Perhaps no other Shakespearean drama so engulfs its readers in the ruinous journey of surrender to evil as does Macbeth.

A timeless tragedy about the nature of ambition, conscience, and the human heart, the play holds a profound grip on the Western imagination.

Burton Raffel is professor of arts and humanities emeritus and professor of English emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Among his many edited and translated publications are Poems and Prose from the Old English, Cliges, Lancelot, Perceval, Erec and Enide and Yvain, all published by Yale University Press.