![]() In its depiction of a man who murders his king and kinsman in order to gain the crown, only to lose all that humans seem to need in order to be happy-sleep, nourishment, friends, love- Macbeth teases us with huge questions. What he created, though, is a play that has fascinated generations of readers and audiences that care little about Scottish history. It is possible, then, that in writing Macbeth Shakespeare was mainly intent upon appealing to the new interests in London brought about by James’s kingship. ” A Scottish king and his court.įrom Raphael Holinshed, The historie of Scotland (1577). Shakespeare’s Macbeth supplied its audience with a sensational view of witches and supernatural apparitions and equally sensational accounts of bloody battles in which, for example, a rebel was “ unseamed . . . James had already himself executed women as witches. Such accounts could feed the new Scottish King James’s belief in a connection between treason and witchcraft. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He also came upon stories of witches and wizards providing advice to traitors. In Scottish history of the eleventh century, Shakespeare found a spectacle of violence-the slaughter of whole armies and of innocent families, the assassination of kings, the ambush of nobles by murderers, the brutal execution of rebels. ![]()
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