Perhaps no other Shakespearean drama so engulfs its readers in the ruinous journey of surrender to evil as doesMacbeth.A timeless tragedy about the nature of ambition, conscience, and the human heart, the play holds a profound grip on the Western imagination.
The polymathic scholar and translator Burton Raffel not only elucidates baffling terms but offers guidance on the prosody and declamation of Shakespeare's lines, often to subtle effect, which will be useful to actors as well as readers. Eric Ormsby,New York Sun
Selected for Association of American University Presses (AAUP) Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries, 2006
Selected as a 2005 outstanding book byUniversity Press Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries
Featured at ALA as one of the "Best of the Best from the University Presses: Books you should know about"
Burton Raffelis Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities Emeritus and professor of English emeritus, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Among his many edited and translated publications arePoems and Prose from the Old English, Clig?s, Lancelot, Perceval, Erec and Enide,andYvain,all published by Yale University Press.Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at New York University, is the author of many books,includingThe Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human,andWhere Shall Wisdom Be Found?
Perhaps no other Shakespearean drama so engulfs us in the ruinous journey of surrender to evil as doesMacbeth. Theon-page annotations of this edition provide readers with all the tools they need to comprehend the play fully and to examine its profound grip on the Western imagination.