Oxford School Shakespeare: Macbeth is a specially prepared edition of William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Macbeth, designed to support school and classroom study. This edition provides the complete, unabridged text of the play along with helpful explanatory notes, glossaries, and summaries to assist students in understanding Shakespeare’s language and themes. It includes background information about Shakespeare’s life, the historical context of the play, and key literary features. With illustrations, scene-by-scene analyses, and discussion questions, this edition makes the complex themes of ambition, power, fate, guilt, and the supernatural more accessible to learners. It is a valuable resource for both teachers and students, encouraging deeper engagement with one of Shakespeare’s most powerful tragedies.

Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare that explores the destructive power of unchecked ambition. The play begins with Macbeth, a Scottish general, who encounters three witches. They prophesy that he will become the King of Scotland. Tempted by the prophecy and spurred on by his ambitious wife, Lady Macbeth, he murders King Duncan and seizes the throne. Haunted by guilt and paranoia, Macbeth becomes a tyrant, committing further murders to protect his crown, including the killing of Banquo, his friend, and the massacre of Macduff’s family. Lady Macbeth, overwhelmed by guilt, descends into madness and dies. In the final act, Macbeth faces Macduff, who was "from his mother’s womb untimely ripped" (not of woman born) and thus fulfills the witches’ prophecy that no man born of a woman could harm him. Macbeth is slain, and Malcolm, Duncan’s rightful son, is restored to the throne. The play ends with a strong message about ambition, fate, guilt, and the tragic downfall of those who misuse power.