We know that he was one of the principal shareholders in the Globe theatre and therefore had vested interests in writing "a hit, a palpable hit." But why write one about a long-dead Scottish king and his super-ambitious wife? The reason may be found in the date of the play. According to the experts, it was probably written in 1605-06 (WS never dated his plays) when King James I of England (a.k.a. James VI of Scotland) had already been reigning for two or three years. We know James loved the theatre and that he considered himself a direct descendant of Banquo and the eight kings whose apparitions appear at the end of the terrific Witches' scene - the one where they are busy making soup and proclaiming:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
"Women in straunge & ferly apparell, resembling creatures of an elder world"
From Holinshed's "Chronicles," 1587.
Therefore, Shakespeare, as a leading member of the King's Men theatre company, had vested interests in stroking the royal ego and keeping the company's chief patron happy.
Another reason may also be connected with this king. This play - the shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies - deals with witches, and this topic was very popular at the time. Three popular contemporary plays based on witches included, The Witch of Edmonton, The Late Lancashire Witches and The Witch by Shakespeare's contemporary playwright (and maybe writing partner), Thomas Middleton. In 1597, some nine years before WS wrote "Macbeth," King James himself wrote his academic treatise on witchcraft, Demonologie. This was the result of his becoming obsessed with the topic following the North Berwick witch trials of 1590-91.
Therefore, for Shakespeare to have written a play about witches was not only fashionable, it also flattered the king by reflecting his interest in the topic, especially as the play stressed James' Scottish background. Not only was the Bard a great dramatist, he obviously believed in good PR.
Incidentally, the scene featuring the moving wood "from Great Birnham Wood to high Dunsinane Hill" is not our William's original. This idea had been used before in several works such as, Andrew Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil some two hundred years earlier. And of course, the idea of using trees to camouflage the size of your army appears in the Old Testament when David does this to fool the Philistines.
Finally, what were Shakespeare's sources for this play? He himself probably used Holinshed's Chronicles which appeared in 1577 and again in 1586-87. Holinshed may have based his histories on Stewart's Cronikle of 1535 and Bellenden's Croniklis of 1533. This last work was a free translation of Boece's Scotorium Historiae, 1526-27 which followed Andrew Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil. The earliest history we have about Macbeth appeared in John of Fordun's Chronica sometime before 1385.
Next time I'll deal with the topic why it can be fatal to take part in this "Scottish play" or even to go and watch it at your local theatre.
For comments on the above, please write to: wsdavidyoung@gmail.com
Thank you.
