Macbeth

A prophecy. A king who would rather not hear it. A wife of ferocious ambition and complete conviction. Three witches on a heath, and the particular quality of moral collapse that comes not from wickedness but from the decision to silence the part of yourself that knows what you are doing is wrong.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is the shortest of the great tragedies and the most concentrated: compressed into fewer than twenty-five hundred lines, it moves from its opening scene on the heath to its final battle with the speed and inevitability of a nightmare. Its language — ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’, ‘Out, damned spot’, ‘I am in blood / Stepped in so far’ — is among the most quoted in the English language, which means it is also among the most surprising when encountered properly, in context, for what it actually means.

This Penguin Shakespeare edition provides authoritative text, clear annotations, and an introduction that places the play in its historical and theatrical context. Published by Penguin.