^1. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), Bk. iii, Sec. 34, pp. 108–11.

^2. Frank Kermode explores the issue of the apparent prophetic fulfillment of texts in The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1979), p. 106. Kermode has also studied how classics endure in “A Modern Way with the Classic,” New Literary History, 5 (1974), 415–34.

^3. Generic considerations have dominated scholarly discussions of Macbeth. For example, Edgar Stoll, “Sources and Motives in Macbeth and Othello,” Review of English Studies, 19 (1943), 25–32; J. I. M. Stewart, Character and Motive in Shakespeare (London: Longmans, 1949); R. S. Crane, The Language of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1953); William Rosen, Shakespeare and the Craft of Tragedy (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960); Wayne Booth, “Shakespeare's - Tragic Villain,” in Shakespeare's Tragedies, ed. Laurence Lerner (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1962), pp. 180–90; and Robert Heilman, “The Criminal as Tragic Hero,” Shakespeare Survey, 19 (1966), 12–24—all pose the problem of genre directly. Others have posed it obliquely by emphasizing the poetic rather than the strictly dramatic structure of Macbeth—Carolyn Spurgeon in Shakespeare's Imagery (New York: Macmillan, 1936), Cleanth Brooks in The Well Wrought Urn (New York: Harcourt, 1947), and L. C. Knights in Explorations (New York: G. W. Stewart, 1947)—or by positing its debatelike intellectual or philosophical nature—-G. Wilson Knight in The Imperial Theme (London: Methuen, 1951), Irving Ribner in Patterns in Shakespearian Tragedy (London: Methuen, 1960), A. P. Rossiter in Angel with Horns (London: Longmans, 1961), and John Holloway in The Story of the Night (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1961).

^4. Both titles refer to the famous actors portrayed in them. For a fuller discussion of these two illustrations and the kinds of verbal-visual interactions that are set into play when a text is illustrated, see Stephen Leo Carr, “Verbal-Visual Relationships: Zoffany's and Fuseli's Illustrations of Macbeth,” Art History, 3 (1980), 375–87.

^5. See Eugene Waith, “Manhood and Valor in Two Shakespearean Tragedies,” ELH, 17 (1950), 262–73.

^6. Shaftesbury discusses this topos in “A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tabulature of the Judgement of Hercules,” an influential essay on the need to naturalize mythological and recondite emblems. See third Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Second Characters; or, The Language of Forms, ed. Benjamin Rand (1914; rpt. New York: Greenwood, 1963). All quotations are from the first four chapters of “The Hercules of Prodicus” section, pp. 34–35, 42–44.

^7. Zoffany was, of course, somewhat bound by the dramatic production he represents, yet he changed details to make his image match up better with the topos to which he playfully alludes. When Zoffany painted the second version of the design, which was widely disseminated as a mezzotint by Valentine Green, he changed Lady Macbeth's posture and dress to clarify the underlying topos. In both versions, Lady Macbeth is clearly taller than Macbeth, and although Mrs. Pritchard was in fact taller than Garrick, painters conventionally used strategies that obscured his shortness, lest they offend his vanity.

^8. For an account of Zoffany's learned yet subversive playfulness, see Ronald Paulson, Emblem and Expression: Meaning in English Art in the Eighteenth Century (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), pp. 138–58.

^9. “The Choice of Hercules” topos informs several eighteenth-century thematic oppositions: it provides, for example, the structure for Reynolds' “Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy.” Industry and Idleness was a popular variant of this topos, both as an explicit topic (as in Hogarth's series of prints of this name) and as an underlying thematic of numerous binary choices confronting major characters (as in Tom Jones's “choice” between Sophia Western—whose name ironically suggests wisdom—and Molly Seagrim). Industry and Idleness reveals its close association with the older emblem of “The Choice of Hercules” in the shared contrasts between hard work and frivolous pleasure, for example, or in their common insistence that Vice or Idleness is only a mask hiding evil and ultimate destruction.

^10. The phrase is from Stephen Gosson's The School of Abuse, 1579.

^11. With these two protagonists we establish an early sympathy, share their bafflement over what to do, and find it hard to determine exactly which act constituted the fatal error.

^12. For example, in i.v. 16–31, the operative word is “do”; in 11. 48–54, “purpose” is exalted over “remorse”; and in 11. 62–71, there is a warning against imagining. In i.vii.35–44 she insists that “act” and “valor” ought always to serve “desire,” in 11. 47–59 that she herself would have the valor to kill her own infant, and in 11. 59–73 that only will is necessary to perform the murder undetected.

^13. Since Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, in which this attitude is explicitly argued, appeared in 1776, there was probably widespread speculation around that time about a person's duty to Industry.

^14. Note, for example, how many of Lady Macbeth's verbs in these early scenes are imperatives.

^15. The First Folio reads “I have done the deed,” but several eighteenth-century editors (e.g., Theobold, 1733, and Warburton, 1747) print “I've done the deed.”

^16. Horwich, “Integrity in Macbeth: The Search for ‘The Single State of Man,‘ ” Shakespeare Quarterly, 29 (1978), 365–73.

^17. “From this time / Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valor / As thou art in desire?” (i.vii.38–41 ).