§Synopsis
01The play concerns a trusted general who secretly lusts for power. Encouraged by the prophecies of three witches and urged on by his ambitious wife Macbeth commits regicide. Left fearful and superstitious by this desperate act he is driven to a spiralling course of murder and outrage, almost inevitably culminating in his own death. One of Shakespeare’s most popular tragedies, Macbeth is ostensibly based on the Scottish king although the story represented in the play bears no relation to historical fact as the true King Macbeth was well respected by his contemporaries. This book includes the hero Macbeth becoming more and more evil after he gets told his "destiny" by the witches and becomes greedy with power.
§Our take
Macbeth is at its best when the stage does the work: prophecy, pressure and guilt arrive fast enough that nobody has time to look away. At roughly half the length of Hamlet, it is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, sharply plotted, though scholars suspect the Folio text may itself have been abridged or rearranged.
The edition becomes part of the play. Folger provides the full text free online, a print edition with facing notes, and a full-cast audio recording. Bate preferred Cambridge for Macbeth in 2003, while the 2015 Arden Third Series offers a long introduction and detailed commentary. The Hecate scenes and parts of two songs may be later additions, perhaps by Thomas Middleton, though the proof is not conclusive. Read it with the audio running.
§Themes
- Ambition as permission
- Macbeth’s hunger for power makes prophecy and his wife’s pressure feel like permission rather than command.
- Fear that feeds itself
- Guilt and superstition turn fear into a widening cycle of violence and disorder.
- A kingdom out of order
- Broken sleep and reversed gender roles make Scotland’s natural and hierarchical order feel inverted.
- The weight of images
- Clothing, blood and sleep recur as image clusters, shifting attention from private psychology toward the play’s poetry.
- Rebellion under the crown
- Scholars read the Gunpowder Plot backdrop and the Porter’s equivocation as sharpening questions of royal authority and rebellion.
§How it was received
Samuel Johnson saw the title character as a figure readers revile, while A. C. Bradley stressed Macbeth’s imagination. Mid-twentieth-century critics shifted toward poetic imagery and language; later readings have split over whether the witches form an eclectic collage or carry the deeper meaning Stephen Greenblatt and Stephen Orgel find in their ambiguity. The play is also read against King James and the post-Gunpowder-Plot climate, with disagreement over whether it questions royal authority and rebellion.
§Read it if
- You want Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, with a plot that hits the ground running
- You like prophecy, moral ambiguity and poetic imagery carrying as much weight as action
- You want notes or audio to help with Shakespeare’s difficult language
§Skip it if
- You want a long, reflective tragedy. Macbeth runs about half the length of Hamlet and moves fast.
- You need a text with no disputed authorship. The Hecate scenes and some songs may be later additions, perhaps by Thomas Middleton.
§Before you start
- Reading experience
- It moves fast at roughly half Hamlet’s length, but the language can be difficult on the page; teachers say the play is built to be heard and seen, so an audio recording helps.
- Reading order
- Standalone tragedy, not part of a series. It is often grouped with Shakespeare's other major tragedies: Hamlet, Othello and King Lear.
- Content notes
- Murder, including the killing of a king and the onstage or reported killing of a woman and her child; Battle violence and a death by apparent suicide offstage; Witchcraft, supernatural apparitions and sleepwalking.
§Common questions
- When was Macbeth written and first published?
- Probably written and first staged in 1606, then first printed in the 1623 First Folio, the only source for its modern text.
- Is Macbeth based on a true story?
- Loosely. Macbeth was a real Scottish king, but the play takes great liberties with the historical record, and the real Macbeth was far better regarded by his contemporaries than Shakespeare's version.
- Which edition of Macbeth should I read?
- There is no settled best. Folger gives the full text free online and offers a facing-notes print edition; Bate preferred Cambridge in 2003, while Arden Third Series (2015) offers a long introduction and detailed commentary.
§If you liked this
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare — The longer, more reflective tragedy; Macbeth runs at about half its length and moves much faster.
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky — Pasternak compared Macbeth with Raskolnikov, pairing two murderers burdened by conscience.
- Richard III by William Shakespeare — Shakespeare's other portrait of a usurper who murders his way to the crown, played with more swagger and far less guilt.
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