Dramaturgical Note
The historical Macbeth was a Scottish noble who deposed the unpopular king Duncan, who had also seized the throne by violent means. Macbeth ruled well for
several years before his ruthlessness led to his own overthrow by the Scottish thanes. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is based on several sources including Holinshed’s historical Chronicles. From this text Shakespeare compressed two major and very different characters and stories: Macbeth and Duffe, another king whose history included elements of witchcraft and sorcery. The medieval Scottish thanes of the historical sources were ambitious and violently aggressive descendants of Norsemen much given to superstition and intrigue. Macbeth is a play about ambition, power, evil and its consequences and was most probably influenced by the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot to kill King James I of England and overthrow the “natural order” of God and anointed kings. To this mix of history, myth, and the supernatural, Shakespeare added a timeless plot, complex characters, drama, suspense, humor, ritual, and most specially, the beauty and power of his poetry.
