Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays because its tight structure shows the somehow inevitable crime of a tyrant meeting with just punishment. In the most famous speech of the play, Macbeth denies that life has any meaning at all, let alone that there is justice: “life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It is striking that one of the most popular comedies of recent times described itself as a show “about nothing.” Shakespeare’s tragedy comprehends comedy within itself because it is open to the whole question of how much order or justice there is in life.

Shakespeare opens these broader questions up by prompting such as, why does the just result appear to be the result of the action of evil witches? Why do Macbeth and Lady Macbeth apparently exchange characters, so that they meet ends in tension with how they acted at the beginning? And so on. Shakespeare shows ultimately that the tyrant’s passions correspond to particular views of imagination, honour, power and ultimately of time itself.

Since tyranny is a danger coeval with political life, understanding the tyrant will always be of use to us. This utility is leavened by Shakespeare’s poetry, which we will read together to appreciate it as poetry and to try to understand the deeper intention of the poet.