This book is part of the "New Casebooks" series which is designed to reveal some of the ways in which contemporary criticism has changed our understanding of commonly studied texts and writers and, indeed, of the nature of criticism itself. Central to this series is a concern with modern critical theory and its effect on current approaches to the study of literature. This particular casebook looks at Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in a series of 12 articles. Among the essays featured are "Macbeth" and masculinity by Marilyn French, "Macbeth" and witchcraft by Peter Stallybrass, an analysis of the character of Lady Macbeth by Sigmund Freud and the history, ideology and intellectual response to "Macbeth" by Alan Sinfield. Other "New Casebooks" include "Tristram Shandy", "Hamlet" and "Middlemarch".