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Macbeth is Shakespeare’s great tragedy of
a fall into evil. The Norton Critical Edition text is based
on the First Folio (1623), the only authoritative text of
the play. It is accompanied by an introduction, detailed explanatory
annotations, and textual notes.
A rich “Sources and
Contexts” section provides readers with an understanding
of Macbeth’s origins through the works of Seneca,
Raphael Holinshed, and The Slaughter of the Holy Innocents
and the Death of Herod. The cultural controversies surrounding
the play—free will, predestination, witchcraft, tyrannicide,
and equivocation—are debated by various authors. Adaptations
of Macbeth are included for comparative reading,
among them Welcome Msomi’s recent South African retelling,
uMabatha.
Four hundred years of critical interpretation of Macbeth
are represented in seventeen
judiciously-chosen essays, among them assessments by Samuel
Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sarah Siddons, A. C. Bradley,
Janet Adelman, Derek Jacobi, Stephen Orgel, and Peter Holland.
A Selected Bibliography is also included.
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