This article advances the thesis that Shakespeare's play, Macbeth, is best understood as a drama which centers on the alteration in the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Lord Macbeth, the hero of the realm, is revealed to be a man whose self required an archaic selfobject—Lady Macbeth—to maintain its cohesiveness. As the play unfolds and Lady Macbeth becomes fragmented, Macbeth experiences a profound disarray with tragic consequences for all in the kingdom, including wholesale murder and the killing of “innocent babes.” Shakespeare's play is dominated from beginning to end by the vicissitudes of a failed self/selfobject relationship and the attempted repair of this relationship.