Introduction

The Shakespearean Originals Series takes as its point of departure the question: "What is it that we read Shakespeare?" The answer may seem self-evident: we read the words that Shakespeare wrote. But do we? In the case of all the major editions of Shakespeare available in the market, the fact of the matter is that many of the words that we read in an edition of, say, Hamlet, never appeared in the text as it was printed during or shortly after Shakespeare's own lifetime. They are the interpretations and interpolations of a series of editors who have been systematically changing Shakespeare's text from the eighteenth century onwards.

This volume offers the text of Macbeth, as printed in the 1623 First Folio.