# Macbeth

**Author:** William Shakespeare
**Grade range:** Grades 10–12
**Age range:** 15–18
**First published:** 1606
**Page count:** 256
**Genre:** Drama
**ISBN-13:** `9780743477109`
**ISBN-10:** `0743477103`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/macbeth
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

A Scottish general hears a prophecy from three witches that he will become king; urged on by his wife, he commits a regicide that sets off a chain of political killings and his own psychological collapse. Macbeth is the standard 10th- or 11th-grade Shakespeare text, frequently paired with rhetorical-analysis work in AP Lit and Language.

## Themes

- ambition
- guilt and conscience
- fate vs free will
- political violence
- masculinity
- supernatural

## Content notes

- graphic violence
- murder
- psychological breakdown

Common Sense Media age recommendation: 13+

## Where this book is assigned

### AP English Literature & Composition

- **recommended** · 12th grade — [source: AP Lit drama representative text](https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-english-literature-and-composition)

### Common Core State Standards (ELA)

- **recommended** · 10th grade — [source: CCSS ELA Appendix B, grades 9-10 drama exemplar](https://achievethecore.org/page/2699)
- **recommended** · 10th grade · Massachusetts — [source: MA ELA Framework grade 10 Shakespeare](https://www.doe.mass.edu/)

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