Yes, there was a real Macbeth. His full name was Mac Bhetha mac Fhionnlaigh, and he was sometimes called Ri Deircc, “the Red King.” He was a High King of Scotland, apparently, and not the High King. Unlike Shakespeare’s character, the historical Macbeth was not a tyrant, but a good ruler, who enjoyed a long and relatively peaceful reign of 17 years.
The Historical Macbeth
To understand the politics behind Macbeth’s rise to (and fall from) power, it’s necessary to first have a little understanding of the principle of alternating succession. Both the Scots and the Irish practiced this tradition, at least for a time, in which the inheritance of power passed between alternating branches of a family.
According to the theory, Macbeth should have been the heir to the holdings of King Malcolm II of Scotland, since the succession had been alternating between descendants of the two sons of Kenneth McAlpin, an earlier King of the Scots. Malcolm had broken with tradition, however, and named his oldest grandson, Duncan, as his successor.
Duncan was not the kindly and wise old man that Shakespeare has had us think. He was a fairly young man, not much older than Macbeth. He was also a notoriously ineffectual ruler, and it was somewhat of a relief to many when Macbeth deposed him.
Macbeth’s claim to the throne was further justified by his wife’s ancestry, who was a direct descendant of two Scottish Kings, Malcolm I and Kenneth III. Mrs. Macbeth’s name was Gruoch, and she was a widow when Macbeth had married her. She had previously been married to one of Macbeth’s cousins, Gille Coemagain, and had a son with him, Lulach. Gille Coemagain (and his brother) had slain Macbeth’s father, making Macbeth Mormaer of Moray, and Macbeth in turn had slain his cousin. I guess the Gaels had come by that tradition of alternate succession by way of experience.
After Duncan’s death, his widow took her two sons, Malcolm III and Donalbane, out of Scotland. Macbeth’s reign was reasonably peaceful, and he even found time to make a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050, where “scattered money like seed among the poor.” You have to have a peaceful kingdom in order to take long road trips.
In 1054, Macbeth’s territory was invaded by Siward, the Earl of Northumbria. Also involved in the invasion was Mael Coluim, a different Malcolm, not the one who would ultimately become King of Scotland. After a long and bloody battle, Siward’s side apparently won, for it was Macbeth that made the concessions — in part, large holdings given to Mael Coluim. Macbeth himself was alive and healthy, and still sitting on the throne.
Two years later, Malcolm the son of Duncan returned with an army, and Macbeth was killed. That put Macbeth’s stepson on the throne, but not for long. Malcolm murdered him and took over the following year. It’s probably not a coincidence that Luach was nicknamed “The Unfortunate.”
Shakespearean Modifications
More years ago than I care to think about, I majored in English Literature in college. One of the more popular queries relating to Shakespeare’s Macbeth was the question, “What happened to Macbeth’s children?”
The question is based on two possibly conflicting statements made within the play. Lady Macbeth speaks of having nursed an infant, but Macbeth, according to Macduff, “has no children.” In my academic days, all kinds of psychological subtext were derived from these statements, so I was particularly delighted to learn that Macbeth had a stepson. Mystery solved.
In other areas, Shakespeare was not so attached to the historical truth, or I should say more accurately, the truth as he knew it. Shakespeare’s source for Macbeth was primarily Ralph Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which also provided grist for Shakespeare’s mill in most of his histories, and portions of Cymbeline and King Lear. Much of Holinshed’s work is considered problematical today, but it was the best available source at the time.
Shakespeare altered history in his portrayals of the characters of Macbeth and Duncan, as we’ve already seen. He also took serious liberties with the historical Banquo, who was, in real life, an accomplice of Macbeth’s in the death of Duncan, not his voice of conscience. The reason for this is simple — the current monarch of England, James I, for whom Shakespeare probably wrote the play, was proud that his ancestry descended from that very man. Remember the scene in Act IV, where Macbeth is shown the vision of Banquo’s descendants? He sees eight kings in succession, with the last holding a mirror showing many more, “a line [that] stretch[s] out to the crack of doom.” No one ever said Shakespeare’s flattery was subtle.
The bloody murder of the king was actually taken from Holinshed, although in the Chronicles it wasn’t Duncan that was offed. It was another Scottish king, called Duff, who was murdered by a trusted noble. The murderer, it seems, had been egged on by an overly ambitious wife.
What’s with the Witches?
Witches are always a crowd-pleaser, but Shakespeare may have had another motive in making them such an integral part of the plot. James I was intensely interested in the subject. James had married the 15-year old Anne of Denmark in a proxy ceremony in 1589. When rough weather prevented the young bride from sailing to Scotland, James sailed to Denmark to fetch her personally. The weather then prevented the royal couple from returning to Scotland for several weeks. While he was there, he observed a few witch trials.
Returning to Scotland, James enacted the Witchcraft Act of 1563. The law was applied in only a limited way until 1590, when the North Berwick Witch Trials, the first large-scale persecution of witches, was held. Among the unlawful acts that the witches were tried for was the allegation that they had conspired to use witchcraft to provoke the storms that had prevented James’ return to Scotland.
In 1597, James wrote a tract on the subject, Daemonologie. Shakespeare was acquainted with the work and used it in his play. (If you want to brush up on your witch-finding skills, you can read the whole treatise at Project Gutenberg.)
The witches fit a little awkwardly into the Scottish play, since they aren’t really a tradition of the Celts — at least in the “Fillet of a Fenny Snake” sense. It is thought by some that James I insisted on their inclusion. On the other hand, their depiction as the three “Wierd Sisters” is right in line with the Norse tradition of the three Norns, or prophetic women. The Norns sat beside the Great Tree of the World, Yggdrasil, spinning out the destiny of the world. It is important to remember that the word “weird” originally came from the Anglo-Saxon wyrd, or “fate”. Our current connotation of “weird” as meaning bizarre or eerie only dates back to the 18th century.
Equivocators, Beware!
It’s almost impossible to read Macbeth without noticing the theme of equivocation. Macbeth’s porter speaks about it directly. “Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both sides against either scale, who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven.” In a more jocular vein, he also states that “much drink” equivocates with lechery: “…it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him to sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.”
In actuality, this ribald scene was a stab at the Catholics. In this time of religious persecution, some Catholic leaders had decided that equivocation under persecution was permissible. Since it was a sin to lie under oath, the trick was to speak the truth in a way that misled the hearer. Treatises were written on the subject, a notable one by Father Henry Garnet, who was later executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot. Garnet didn’t become really famous until he was tried for the Plot in 1606, so Shakespeare might not have been thinking of him specifically, since the play may have been written as early as 1603. There were lots of other equivocators, however. Times were tough, if you were a Catholic.
Equivocation was looked on by the Protestants as simply a justification to lie. It wasn’t a particularly successful tactic, as the persecuted Catholics usually were found guilty anyway. It did, however, manage to save a few priests, since one of the most widespread uses of equivocation was to protect the identity of priests and fellow Catholics.
On the other hand, the most notorious equivocators in the play Macbeth were the three witches, who always told Macbeth the truth — even if he didn’t interpret it correctly. And they made out okay, right?
Sources: Chase’s Calendar of Events, 2011 Edition: The Ultimate Go-To Guide for Special Days, Weeks and Months, Editors of Chase’s Calendar of Events; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_27; Macbeth, William Shakespeare; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth,_King_of_Scotland; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_I_of_England; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holinshed%27s_Chronicles; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Berwick_witch_trials; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulach; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_mental_reservation; http://www.sff.net/people/catherine-wells/machome.htm; http://www.lordbothwell.co.uk/macbeth.html; http://www.westirondequoit.org/ihs/library/his.html; http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/Scotland-History/DuncanandMacbeth.htm.
