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MACBETH- BACKGROUND TO THE PLAY
At just over 2,100 lines, Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays – just over half the
length of Hamlet. It is one of his bloodiest plays, featuring six slayings plus the death of Lady
Macbeth, as well as the carnage wreaked on Macduff’s household by Macbeth’s hired
murderers.
The play dates from around 1606, just before Shakespeare started writing his late romances.
Macbeth is the last of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, having been written after Hamlet
(1600–1), Othello (1602–3) and King Lear (1605). It was written during the reign of King
James I, who was the patron of Shakespeare’s playing company, the King’s Men.
Macbeth contains numerous references to the life and interests of King James, and to his
reputed ancestors, including Banquo. The primary source for the play is Raphael
Holinshed’s Chronicles, specifically his ‘Historie of Scotland’. Holinshed describes Macbeth
and Banquo as co-conspirators in the murder of Duncan, but Shakespeare is careful to
recast Banquo as entirely innocent. Holinshed emphasises Lady Macbeth’s ambition and
influence on her husband. He details Macbeth’s 10 years as a good and responsible ruler,
albeit with a heavy reliance on witches and wizards, before being brought down by Malcolm,
complete with travelling Birnam Wood.
The early performance history of Macbeth is unclear. It may have been performed for King
James in 1606, though no record exists. The earliest surviving definitive account of the play
is from an audience member who attended a performance at the Globe theatre in 1611.
The Weird Sisters’ comment that Banquo will found a line of kings is a direct reference to
King James’s claim to have descended from eleventh-century Scottish nobleman Banquo,
Thane of Lochaber. Banquo of Lochaber was thought to have been the father of the first
Stuart king from whom James was descended. The play’s focus on good versus evil
reflected King James’s focus on reviewing the standards in the church and producing a new
English version of the Bible, known today as the King James Bible. The appearance of the
Weird Sisters was in part a reflection of James’s fascination with the supernatural. In 1597
he had published a book entitled Dæmonologie, in which he argued that witches did indeed
exist and that they should be hunted down and killed.
The Weird Sisters are also part of a series of references in the play to the Gunpowder Plot of
1605, in which Catholic dissidents planned to assassinate King James, his son and the
entire government in one explosion at the Houses of Parliament. The plot was discovered
and the plotters brought to trial, during which the king carefully organised the public’s
outrage, including inventing Guy Fawkes Day (Gunpowder Treason Day as it was then
known). The dissidents’ act was linked to witchcraft and several plays were written in 1606–
7, referring to the conspiracy.
Other links to the Gunpowder Plot in Macbeth include the murder of King Duncan, Malcolm’s
testing of Macduff’s loyalty using deceptive language, and Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
receiving their comeuppance for committing regicide. Also, the use of paradoxes such as
‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ and elements of the Porter’s speech in Act 2 refer to the perceived
‘equivocal’ nature of Catholic beliefs.
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