Page 119 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

Unit 9: Macbeth: History and its Impact on 18th and 19th Century

to Macbeth in a dream or vision, and hailed him successively by the titles of Thane of Cromarty, Notes
Thane of Moray, which the king afterwards bestowed on him, and finally by that of King of Scots;
this dream, it is said, inspired him with the seductive hopes so well expressed in the drama.
Here in this unit a detail of Macbeth history and its impact on 18th and 19th century have been
given.

9.1 History of Macbeth

The story is taken from Holinshed, who copied it from the History of Scotland, by Hector Boece or
Boyce, in seventeen volumes (1527). The history, written in Latin, was translated by John Bellenden
(1531-1535). Macbeth was first printed in the folio of 1623, where it occupies pages 131 to 151 inclusive,
in the division of “Tragedies.” It was registered in the books of the Stationers’ Company, on the 8th
of November, 1623, by Blount and Jaggard, the publishers of the folio, as one of the plays “not
formerly entered to other men.” It was written between 1604 and 1610; the former limit being fixed
by the allusion to the union of England and Scotland under James I, and the latter by the MS Diary
of Dr Simon Forman, who saw the play performed “at the Globe, 1610, the 20th of April, Saturday.”
It may then have been a new play, but it is more probable, as nearly all critics agree, that it was
written in 1605 or 1606. The accession of James made Scottish subjects popular in England, and the
tale of Macbeth and Banquo would be one of the first to be brought forward, as Banquo was held to
be an ancestor of the new king. A Latin “interlude” on this subject was performed at Oxford in 1605,
on the occasion of the king’s visit to the city; but there is no reason for supposing that Shakespeare
got the hint of his tragedy from that source.

Macbeth was first printed in the folio of 1623, where it occupies pages 131 to 151
inclusive, in the division of “Tragedies.”
It is barely possible that there was an earlier play on the subject of Macbeth. Collier finds in the
Registers of the Stationers’ Company, under the date of August 27, 1596, the entry of a Ballad of
Makdobeth, which he gives plausible reasons for supposing to have been a drama, and not a “ballad”
properly so called. There appears to be a reference to the same piece in Kemp’s Nine Days’ Wonder,
printed in 1600, where it is called a “miserable stolen story,” and said to be the work of “a penny
Poet.”
George Steevens maintained that Shakespeare was indebted, in the supernatural parts of Macbeth,
to The Witch, a play by Thomas Middleton, which was discovered in manuscript towards the end
of the eighteenth century. Malone at first took the same view of the subject, but finally came to the
conclusion that Middleton’s play was the later production, and that he must therefore be the
plagiarist. The Clarendon Press editors take the ground that there are portions of Macbeth which
Shakespeare did not write; that these were interpolated after the poet’s death, or at least after he
had ceased to be connected with the theatre; and that “the interpolator was, not improbably, Thomas
Middleton.”
These views have found little favour with other Shakespearian critics. A more satisfactory explanation
of the imperfections of the play ascribes them to the haste with which it was written. Richard Grant
White, who refers its composition to “the period between October, 1604, and August, 1605,” remarks:
“I am the more inclined to this opinion from the indications which the play itself affords that it was
produced upon an emergency. It exhibits throughout the hasty execution of a grand and clearly
conceived design. But the haste is that of a master of his art, who, with conscious command of its
resources, and in the frenzy of a grand inspiration, works out his composition to its minutest detail
of essential form, leaving the work of surface finish for the occupation of cooler leisure. What the
Sistine Madonna was to Raphael, it seems that Macbeth was to Shakespeare—a magnificent

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 113