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The tragedy we know today came to us patched together with lines lifted from the works of another playwright, Thomas Middleton. Since Macbeth was not considered one of Shakespeare’s last plays, it’s difficult to explain why the tragedy had to be cobbled together in that manner. Was it possible that Macbeth, due to its bloodthirsty portrayal of Scottish royalty, had been censored by James I? Was Macbeth always the shortest play in the canon, or was its brevity the result of censorship? Could its author have suffered dire consequences as a result of a king’s displeasure, and was that the reason “the Scottish play” had always been associated with bad luck?
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Lee Durkee (Stalking Shakespeare: A Memoir of Madness, Murder, and My Search for the Poet Beneath the Paint)