Macbeth
William Shakespeare · 1606 · Paper 1 Section A
Context
Written c.1606 for King James I (who had survived the Gunpowder Plot), Macbeth explores the catastrophic consequences of regicide through the lens of Jacobean beliefs about divine right, witchcraft, and the Great Chain of Being. Shakespeare drew on Holinshed's Chronicles but transformed the historical Macbeth into a study of ambition, guilt, and moral disintegration.