Macbeth is among the most powerful of Shakespeare's tragedies, a dark but fascinating glimpse into the soul of evil. Set in medieval Scotland in an atmosphere of civil unrest and mutual suspicion, Macbeth probes the intellectual as well as the emotional consequences of unbridled ambition and the cold-blooded murder it engenderrs. In the title character and his wife and accomplice, Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare conceived as complex and eloquent a pair of villains as have ever been created in the English language.