Macbeth

Macbeth (The Tragedy of Macbeth) is a tragedy of William Shakespeare, who is believed to have been first represented in 1606.2 It dramatizes the damaging physical and psychological effects of ambition politics, in those who seek power by itself. Of all the works that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, who was the patron of Shakespeare’s theatrical company, Macbeth most clearly reflects on the relation of the playwright to his sovereign.3 It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, 4 and is his shortest tragedy.5There is no absolute certainty that the tragedy is entirely Shakespeare’s work, as some claim that certain passages might be later additions of playwright Thomas Middleton, whose work The Witch has multiple affinities with Macbeth.6Macbeth, who was king of the Scots between 1040 and 1057. Shakespeare’s main source for this tragedy was the Chronicles of Raphael Holinshed, a work from which he also extracted the arguments of his historical works. Holinshed was based in turn on History Gentis Scotorum, written in Latin by the Scottish author Hector Boece and first printed in Paris in 1527. To please his patron, King James V of Scotland, Boece had deliberately obscured the figure of Macbeth, in order to exalt a hypothetical ancestor of the king, Banquo.It is important to emphasize that the text reaches us only through the First Folio, unlike other works of Shakespeare of which also some editions are conserved in “rooms”, approved some by the author and others coming from the memory of the spectators . A certain current of criticism maintains that given the smaller extent of this work in relation to other tragedies of the Folio, it can be argued that what has come to us is a summary of the complete work of Shakespeare, further justified by the existence of certain passages obscure in the text that give the impression of needing additional information to be interpreted within the context of the work.