The Tragedy of Macbeth
The fourth in a series of editions of Shakespeare’s most political and history-soaked plays, this Macbeth offers copious aids to understanding the play not found in any other edition. By attending to the play’s medieval Scottish setting in a way that rival editors have never matched—when they have even dug beyond the early seventeenth-century context in which it was produced—Jan H. Blits’s edition richly rewards readers left unsatisfied by “decodings” of the play’s supposed allusions to the politics of early modern England who wish to look deeper. In doing so, it opens the text for readers to encounter, in new ways, the play’s historical, political, and psychological significance.
SKU
98270g
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The fourth in a series of editions of Shakespeare’s most political and history-soaked plays, this Macbeth offers copious aids to understanding the play not found in any other edition. By attending to the play’s medieval Scottish setting in a way that rival editors have never matched—when they have even dug beyond the early seventeenth-century context in which it was produced—Jan H. Blits’s edition richly rewards readers left unsatisfied by “decodings” of the play’s supposed allusions to the politics of early modern England who wish to look deeper. In doing so, it opens the text for readers to encounter, in new ways, the play’s historical, political, and psychological significance.
Reviews:
"A superb edition of the play that offers original and much-needed commentary on its political and historical setting and the complex psychological and philosophical questions that arise from the question of succession, the history of Scotland, and most of all the tension between the old heroic virtues and the new Christian dispensation that comes to a crisis in Macbeth’s murder of King Duncan and his defeat by Malcolm, Duncan’s eldest son. This is the first edition I’ve encountered whose notes proved to be a fascinating read in themselves. With the illuminating Introduction, they provide helpfully compendious aid for accurate reading as well as a context-specific commentary on vital aspects of the drama rarely addressed and typically neglected, insufficiently developed, or unrecognized.
"Rather than making narrow probes into the plot’s politics and history, Blits opens unexplored chambers of implication and significance that affect the complex emotional load of the drama as well as its particular significance. And that significance is both historical and contemporary in the sense that it looks back to a turning point in Scotland’s history with important implications for King James I, the play’s patron and, in terms of its substance, its inheritor. Blits shows just how important that turning point is, not merely as a defeat of a bewitched tyrant but as an arduous, not fully complete transition from one way of being kind (and being human) to another."
—John C. Briggs, Professor, Department of English, University of California Riverside
About the Author:
Jan Blits is Emeritus Professor, University of Delaware.
