ABSTRACT
It is tting that a study of adaptation should choose Macbeth as its center. The only text of Macbeth we possess, the one appearing in the 1623 Folio, is now almost universally accepted as an adaptation. As Gary Taylor explains, “Since 1869, most scholars have agreed with W. G. Clark and W. A. Wright that Shakespeare’s original play was later adapted by Thomas Middleton to incorporate two songs and the character Hecate from The Witch,” a Middleton play generally thought to have been composed and then staged in 1616 (Taylor, “Empirical Middleton,” 239). Claims have been made that other plays now included in the Shakespeare canon represent instances of co-authorship, but the case of Macbeth is unique because of the clear textual overlaps between it and Thomas Middleton’s play, The Witch.
