Includes bibliographical references (pages 377-381).

Introduction --
The text of Macbeth --
The actors' gallery. Letter (1762) / David Garrick ; From Dramatic miscellanies (1783) / Thomas Davies ; Garrick's Macbeth (1761) / David Garrick ; [On Playing Lady Macbeth] (1834) / Sarah Siddons ; Notes on Siddons's Lady Macbeth (1809) / G. J. Bell ; Letters (1849, 1860) / Edwin Forrest ; From Reminiscences (1849) / William Macready ; [On Lady Macbeth] (1888) / Adelaide Ristori ; [On the 1936 Voodoo production and the 1948 Macbeth Film] / Orson Welles ; [On the 1976 Trevor Nunn Macbeth] / Ian McKellen ; [On the 1980 Ninagawa Macbeth] / Hira Mikijirô and Yukio Ninagawa ; Interviews (2001) / Antony Sher and Harriet Walter ; Stewart interview (2010) / Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood ; Fleetwood interview (2011) --
Sources and contexts. Sources. [The slaughter of the Holy Innocents and the death of Herod] (fourteenth century) / N-Town Cycle ; Medea (first century, trans. 1581) / Seneca ; Hercules Furens (first century, trans. 1581) / Seneca ; Agamemnon (first century, trans. 1581) / Seneca ; [Duff and Duncan] (1587) / Raphael Holinshed --
Contexts. Debate on free will and predestination: [An attack on free will] (1520/21) / Martin Luther, [A defense of free will] (1524) / Desiderius Erasmus ; Debate on witchcraft: From The discovery of witchcraft (1584) / Reginald Scot, From News from Scotland (1591) / James I, From Daemonology (1597) / James I ; Debate on tyrannicide: From An homily against disobedience and willful rebellion (1570) / Church of England, [A defense of disobedience and tyrannicide] (1599) / Juan de Mariana ; Debate on equivocation: A treatise of equivocation (before 1606) / Henry Garnet ; Arraignment of Henry Garnet, S.J. (1606) / Sir Edward Coke --
Criticism. [Eyewitness account of Macbeth](1611) / Simon Forman ; Miscellaneous observations on the tragedy of Macbeth (1745) / Samuel Johnson ; [On Macbeth](1808-19) / Samuel Taylor Coleridge ; On the knocking at the gate in Macbeth (1823) / Thomas De Quincey ; Two scenes from Macbeth (1982) / Harry Levin ; Macbeth and the antic round (1999) / Stephen Orgel ; "Stands Scotland where it did?" : the location of Macbeth on film (2004) / Peter Holland ; A note on the authorship controversy (2014) / Robert S. Miola ; Macbeth and Middleton (2014) / Gary Taylor --
Afterlives. Macbeth (1674) / William Davenant ; Macbeth Travesties 1820-66) ; Macbeth (1865) ; Letters (1847, 1865) / Giuseppi Verdi ; Macbett (1972) / Eugène Ionesco ; Welcome Msomi (1996) / uMabatha ; Equivocation (2009) / Bill Cain.

The Norton Critical Edition is again based on the First Folio (1623), the only authoritative text of the play. The volume includes a revised introduction and new annotations and textual notes.

The Second Edition also includes the innovative feature "The Actors' Gallery," which presents famous actors and actresses--among them David Garrick, Sarah Siddons, Ian McKellen, Hira Mikijir?, Patrick Stewart, and Kate Fleetwood--reflecting on their roles in major productions of Macbeth for stage and screen.

"Sources and Contexts" provides readers with an understanding of Macbeth's origins in earlier texts, specifically the works of the Roman playwright Seneca, the Tudor historian Raphael Holinshed, and the medieval drama The Slaughter of the Innocents and the Death of Herod. Contexts for the play include contemporary debates on predestination versus free will (Martin Luther versus Erasmus), witchcraft as fiction or fact (Reginald Scott versus King James I), the ethics of regicide (an Elizabethan homily versus Jan de Mariana, S.J.), and the ethics of equivocation (Henry Garnet, S.J., versus--new to the Second Edition--Sir Edward Coke).