ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION MACBETH is not known to have been printed until the first Folio (1623) in which it follows Julius C(!Jsar and precedes Hamlet. Although it has twenty-seven scenes in FI it is by far the shortest of the completed tragedies (2,108 lines), and this, with the presence of loose ends and unexplained references, has led some critics to regard it as a shortened play. ThusJ. D. Wilson1 considered that it was probably cut down by Shakespeare himself for a court performance when the King of Denmark, Christian IV, visited his brother-in-law in the summer of 1606. J ames I was certainly no lover of long plays, which bored him or sent him to sleep. We should, however, have to suppose that the shortened version was that used in the public theatre thenceforth, and that this was later subject to interpolations and other alterations.
