MACBETH is often called Shakespeare’s “noble villain (恶棍)”. For some that sounds like a strange thing. It is more typical (典型的) for the central character of a tragedy (悲剧) to be good. Aristotle, in his Poetics, wrote that an audience would not be able to identify with a bad person in a tragedy. And, by any measure, Macbeth is a bad person. He kills his way to the top.