Macbeth

by William Shakespeare, Robert S. Miola (editor)

“With clear and engaging explanation, Professor Miola offers a general introduction to the play, as well as commentary from well-known actors who have played its major roles from the mid-eighteenth century on and material on critical debates. Rather than take single viewpoints on such topics as witchcraft, tyrannicide, equivocation, and the union of Scotland and England, he presents each issue as a debate, open to fruitful discussion among students and colleagues.”—CYNTHIA LEWIS, Davidson College


“Framing this devastating play with illuminating readings, this wonderful edition offers readers a vivid introduction to the Macbeths’ blood-steeped world.”—TANYA POLLARD, City University of New York University


This Norton Critical Edition



The First Folio (1623) text of Macbeth, with updated and expanded footnotes and introductory materials by Robert S. Miola.
Illustrations from a wide range of adaptations, including modern stage and film productions.
“The Actors’ Gallery,” collecting reflections from actors and actresses about their roles in major productions of Macbeth from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries.
Sources and contexts highlighting early texts that influenced Shakespeare and that range in topics from witchcraft to regicide, with a brand-new category on the union of Scotland and England.
Nine selections—four new to the Third Edition—of literary and theatrical criticism.
A revised “Afterlives” section, featuring four examples of how Macbeth continues to be reimagined beyond the Folio.
An annotated list of online and print resources.

369 pages, Paperback

Published March 14, 2025

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".