Using Shakespeare and Macbeth as a test case, this book examines the idea of the writer and the writer's work. Kathleen McLuskie explores the structure and theatricality of Macbeth as well as addressing the way that it was constructed as a work by its publication in the "1623 Folio of Shakespeare's Works". The study goes on to examine the relationship between the work and the history of its creation and reception and concludes with an analysis of the role of the work in the imagined life of Shakespeare and assesses the relationship between the work and the writer in the 21st century culture. It is informed, but not driven by, recent literary theory, it is alert to the role of theatre, in both the early modern period and today, in reproducing Macbeth as a work and it builds on recent scholarship on the relationship between print and theatrical culture in the seventeenth century.