A tale of unbridled greed and an insatiable thirst for power set in eleventh-century Scotland, Macbeth has long been recognized as Shakespeare's fastest-moving tragedy, combining relentless narrative momentum with a profound examination of how psychological coercion mixed with personal ambition can lead to murder - and how individual impulses can shape both a man's own destiny and the course of history.

First performed in around 1606 and published in the First Folio of 1623, Macbeth is presented here in a fully annotated edition that will make the text accessible to twenty-first-century readers, enabling them to appreciate its poetry and encouraging them to delve deeper into its variegated and complex history.