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Shakespeare's source for his story is Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577). The Scottish Play is based loosely on an episode from history (there was a real Lady Macbeth), the death of King Duncan at the hands of his kinsman Macbeth. Macbeth is a tragedy in five acts, and was performed at the Globe Theatre, London, in 1605-06 and published in the First Folio of 1623. The play is the shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies, without diversions or subplots. It chronicles Macbeth's seizing of power and subsequent destruction, both his rise and his fall the result of blind ambition. |