Introduction and Notes by Cedric Watts, Professor of English Literature, University of Sussex Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's four great tragedies, encompassing witchcraft, bloody murder, ghostly apparitions as well as high poetry, blended in such a way as to demonstrate the assured dramatic touch of Shakespeare's maturity. Macbeth's tragedy is that of a good, brave and honourable man turned into the personification of evil by the workings of unreasonable ambition. It was a lesson lost on King James I & VI, for whom the play was written.