• Conflict and Opposition. Other themes include illusion vs. reality, as evinced in Macbeth's visions and the optical illusion of the moving forest and kingship, which deals with questions of who should be the rightful monarch (which is why the regicide of Duncan leads to abberations in the natural world). Destiny vs. free will comes into play as a theme, with destiny ultimately winning out (no matter how hard Macbeth tries, he is not destined to beget kings).

• War. The two opposing sides of the battle that takes place in Fife, is disapprovingly compared to "...two spent swimmers, that do cling together / and choke their art" (I.ii.9). Before Macbeth enters the stage, Macbeth is ironically praised for inhumanely eviscerating the traitorous Macdonwald: "...he unseamed him from the nave to th' chops" (I.ii.22). In this same scene, Macbeth is honored by the Thane of Ross when Ross calls Macbeth "Bellona's bridegroom" (I.ii.54).

• Corrupting Power of Pure Emotion. In the beginning of the play, Macbeth respects societal expectations of him and thus falters in his ambitions to commit regicide; only through the influence of the witches and Lady Macbeth does he gather the will to murder Duncan. From this point, however, Macbeth begins to act more and more compulsively, such as when he orders the murders of Banquo and Fleance; in Act IV, he commits himself completely to living based on his bare impulses: "From this moment / The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand" (IV.i.168-170). After making this pledge, Macbeth becomes a highly erratic mess of fitful remarks and emotional outbursts, and eventually tosses himself into inevitable defeat at the hands of Macduff after spending the entire play jealously guarding his life and crown.

• Internal Struggle. In the first two acts of the play, Macbeth struggles with morality and ambition, trying desperately to reconcile the two. After act two, he struggles instead to reconcile with his regicidal 'new self,' finally failing the task and falling into utter moral darkness and completely abandoning all optimistic perspective, his old "greatness" decaying until his "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" speech, when he has given up on all hope of self- reconciliation.

Text of the play

Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The Folio is the only authoritative source for the text. This is regrettable, as the text has been plainly altered by later hands. Most notable is the inclusion of two songs from Thomas Middleton's later play The Witch, on the basis of which many scholars reject all three of the interludes with the goddess Hecate as inauthentic and added by a later editor, possibly Middleton himself. Even with the Hecate material, the play is conspicuously short, indicating that the Folio text may derive from a promptbook that had been substantially cut for performance.

King James VI of Scotland (King James I of England)

The parade of eight kings which the witches show Macbeth in a vision in Act IV is generally taken to represent the Stuart line, and be intended as a compliment to King James VI of Scotland, recently crowned as James I of England when the play was written.

Shakespeare's sources

• Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, based on Hector Boece's 1527 Scotorum Historiae.
• Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft
• King James I of England's 1599 Daemonologie
• Macbeth's words on dogs and men in Act 3, scene 1, (91-100), likely came from Erasmus' Colloquia
• Compare also the Witch of Endor.

Film versions

See also Shakespeare on screen (Macbeth)

• Macbeth, directed by John Emerson [1]
• Macbeth, directed by Orson Welles
• Throne of Blood, directed by Akira Kurosawa, is a retelling of Macbeth set in medieval Japan.
• Macbeth, directed by Roman Polanski
• Macbeth, directed by Philip Casson
• Geoffrey Wright has shot a modern retelling of Macbeth, titled "M", set in the backdrop of a violent gangwar in southern Australia. The film, due for release in 2006, retains the same dialogue as the play, as in Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and stars Sam Worthington, Victoria Hill and Lachy Hulme.

Adaptations

• Macbeth — 1847 opera by Giuseppe Verdi
• Joe Macbeth — 1955 film noir resetting the story as a gangwar in Chicago, Illinois
• Throne of Blood — 1957 film directed by Akira Kurosawa
• MacBird — 1966 counterculture drama by Barbara Garson featuring US President Lyndon Johnson as Macbeth
• Macbeth — 1988 Greek novel by Apostolos Doxiadis
• Macbeth — 1992 animation by Nikolai Serebryakov as a part of Shakespeare: the Animated Tales
• Macbeth — 1998 TV movie on UK Channel 4, starring Sean Pertwee and set in an alternate present day Scotland
• MacBeth — 1999 Finnish comic book, adapted by Petri Hannini and artwork by Petri Hiltunen.
• Maqbool — 2004 Hindi adaptation set in the Mumbai underworld.
• Men of Respect — 1991 film, set as a Mafia power struggle in New York but otherwise very closely tracking the original
• Scotland, PA — 2001 independent film retelling the story in the form of a black comedy set against the backdrop of a 1975 hamburger stand
• The BBC's ShakespeaRe-Told series in 2005 included a present-day modern-language Macbeth set in a Glasgow restaurant.
• Wyrd Sisters — 1988 parody of Macbeth by Terry Pratchett, one of many novels set in the Discworld fantasy world.

Musical Adaptations

• The opera Macbeth (1847) by Giuseppe Verdi
• Macbeth is one of Richard Strauss's earliest tone poems (1890).
• MacBird (1966) Counterculture drama by Barbara Garson
• The album Thane to the Throne (2000) concept album by Jag Panzer
• The album A Tragedy in Steel (2002) a concept album by Rebellion.

Cultural references

• Macbeth is a recurring character in the television series, Gargoyles. Its backstory is a very loose version of the play, bearing similarities also to the real Macbeth's actual history. Macbeth is an immortal who has a long link and grudge with a renegade Gargoyle, Demona, and originally harassed the Manhattan clan in hopes of drawing her to him.
• The Third Witch — Novel told from the point of view of one of the witches in the play. By Rebecca Reisert.