This guide offers a new type of study aid which combines lively critical insight with practical guidance on the critical and writing skills students need to develop in order to engage fully with Shakespeare's texts. The books' core focus is on language: both understanding and enjoying Shakespeare's rich and complex dramatic language and the students' own critical language and how they can improve and develop this to become a critical writer. This volume on 'Macbeth' discusses the play in its Jacobean context and in relation to Shakespeare's other tragedies before looking closely at its language and poetry.