Editing Macbeth (section)

===As a poetic tragedy===
Critics in the early twentieth century reacted against what they saw as an excessive dependence on the study of character in criticism of the play. This dependence, though most closely associated with [[A. C. Bradley]], is clear as early as the time of [[Mary Cowden Clarke]], who offered precise, if fanciful, accounts of the predramatic lives of Shakespeare's female leads. She suggested, for instance, that the child Lady Macbeth refers to in the first act died during a foolish military action.<ref name="Byler2015">{{cite journal|author=Lauren Byler|title=Loose characters in Mary Cowden Clarke's The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines in a Series of Tales |journal=Texas Studies in Literature and Language |volume=57 |issue=3 |date=2015 |page=343 |doi=10.7560/TSLL57305 |s2cid=162081047 |issn=0040-4691}}</ref>