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.