We read Shakespeare's Macbeth with great pleasure in the exemplary and profound translation by Giorgos Cheimonas. Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. It consists of five acts of a "nightmare" that begin and end in the blink of an eye.

Macbeth is a general in King Duncan of Scotland's army and seeks to seize power. To achieve this, he commits a series of murders—one after another—prompted by his wife, Lady Macbeth. At the end of the tragedy, he will die at the hands of the noble Macduff, after his murders have been uncovered.

Macbeth has suppressed a rebellion and can become king, and must do so—destiny's command. He kills the legitimate ruler Duncan for this reason. However, this is not enough; he must also murder the witnesses of the crime and those who suspect anything about it, as well as the sons and friends of those he killed. Ultimately, he must kill everyone because everyone is against him.

It was a destiny he did not choose himself—it was decided by the cunning witches, the Fates, and they impose it on him, a decision that will be fulfilled through the intervention of his wife, Lady Macbeth, thus creating yet another cursed one among many among the unhappy who have lived—and will live.

The theme of power is central to this tragedy, intertwined with other themes of the work, which are murder and fear. All together they form a question that has occupied humankind since the dawn of time: the question of fate. Macbeth is not a real person, but a figure representing the unbearable destiny of ultimate collapse after a tragic climax and terrible suffering of Macbeth himself.

Minas Maroudis, Eleftherotypia, 28/8/2009