ABSTRACT
William Shakespeare's words were changed as early as the printing of the First Folio. When the compositors who set the type had difficulty reading the handwritten manuscripts, they chose words that made sense to them. The Folio substitutions were unwitting mistakes, but the many changes that subsequent editors and adaptors made were deliberate, often to address the aesthetics of their times. In his 1725 edition, the poet Alexander Pope began the task of collating folio and quarto texts. Shakespeare wrote about taking arms against a sea of troubles, he changed sea to siege to avoid a mixed metaphor. Macbeth is referring to Duncan's murder, but he does not use that word. In this soliloquy and the dialogue that follows, Macbeth uses "murderer" once to argue against his committing that act, but he avoids saying the word murder six times. Macbeth is still vacillating about the decision to murder Duncan and his choice of words tells us that.
