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British Drama

Notes quite short, perhaps because Shakespeare knew that James preferred short plays. And the play
contains many supernatural elements that James, who himself published a book on the detection
and practices of witchcraft, would have appreciated. Even something as minor as the Scottish defeat
of the Danes may have been omitted to avoid offending King Christian.

4.2.2 Sources of the Text

The material for Macbeth was drawn from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland,
and Ireland (1587). Despite the play’s historical source, however, the play is generally classified as
tragedy rather than a history. This derives perhaps from the fact that the story contains many
historical fabrications—including the entire character of Banquo, who was invented by a 16th-century
Scottish historian in order to validate the Stuart family line. 0In addition to such fictionalization,
Shakespeare took many liberties with the original story, manipulating the characters of Macbeth
and Duncan to suit his purposes. In Holinshed’s account, Macbeth is a ruthless and valiant leader
who rules competently after killing Duncan, whereas Duncan is portrayed as a young and soft-
willed man. Shakespeare draws out certain aspects of the two characters in order to create a stronger
sense of polarity. Whereas Duncan is made out to be a venerable and kindly older king, Macbeth is
transformed into an indecisive and troubled young man who cannot possibly rule well.
Macbeth is certainly not the only play with historical themes that is full of fabrications. Indeed,
there are other reasons why the play is considered a tragedy rather than a history. One reason lies in
the play’s universality. Like Hamlet, Macbeth speaks soliloquies that articulate the emotional and
intellectual anxieties with which many audiences identify easily. For all his lack of values and
“vaulting ambition,” Macbeth is a character who often seems infinitely real to audiences. This
powerful grip on the audience is perhaps what has made Macbeth such a popular play for centuries
of viewers.

Macbeth is a play with historical themes but rather than illustrating a specific historical
moment, it presents a human drama of ambition, desire, and guilt.
Given that Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays, some scholars have suggested that scenes
were excised from the Folio version and subsequently lost. There are some loose ends and non-
sequiturs in the text of the play that would seem to support such a claim. If scenes were indeed cut
out, however, these cuts were most masterfully done. After all, none of the story line is lost and the
play remains incredibly powerful without them. In fact, the play’s length gives it a compelling,
almost brutal, force. The action flows from scene to scene, speech to speech, with a swiftness that
draws the viewer into Macbeth’s struggles. As Macbeth’s world spins out of control, the play itself
also begins to spiral towards to its violent end.
Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare written around 1606. The only Shakespearean drama
set in Scotland, Macbeth follows the story of a Scottish nobleman (Macbeth) who hears a prophecy
that he will become king and is tempted to evil by the promise of power. Macbeth deals with the
themes of evil in the individual and in the world more closely than any of Shakespeare's other
works. Shakespeare draws on Holinshed's Chronicles as Macbeth's historical source, but he makes
some adjustments to Holinshed's depiction of the real-life Macbeth. Holinshed's Macbeth was a
soldier, and not much more; he was capable, and not too thoughtful or self-doubting. In Shakespeare's
Macbeth, it is the internal tension and crumbling of Macbeth, entirely Shakespeare's inventions,
that give the play such literary traction.
Macbeth is also unique among Shakespeare's plays for dealing so explicitly with material that was
relevant to England's contemporary political situation. The play is thought to have been written in
the later part of 1606, three years after James I, the first Stuart king, took up the crown of England.

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