THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, PART II THE SEED OF BANQUO by Noah Lukeman

In 1610, The Tragedy of Macbeth was first performed.

400 years later: the sequel.

Ten years king, Malcolm sits on an uneasy throne. If Malcolm’s mind is haunted by the ghosts of his royal father (“gracious Duncan”) as well as the thane and lady who so bloodily betrayed him, Malcolm’s soul is sickened, as was Macbeth’s, by the witches’ prophecy that from Banquo’s seed would spring a line of Scottish kings: a prophecy that remained unfulfilled at the end of Shakespeare’s play. The witches also taunt Malcolm with riddles all his own: that sorrows will visit him from Ireland (where his younger brother fled upon their father’s death); that his love for Macbeth will breed fresh treachery.

True to the Shakespearean model, its devious plot unfolding in five acts and its speech set to the measure of blank verse, Macbeth, Part II, draws bold the tragedy of a powerful man undone by the terrors he imagines and the truths he fails to see.

An original play, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Part II picks up where Shakespeare's Macbeth left off, imagining a resolution to the witches’ original prophecy that “the seed of Banquo” will become kings. Written in blank verse, adhering to the traditional Shakespearean five-act structure, it is executed in the form of what would be a faithful sequel.

The first hardcover edition was published by Pegasus Books in October of 2008, and the paperback edition was released on April 23, 2010.

“An audacious achievement. ‘Blood will have blood,’ wrote Shakespeare, and Lukeman steers us back into the red, raging thick of it, exploring—in blank verse, no less— the murderous fallout from the original Macbeth.”
--Jennifer Lee Carrell, Ph.D. (Harvard)
New York Times Bestselling author of Interred With Their Bones/The Shakespeare Secret

"Shakespeare lives on because we find his thoughts in our blood. Noah Lukeman's bold sequel to Macbeth, written in blank verse, is a fierce, memory-ridden love letter to Shakespeare, and an