THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH

Background
SHORTLY after James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne, in 1603, he gave his patronage to Shakespeare's company; the Lord Chamberlain's Men became the King's Men, entering into a special relationship with their sovereign. Macbeth is the play of Shakespeare's that most clearly reflects this relationship. James regarded the virtuous and noble Banquo, Macbeth's comrade at the start of the action, as his direct ancestor; eight Stuart kings were said to have preceded James, just as, in the play, Banquo points to ‘a show of eight kings’ as his descendants (4.1); and in the play the English king (historically Edward the Confessor) is praised for the capacity, on which James also prided himself, to cure ‘the king's evil’ (scrofula). Macbeth is obviously a Jacobean play, composed probably in 1606.

But the first printed text, in the 1623 Folio, shows signs of having been adapted at a later date. It is exceptionally short by comparison with Shakespeare's other tragedies; and it includes episodes which there is good reason to believe are not by Shakespeare. These are Act 3, Scene 5 and parts of Act 4, Scene 1. These episodes feature Hecate, who does not appear elsewhere in the play; they are composed largely in octosyllabic couplets in a style conspicuously different from the rest of the play; and they call for the performance of two songs that are found in The Witch, a play of uncertain date by Thomas Middleton. Probably Middleton himself adapted Shakespeare's play some years after its first performance. We do not attempt to excise passages probably not written by Shakespeare, because the adapter's hand may have affected the text at other, indeterminable points. The Folio text of Macbeth cites only the opening words of the songs; drawing on The Witch, we attempt a reconstruction of their staging in Macbeth. 

Shakespeare took materials for his story from the account in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicle of the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth (A.D. 1034-57). Occasionally (especially in the English episodes of Act 4, Scene 2) he closely followed Holinshed's wording; but essentially the play's structure is his own. He invented the framework of the three witches who tempted both Macbeth and Banquo with prophecies of greatness. His Macbeth is both more introspective and more intensely evil than the competent warrior-king portrayed by Holinshed; conversely, Shakespeare made Duncan, the king whom Macbeth murders, far more venerable and saintly. Some of the play's features, notably the character of Lady Macbeth, originate in Holinshed's account of the murder of an earlier Scottish king, Duff; he was killed in his castle at Forres by Donwald, who had been ‘set on’ by his wife.

Macbeth can be enjoyed at many levels. It is an exciting story of witchcraft, murder, and retribution that can also be seen as a study in the philosophy and psychology of evil. The witches are not easily made credible in modern performances, and Shakespeare seems deliberately to have drained colour away from some parts of his composition in order to concentrate attention on Macbeth and his Lady. It is Macbeth's neurotic self-absorption, his fear, his anger, and his despair, along with his wife's steely determination, her invoking of the powers of evil, and her eventual revelation in sleep of her repressed humanity, that have given the play its long-proven power to fascinate readers and to challenge performers.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

KING DUNCAN of Scotland
MALCOLM			}
DONALBAIN		} his sons
A CAPTAIN in Duncan's army

MACBETH, Thane of Glamis, later Thane of Cawdor, then King of Scotland
A PORTER at Macbeth's castle
Three MURDERERS attending on Macbeth
SEYTON, servant of Macbeth
LADY MACBETH, Macbeth's wife
A DOCTOR of Physic		}
A Waiting-GENTLEWOMAN	} attending on Lady Macbeth

BANQUO, a Scottish thane
FLEANCE, his son
MACDUFF, Thane of Fife
LADY MACDUFF, his wife
MACDUFF'S SON
LENNOX		}
ROSS			}
ANGUS		} Scottish Thanes
CAITHNESS	}
MENTEITH		}

SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland
YOUNG SIWARD, his son
An English DOCTOR

HECATE, Queen of the Witches
Six WITCHES
Three APPARITIONS, one an armed head, one a bloody child,
	one a child crowned
A SPIRIT LIKE A CAT
Other SPIRITS

An OLD MAN
A MESSENGER
MURDERERS
SERVANTS

A show of eight kings

Act 1 Scene 1

(Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches)
l1l	First Witch	When shall we three meet again?
l2l		In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
l3l	Second Witch	When the hurly-burly’s done,
l4l		When the battle’s lost and won.
l5l	Third Witch	That will be ere the set of sun.
l6l	First Witch	Where the place?
	Second Witch				Upon the heath.
l7l	Third Witch	There to meet with Macbeth.
l8l	First Witch	I come, Grimalkin.
l9l	Second Witch	Paddock calls.
	Third Witch						Anon.
l10l	All	Fair is foul, and foul is fair,
l11l		Hover through the fog and filthy air.
		(Exeunt)