Virtually all editions of Macbeth will have at least some annotations. Rummaging through five different editions, I preferred the Yale University Press version, edited by Burton Raffel, as having the most comprehensive and comprehensible notes, as well as an excellent introduction to Shakespeare's play. Raffel not only explains the meanings of obscure words, but also gives brief notes pertaining to relevant history, geography, stage directions, etc, that are rarely addressed as fully by other editors. In addition, Raffel frequently gives the proper way to stress the syllables in a line when reading it aloud, which can be extremely helpful. (However, in most places these stresses need to be very subtle, so that you don't sound like "taDUM taDUM taDUM".) And Yale's page layout is among the clearest that I've seen.

(To find this edition: at Avanced Search, enter ISBN 0300106548; or, enter Macbeth as title, and either Raffel as author or Yale as publisher.)

As a bonus, this edition includes at the back a long essay on the play by Harold Bloom. This is not an uninteresting commentary, but Bloom desperately needs a good editor. His essay is not only at least three times longer than it should be, but is startlingly repetitious. Yale would have been wise to have asked Bloom for a rewrite.

From the opening foreboding lines of the witches on the heath " When shall we three meet again in thunder lightning or in rain, when the hurly burly's done when the battle's lost and won;/ to the concluding realization of the prophecy of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane , the seeming impossible happening, and Macbeth being deposed and done away with the drama is one of cold ambition and cruel horror. The great Macbeth spurred by the ambition of Lady Macbeth let's ambition turn him to murder , and this murder and its consequences are the heart of the tragic tale. The powerful figure of Lady Macbeth dominates her less strong husband, and he the great warrior follows her toward ruthless realization of his own ambition. The fall of all is the justice of the end of the play. The play contains one of Shakespeare's greatest speeches , the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow " soliloquy of Macbeth .And the work as a whole does raise the question of the meaning of the sound and fury signifying nothing. As a young person reading this work for the first time I could never reconcile myself to the cruel end of the story - I simply could not understand why such a sad and unhappy ending had to happen to them all. For this reason my love of the play as a whole was tempered, though I very much loved its great passages and language. I just could not bear in those days to see such an ' unhappy ending'.

When rating Shakespeare, I am comparing it to other Shakespeare. Otherwise, the consistent "5 Stars" wouldn't tell you much. So if you want to have this book rated as compared to the general selection of books in the world, it probably deserves five stars, certainly four. But as Shakespeare goes, in spite of being one of his best-known plays, it truly isn't one of the best.

Certainly, there are the bones of a fine plot here, but the play is very short and thus doesn't really give us the smooth development of plot and character that we usually see in Shakespeare. Nor, given how entirely unappealing the main character is, is it properly a tragedy when he dies; granted, one can consider it tragic that good King Duncan is killed, and Banquo as well, to say nothing of McDuff's family. But can a play in which the unequivocal "good guys" categorically win (and several of them even survive) be properly called a tragedy?

There are certain similarities between the plot (or at least, the theme) of this play and that of the novel "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky. If you liked that book, you may enjoy this play. If you like this play, you will probably enjoy that book (it is a much more in-depth character portrait). Granted, the issue of Kingship never comes into play in Dostoyevsky's work, but the concept of the effect a murder has on the murderer is there, and actually handled rather better.

Of course, being Shakespeare, there is much beautiful language to be found here, and as Shakepearean plays go, the language isn't too difficult for the modern reader; there are only a few places where the footnotes are absolutely essential to an understanding of what's been said. But truly, it is hard to really like this work, and while it can be interesting, it would have been better if it weren't so rushed.

a tragic story of death and betrail. A great play to watch, read, and perform. Read this play!