy" (2004, The Simpsons) "The Coup" (2006, The Office) "Dial 'N' for Nerder" (2008, The Simpsons) "Four Great Women and a Manicure" (2009, The Simpsons) "The Shower Principle" (2012, 30 Rock) "The Understudy" (2014, Inside No. 9)
Other	Macbeth (Johann Strauss) The Scottish Play Piano Trios, Op. 70 (Ludwig van Beethoven) The Ruins of Cawdor House of Cards (UK, 1990) House of Cards (US, 2013–2018) Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)

Categories:

• Macbeth
• 1603 plays
• English Renaissance plays
• Shakespearean tragedies
• Regicides
• Plays set in the 11th century
• Plays set in Scotland
• British plays adapted into films
• Plays adapted into operas
• Plays adapted into television shows
• Fiction about suicide
• Biographical plays about Scottish royalty
• Fiction about regicide
• Plays about witches and witchcraft