Excerpt from Shakespeare Select Plays: Macbeth Macbeth was printed for the first time in the folio of 1633, where it comes between Julius Casar and Hamlet, and occupies pages 131-151. It is divided throughout into acts and scenes. The text, though not so corrupt as that of some other plays - Coriolanus for example - is yet in many places very faulty, especially as regards the division of the lines. Probably it was printed from a transcript of the author's ms., which was in great part not copied from the original but written to dictation. This is confirmed by the fact that several of the most palpable blunders are blunders of the ear and not of the eye. Here, as elsewhere, we have great reason to join in the regret expressed by the editors of the first folio, that the author did not live to oversee' his own works before they were committed to the press. With regard to the time at which Macbeth was written, if we had the evidence of style alone to guide us, we should assign it to a period when Shakespeare had attained the full perfection of his powers. From the vision of the eight kings. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.