Macbeth

Macbeth is a tragedy by the English playwright William Shakespeare, believed to have been first performed around 1606, following the Scottish general Macbeth, who is told by three witches that he will become King of Scotland and, urged on by his wife Lady Macbeth, murders King Duncan to seize the throne. Having secured the crown through murder, Macbeth descends into paranoid tyranny, ordering the killing of his former ally Banquo and the family of the nobleman Macduff to eliminate perceived threats, while Lady Macbeth is driven to guilt-ridden madness and suicide by the crime she helped instigate, before Macduff, revealed to have been born by caesarean section rather than naturally born of woman, fulfills the witches' riddling prophecy and kills Macbeth in the play's final battle. One of Shakespeare's shortest tragedies, the play is noted for its concentrated, rapid pace, its exploration of ambition, guilt and the corrupting effect of power, and its sustained use of supernatural elements, the witches' prophecies and Lady Macbeth's hallucinated bloodstained hands, to dramatize psychological disintegration. Frequently associated in theatrical tradition with a supposed curse leading many companies to avoid naming it directly, calling it instead the Scottish Play, Macbeth remains one of Shakespeare's most frequently performed and adapted tragedies.