Returning to his inexhaustible muse, Shakespearean apologist Harold Bloom completed his quintet of insightful character analyses (preceded by those on Falstaff, Cleopatra, Lear, and Iago) with this profile of Macbeth. First seen as a heroic warrior, over the course of the eponymous play Macbeth transforms into a brutal, murderous villain and ultimately pays an extraordinary price for his evil. He is a man consumed with ambition and self-doubt—one of Shakespeare's most vital meditations on the dark corners of the human psyche—and Bloom illuminates Macbeth's actions with insight and compassion, while acknowledging how his own perceptions of this character evolved over the course of his career. "A lingering and deeply curious, even troubled, look at the titular character in the legendary play…. Clear, concise, empathetic."—Kirkus Reviews

"Bloom once again plumbs the depths of a Shakespeare play to reveal new insights … [that] will shift the reader's perceptions of a literary classic."—Publishers Weekly