NICOLAS TREDELL is Consultant Editor of the Palgrave Macmillan Readers' Guides and has produced five Guides for the series. He has published widely on literary criticism and theory - his previous publications include The Critical Decade (1993), Conversations with Critics (1994) and a history of film theory, Cinemas of the Mind (2002). For many years he has taught and convened Sussex University literature courses, most recently on Shakespeare.

• AcknowledgementsNote on the TextIntroductionThe Seventeenth to the Late Eighteenth Century: The Development of Macbeth CriticismThe Nineteenth Century: Romantic and Victorian MacbethThe Early Twentieth Century: Tragedy, Psychoanalysis and ImageryThe Mid-Twentieth Century: History, Manhood, the Naked Babe, Nature and EvilThe Later Twentieth Century: History, Tragedy, Violence and IdeologyThe Later Twentieth Century: Language, Subjectivity, and SubversionThe Later Twentieth Century: Men, Women and WitchesConclusion: The Twenty-First Century: Future DirectionsSelect BibliographySelect FilmographyIndex.