Shakespeare William - Macbeth: a critical reader

Arden Early Modern Drama Guides

Series Editors:

Andrew Hiscock

University of Wales, Bangor, UK and Lisa Hopkins,
Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Arden Early Modern Drama Guides offers practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performative contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Each guide introduces the texts critical and performance history but also provides students with an invaluable insight into the landscape of current scholarly research through a keynote essay on the state of the art and newly commissioned essays of fresh research from different critical perspectives.

A Midsummer Nights Dream edited by Regina Buccola

Doctor Faustus edited by Sarah Munson Deats

King Lear edited by Andrew Hiscock and Lisa Hopkins

1 Henry IV edited by Stephen Longstaffe

Tis Pity Shes a Whore edited by Lisa Hopkins

Women Beware Women edited by Andrew Hiscock

Volpone edited by Matthew Steggle

The Duchess of Malfi edited by Christina Luckyj

Richard III edited by Annalise Connolly

The Alchemist edited by Erin Julian and Helen Ostovich

The Jew of Malta edited by Robert A Logan

Macbeth edited by John Drakakis and Dale Townshend

Further titles in preparation

MACBETH

A Critical Reader

Edited by
John Drakakis and
Dale Townshend

Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com

First published 2013

John Drakakis, Dale Townshend and contributors 2013

John Drakakis, Dale Townshend and contributors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4725-1739-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

CONTENTS

2Rooting for Macbeth : Parable Ethics in Scotland
ADRIAN STREETE

The drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries has remained at the very heart of English curricula internationally and the pedagogic needs surrounding this body of literature have grown increasingly complex as more sophisticated resources become available to scholars, tutors and students. This series aims to offer a clear picture of the critical and performative contexts of a range of chosen texts. In addition, each volume furnishes readers with invaluable insights into the landscape of current scholarly research as well as including new pieces of research by leading critics.

This series is designed to respond to the clearly identified needs of scholars, tutors and students for volumes which will bridge the gap between accounts of previous critical developments and performance history and an acquaintance with new research initiatives related to the chosen plays. Thus, our ambition is to offer innovative and challenging Guides which will provide practical, accessible and thought-provoking analyses of Early Modern Drama. Each volume is organized according to a progressive reading strategy involving introductory discussion, critical review and cutting-edge scholarly debate. It has been an enormous pleasure to work with so many dedicated scholars of Early Modern Drama and we are sure that this series will encourage you to read 400-year-old playtexts with fresh eyes.

Andrew Hiscock and Lisa Hopkins

NOTES ON
CONTRIBUTORS

Sandra Clark is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. She has published widely on Shakespeare and early modern drama, and is Series Editor of the Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries. She is currently editing Macbeth for the Arden Shakespeare Third Series.

Christy Desmet is Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia (US). She is the author of Reading Shakespeares Characters: Rhetoric, Ethics, and Identity and Editor of Shakespeare and Appropriation (with Robert Sawyer), Harold Blooms Shakespeare (with Robert Sawyer), Shakespearean Gothic (with Anne Williams), and Helen Faucit , in the Lives of Shakespearian Actors series. With Sujata Iyengar, she is co-founder and co-General Editor of Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation ( http://www.borrowers.uga.edu ).

John Drakakis is Emeritus Professor of English Studies at the University of Stirling. He also holds Visiting Professorships at Glyndwr University, where he has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship, and the University of Lincoln. He has published widely in the area of Shakespeare Studies and is the editor of Alternative Shakespeares , the joint editor of Gothic Shakespeares , and three other books of collected essays; he is also the editor of the recently published Arden 3 Series The Merchant of Venice . He has contributed essays to edited collections and articles and reviews to a number of leading literary journals. He is currently a trustee of the British Shakespeare association, and chair of its Fellowships sub-committee. He is a Fellow of the English Association and a member of the Academia Europoeia. He is currently general editor of the Routledge New Critical Idiom series, and is the general editor in charge of the revision of Geoffrey Bulloughs Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare .

Terence Hawkes is Emeritus Professor of English at Cardiff University, Wales. He is the author of Metaphor (Methuen, 1972), and Structuralism and Semiotics (Routledge, 1977, second edition, 2003), as well as a number of books on Shakespeare, including Shakespeare and the Reason (Routledge 1964, 2005), Shakespeares Talking Animals (Arnold, 1973), That Shakespeherian Rag (Methuen, 1986, Routledge, 2005), Meaning By Shakespeare (Routledge, 1992) and Shakespeare In The Present (Routledge, 2002). He was co-editor, with Hugh Grady, of Presentist Shakespeares (Routledge, 2007). He has also acted as the general editor of the New Accents series and of the Accents on Shakespeare series published by Routledge, and was an editor of the journal Textual Practice .

Laury Magnus is Professor of Humanities at the US Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. She has co-edited Who Hears in Shakespeare? Auditory Worlds on Stage and Screen . Her chapter, Shakespeare on Film and Television appeared in the Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare. She is editor of the New Kittredge editions of The Taming of the Shrew and The Comedy of Errors , and co-editor of Romeo and Juliet and Measure for Measure. She has frequently written on Shakespeare in performance in The Shakespeare Newsletter . Her articles and reviews have also appeared in Literature and Film Quarterly, Connotations, Assays, and College Literature. Her non-Shakespearean books include Lexical and Syntactic Repetition in Modern Poetry and a co-translation of Ivan Goncharovs The Precipice. Magnus is also a member of the editorial team of Hamletworks.org.