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The oldest surviving firsthand report of a performance of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth comes from the astrologer Simon Forman, who witnessed the tragedy at the Globe on April 20, 1611. Yet a number of authorities concur that the Bard’s tragedy most likely had its premiere even earlier: perhaps staged for King James and his brother-in-law King Christian of Denmark at Hampton Court Palace on August 7, 1606, inferred from textual clues.
Macbeth was not printed (as far as we know) until 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, in the First Folio, together with 18 other plays that had not previously appeared in print, among them Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, and The Tempest.
Since then, the Scottish Play—as it is often referred to within the theater world to ward off bad luck—has been performed and adapted countless times, for both stage and screen. (Fun fact: Samuel Pepys is known to have seen it at least nine times.) The lead role has been memorably brought to life by Laurence Olivier, Ian McKellen, Peter O’Toole, Orson Welles, Denzel Washington, Michael Fassbender, Alan Cumming, and Toshiro Mifune, not to mention Homer; and Lady Macbeth, a character whose presence has resonated through contemporary film and literature, has been portrayed by Vivien Leigh, Judi Dench, Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, Isuzu Yamada, Marion Cotillard, Ruth Negga, and many others.
