Arden Renaissance Drama Guides offer students and academics practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performance contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Essays from leading international scholars provide invaluable insights into the text by presenting a range of critical perspectives, making the books ideal companions for study and research. Key features include: Essays on the play's critical and performance history A keynote essay on current research and thinking about the play A selection of new essays by leading scholars A survey of resources to direct students' further reading about the play in print and online Regularly performed and studied, Macbeth is not only one of Shakespeare's most popular plays but also provides us with one of the literary canon's most compellingly conflicted tragic figures. This guide offers fresh new ways into the play. -- Provided by publisher.;Introduction / John Drakakis -- The critical backstory / Sandra Clark -- Performance history / Laury Magnus -- Macbeth: the state of the art / Lauren Shohet -- Macbeth and "sovereign process' / John Drakakis -- Rooting for Macbeth: parable ethics in Scotland / Adrian Streete -- Unsexing Macbeth, 1623-1800 / Dale Townshend -- Macbeth in the present / Terence Hawkes -- Resources / Christy Desmet.