Macbeth

By William Shakespeare

Macbeth (/məkˈbɛθ/, full title The Tragedie of Macbeth) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606.[a] It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, Macbeth most clearly reflects his relationship with King James, patron of Shakespeare's acting company. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy.

A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.

Shakespeare's source for the story is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff, and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth. The events of the tragedy are usually associated with the execution of Henry Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Global Publishers
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915932778

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.

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Macbeth

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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Copyright © 2023

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Table of Contents

ACT I. SCENE I.

A desert place. Thunder and lightning.

ACT I. SCENE II.

A camp near Forres. Alarum within.

ACT I SCENE III

A heath. Thunder.

ACT I. SCENE IV.

Forres. The palace.

ACT I. SCENE V.

Inverness. Macbeth’s castle.

ACT I. SCENE V.

Before Macbeth’s castle. Hautboys and torches.

ACT I. SCENE VII.

Macbeth’s castle. Hautboys and torches.

ACT II. SCENE I.

Inverness. Court of Macbeth’s castle.

ACT II. SCENE II.

The same.

ACT II. SCENE III.

The same.

ACT II. SCENE IV.

Outside Macbeth’s castle.

ACT III. SCENE I.

Forres. The palace.

ACT III. SCENE II.

The palace.

ACT III. SCENE III.

A park near the palace.

ACT III. SCENE IV.

A Hall in the palace. A banquet prepared.

ACT III. SCENE V.

A heath. Thunder.

ACT III. SCENE VI.

Forres. The palace.

ACT IV. SCENE I.

A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron. Thunder.

ACT IV. SCENE II.

Fife. Macduff’s castle.

ACT IV. SCENE III.

England. Before the King’s palace.

ACT V. SCENE I.

Dunsinane. Anteroom in the castle.

ACT V. SCENE II.

The country near Dunsinane. Drum and colors.

ACT V. SCENE III.

Dunsinane. A room in the castle.

ACT V. SCENE IV.

Country near Birnam Wood. Drum and colors.

ACT V. SCENE V.

Dunsinane. Within the castle.

ACT V. SCENE VI.

Dunsinane. Before the castle.

ACT V. SCENE VII.

Dunsinane. Before the castle. Alarums.

ACT V. SCENE VIII.

Another part of the field.

ACT V. SCENE IX.

ACT I. SCENE I.

A desert place. Thunder and lightning.

[Enter three Witches.]

FIRST WITCH.

When shall we three meet again?

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

SECOND WITCH.

When the hurlyburly’s done,

When the battle’s lost and won.

THIRD WITCH.

That will be ere the set of sun.

FIRST WITCH.

Where the place?

SECOND WITCH.

Upon the heath.

THIRD WITCH. 

There to meet with Macbeth.

FIRST WITCH. 

I come, Graymalkin.

ALL. 

Paddock calls. Anon!

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

[Exeunt.] _

ACT I. SCENE II.

A camp near Forres. Alarum within.

[Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox,

with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Sergeant.]

DUNCAN. 

What bloody man is that? He can report,

As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt

The newest state.

MALCOLM. 

This is the sergeant

Who like a good and hardy soldier fought

‘Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend!

Say to the King the knowledge of the broil

As thou didst leave it.

SERGEANT.

Doubtful it stood,

As two spent swimmers that do cling together

And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald-

Worthy to be a rebel, for to that

The multiplying villainies of nature

Do swarm upon him -from the Western Isles

Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;

And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, 

Show’d like a rebel’s whore. But all’s too weak;

For brave Macbeth -well he deserves that name-

Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel,

Which smoked with bloody execution,

Like Valor’s minion carved out his passage

Till he faced the slave,

Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,

Till he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps,

And fix’d his head upon our battlements.

DUNCAN.

O valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman!

SERGEANT.

As whence the sun ‘gins his reflection

Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,

So from that spring whence comfort seem’d to come

Discomfort swells. Mark, King of Scotland, mark.

No sooner justice had, with valor arm’d,

Compell’d these skipping kerns to trust their heels,

But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage,

With furbish’d arms and new supplies of men,

Began a fresh assault.

DUNCAN.

Dismay’d not this 

Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?

SERGEANT.

Yes,

As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.

If I say sooth, I must report they were

As cannons overcharged with double cracks,

So they

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe.

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,

Or memorize another Golgotha,

I cannot tell-

But I am faint; my gashes cry for help.

DUNCAN. 

So well thy words become thee as thy wounds;

They smack of honor both. Go get him surgeons.

[Exit Sergeant, attended.]

Who comes here?

[Enter Ross.]

MALCOLM. 

The worthy Thane of Ross.

LENNOX.

What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look 

That seems to speak things strange.

ROSS. 

God save the King!

DUNCAN.

Whence camest thou, worthy Thane?

ROSS. 

From Fife, great King,

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky

And fan our people cold.

Norway himself, with terrible numbers,

Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict,

Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapp’d in proof,

Confronted him with self-comparisons,

Point against point rebellious, arm ‘gainst arm,

Curbing his lavish spirit; and, to conclude,

The victory fell on us.

DUNCAN.

Great happiness!

ROSS.

That now

Sweno, the Norways’ king, craves composition;

Nor would we deign him burial of his men

Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme’s Inch,

Ten thousand dollars to