Macbeth Read Online Free Page A

generation ago, most of Shakespeare’s classical and biblical allusions could be assumed to be generally understood, but now they can’t).
    Because Shakespeare did not personally oversee the publication of his plays, with some plays there are major editorial difficulties. Decisions have to be made as to the relative authority of the early printed editions, the pocket format “quartos” published in Shakespeare’s lifetime, and the elaborately produced First Folio text of 1623, the original “Complete Works” prepared for the press after his death by Shakespeare’s fellow actors, the people who knew the plays better than anyone else.
Macbeth
exists only in a Folio text that is reasonably well printed. However, as explained in the introduction above, the surviving text, which is much shorter than those of the other tragedies, may represent a theatrical adaptation post-dating Shakespeare’s retirement, possibly overseen by Thomas Middleton. The extent of Middleton’s involvement is debated by scholars: the Hecate scenes have long been attributed to him, but the possibility of detecting his hand elsewhere in the play is hotly debated (the 2007 Oxford edition of Middleton’s complete works actually included
Macbeth
). Since our editorial principle in the RSC Shakespeare is to follow the First Folio wherever possible, we print the Hecate scenes as they appear there, giving only the opening words of the songs. The full text of the songs from Middleton’s
The Witch
is given at the end of theplay, but we cannot know for sure that exactly the same words were used in
Macbeth
.
    The following notes highlight various aspects of the editorial process and indicate conventions used in the text of this edition:
    Lists of Parts are supplied in the First Folio for only six plays, not including
Macbeth
, so the list here is editorially supplied. Capitals indicate that part of the name which is used for speech headings in the script (thus “King DUNCAN ”).
    Locations are provided by the Folio for only two plays, of which
Macbeth
is not one. Eighteenth-century editors, working in an age of elaborately realistic stage sets, were the first to provide detailed locations (“another part of the palace”). Given that Shakespeare wrote for a bare stage and often an imprecise sense of place, we have relegated locations to the explanatory notes at the foot of the page, where they are given at the beginning of each scene in which the imaginary location is different from the one before.
    Act and Scene Divisions were provided in the Folio in a much more thoroughgoing way than in the Quartos. Sometimes, however, they were erroneous or omitted; corrections and additions supplied by editorial tradition are indicated by square brackets. Five-act division is based on a classical model, and act breaks provided the opportunity to replace the candles in the indoor Blackfriars playhouse that the King’s Men used after 1608, but Shakespeare did not necessarily think in terms of a five-part structure of dramatic composition. The Folio convention is that a scene ends when the stage is empty. Nowadays, partly under the influence of film, we tend to consider a scene to be a dramatic unit that ends with either a change of imaginary location or a significant passage of time within the narrative. Shakespeare’s fluidity of composition accords well with this convention, so in addition to act and scene numbers we provide a running scene count in the right margin at the beginning of each new scene, in the typeface used for editorial directions. Where there is a scene break caused by a momentary bare stage, but the location does not change and extra time does not pass, we use the convention running scene continues. There is inevitably a degree of editorial judgment in making such calls, but the system is very valuable in suggesting the pace of the plays.
    Speakers’ Names are often inconsistent in Folio. We have regularized speech headings, but retained an