Macbeth's name has become better known than any other Scottish king's, purely because of Shakespeare's play of the same name. Notorious rather than famous, how much does Macbeth's real life mirror his theatrical namesake's? Was he an obsessive killer, driven by an over-ambitious wife to usurp the kingdom by 'murder most foul'? Or is Shakespeare's play nothing other than spectacular theatre, reflecting Elizabethan paranoia about rebellion?
Macbeth was the king's given name, rather than a 'son of' family name. It derives from the Gaelic mac beatha meaning 'son of life'. His lineage can be traced back through three and a half centuries to the Cenel Loairn (clan of Loarn) of Dalraida. The Cenel Loairn disappear from the historical record after the Pictish onslaught of Dalraida in 736. Their descendants reappear in the late tenth century as an hereditary dynasty of mormaers (an equivalent of the English earl or thane) of Moray. They presumably migrated from their traditional lands of Lorn up the Great Glen to the region around the Moray Firth. The mormaers had the status of subject kings under the high-kings of the Scots and Picts.
Macbeth was born in 1005, his father was Findlaech mac Ruadri, mormar of Moray. At this time, Moray was in the grip of a virtual civil war between those loyal to one or other branch of the Cenel Loairn. Findlaech mac Ruadri was a casualty of this conflict, being killed by his nephews, Malcolm and Gillacomgain mac Maelbrigte in 1020. These two succeeded to the mormaership in turn. Macbeth sought refuge at the court of his grandfather, Malcolm II. However, by 1031, Macbeth was acting in the capacity of mormaer of Moray at the 'conference of kings' between King Malcolm of Scotland (Macbeth's grandfather) and Cnut, the Danish king of England.
This conference took place a year before the violent death of Gillacomgain, who was still listed as 'mormaer of Moray' in his obituary in the Annals of Ulster. It is known that Malcolm II (who was by now an ageing king) was keen to eliminate potential rival claimants to the succession, so it may be that he appointed Macbeth as mormaer of Moray in opposition to Gillacomgain as a political manoeuvre. In any case, in 1032 Gillacomgain was dead, 'burned, and fifty of his men with him' (Annals of Ulster). Suspicion therefore falls on both Macbeth and Malcolm as being involved in Gillacomgain's death.
Malcolm died in 1034, and Duncan, his tanaise (another of his grandsons) succeeded to the throne. He was already King of Strathclyde, so with his succession, this ceased to be an independent entity (give them back their freedom!).
By the time Shakespeare wrote his play, the institution of monarchy had become endowed with religious significance, to preserve political stability. Opposition to a monarch was therefore a crime against God as well as against man. In any case, Duncan was not the wise and gentle old man depicted by the Bard. He held his throne for only six years, getting involved in the treacherous Anglo-Norse politics of Northumbria and hence presiding over various unsuccessful campaigns in England.
Both the Annals of Tigernach and the Annals of Ulster record Duncan's death in 1040 and identify Macbeth as the man who brought him down and succeeded him. It appears that Duncan was not much older than Macbeth, the Tigernach describes him as being 'slain by his subjects at an unripe age.' This description does not tally with Shakespeare's description of knife-wielding assassins stabbing an aged king to death in his bed. More likely the men of Moray became disillusioned with an ineffectual king and rallied behind Macbeth, rejecting Duncan's authority. When Duncan ventured forth to assert his sovereignty, he was killed in battle near Elgin. It has been suggested that Macbeth was assisted in this by his cousin Thorfinn, who also had a claim on the throne. After his death, Macbeth got the royal title and Thorfinn received control of nine Scottish earldoms.[G. Donaldson, A Northern Kingdom] It has also been suggested that Macbeth and Thorfinn were different names for the same person, but the genealogical and other evidence disproves this.
'Macbeth became king of Scotland for
seventeen years;
and in his reign there were fruitful seasons......'
Chronicle of Melrose
Contrary to Shakespeare's depiction, there was no suggestion that Macbeth was a usurper or a murderer until three hundred years after his death. The first history to disparage his succession is John Fordun's Chronicle written in the fourteenth century. In fact, Macbeth's claim on the throne was at least as valid as Duncan's. The charge of murder is first levelled in Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, also dating from the fourteenth century.
But Macbeth did face potential difficulties at the start of his reign. At home he had to deal with the thwarted ambitions of Crinan, Duncan's father; in Northumbria, Duncan's son Malcolm was sheltering with his maternal relatives, the powerful Siwards; and he had an uneasy truce with Thorfinn in the north.
Crinan (the abbot of Dunkeld) was killed in a battle near Dunkeld, when Macbeth forcibly suppressed a revolt against his over-lordship in 1045. The fact that he survived for five years of Macbeth's reign would indicate that Macbeth was in no hurry to destroy opposing factions.
In 1046 Macbeth appeared to lose control of Lothian to Earl Siward (Shakespeare's 'Sweno'?), but this reverse was overcome, and by 1050 Macbeth was secure enough in his kingdom to leave it several months to undertake a journey to Rome with Thorfinn. Whilst there he is said to have 'scattered money like seed among the poor'.
But Macbeth's confidence in the security of his kingdom was only to last for another four years.
When Shakespeare wrote his play, he was dependent upon the only sources available to him - Raphael Hollinshed's Chronicle of Scotland (1580s) and John Bellenden's translation of Hector Boerce's History and Chronicles of Scotland (1536). Unfortunately, this work is now regarded as largely fiction.
It was Boece who invented the character of 'Lady Macbeth', refined by Shakespeare into his 'fiend-like queen'.
Macbeth's historical wife was Gruoch, who was either a niece of Malcolm II or a granddaughter of Kenneth III. It is impossible to say which, as her father was 'Boite, son of Kenneth' whose grandson was killed by Malcolm II in 1033. There is, unfortunately, no record of which Kenneth was Boite's father. Whatever, Gruoch was born of a royal line at odds with Malcolm and presumably the house of Dunkeld, where he had designated his succession. But she also had reason for hostility towards Macbeth, since she had earlier been the wife of Gillacomgain, burned to death by Macbeth or his followers. The marriage took place before Macbeth's succession and was most likely a political union, designed to bring peace between the contending kindreds of Moray.
There have been suggestions that Gruoch showed some of the characteristics of the fictional lady Macbeth. In these histories she organised the burning of her husband to free her to marry Macbeth, and after Macbeth's death she schemed to place her son, Lulach, on the throne. Neither of these is likely.
Andrew de Wyntoun is the first chronicler to indicate an occult aspect to Macbeth's reign. He introduces the 'weird sisters' and their prophecies, which Wyntoun describes as coming in a dream. He also mentions the prophecies that Macbeth will be undefeated until Burnam Wood comes to Dunsinnen hill ('Dunsinane'), and that he will not be slain by any born of woman, but he does not attribute these to the 'weird sisters'. In fact, most of the occult references in the play can be traced back to Wyntoun. It may be that there was some basis in his assertion that Macbeth firmly believed in 'fantoun fretys' (ghostly prophecies), since he was prior of a monastery on Loch Leven which had been generously funded by Macbeth and Gruoch three centuries earlier.
Malcolm, Duncan's son, had been taken by Earl Siward to the English court, and was a protege of Edward the Confessor. In 1054, Edward sent Siward into Scotland with the intention of driving out Macbeth and installing Malcolm as a client king of Scots, indebted to them both.
The opposing forces met near Macbeth's stronghold of Dunsinnen, and Macbeth was 'put to flight', although no source says that Macbeth was killed (or even deprived of his kingship), or even that Siward was victorious. The most likely result was that Macbeth was forced to give land to Malcolm (probably Cumbria, Tayside and Lothian) as a peace settlement when two armies had fought to stalemate.
Siward died before the end of 1055, of natural causes. This set back Malcolm's ambitions, and it was three more years until Macbeth's death is confirmed - 'Macbeth, son of Findlaech, high king of Alba, slain by Malcolm, son of Duncan' [Annals of Tigernach]. '..he was killed at Lumphanan and buried on the island of Iona' [Chronicle of the Kings]. He died on August 15th, 1057 - the seventeenth anniversary of his slaying of Duncan.
Macbeth's forces seem to have won at Lumphanan, since Malcolm did not succeed to the throne. Macbeth's tanaise and successor was Lulach mac Gillacomgain, his stepson. His short reign (August 1057 to March 1058] came to an end when he was 'slain by Duncan's son, by treachery' (Annals of Tigernach) at Essie in Strathbogie. Scotland's Celtic monarchy died with him.
Malcolm III was to reign for thirty five years and be remembered as 'Malcolm Canmore'. He founded a dynasty which extinguished any remnants of the Celtic character of the kingship of the Scots.
Shakespeare wrote the play 'Macbeth' in 1606 - three years after the union of the Crowns of Scotland and England under James VI and I, of the Scottish Stuart family. Shakespeare put a contemporary 'spin' on Holinshead's version in the "Chronicles" (published in 1578), making Macbeth the villian in order to flatter the new King. In the play, Macbeth murders Banquo, the legendary founder of the house of Stewart, but Banquo's son Fleance survives him. Thus, Fleance of the line of Stewart is the rightful heir to the throne of Scotland, but the throne has been usurped by the murderer, Macbeth. Of course, all of this is intended for the contemporary audience of 1606.
After the murder, Macbeth visits the three witches in their cave. They tell him that he is the end of his royal line and show him a vision of the descendents of Banquo ruling over a mighty realm, symbolised by a triple sceptre representing the combined crowns of Scotland, England and Ireland. Macbeth wails, "will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?" From today's perspective, Shakespeare's pandering isn't very subtle - the audience would surely have got the point.
In addition, James was obsessed with the occult in general and witches in particular, and it has been suggested that he insisted on the presence of witches in the play. Shakespeare lists them as the 'three witches' in his dramatis personae. They don't have an understandable equivalent in Celtic tradition, and are more characteristic of Norse prophetic women. Within the play Shakespeare refers to them as 'wierd sisters', which was the name given to them by Wyntoun and by Bellenden, who used 'wierd' as a trnslation of the Latin word 'fata'.
Our modern understanding of the word 'wierd' to mean 'strange or bizarre' only dates back as far as the eighteenth century. Before then it retained the meaning of the Anglo-Saxon 'wyrd', meaning fate or destiny. The three 'wierd sisters' were most likely intended to reflect the Norse tradition of the three Norns, or women (Wyrd, Verdandi and Skuld) who sit beside the well which springs from the roots of the Yggdrasil (World Ash Tree), spinning out the destiny of mankind.
All of which suggests that the oral history of Macbeth became influenced by his hereditary enemies, the Orkney jarls.
'Monarchs of Scotland' by Stewart Ross (I'm not too convinced of the accuracy of this one)
'Alba of the Ravens' by John Marsden (excellent, with lots of references)
An essay of mine I found from when I did the play at school (Wow, referencing my own work! Just how cool is that!)
Comments on the original draft of this essay from Russ Jimeson, Mischa, and Kathryn 'Tigh A'Ruadh Chow Chows'; members of the 'Freedom-L' mailing list.
The Source of Macbeth: Holinshed's Chronicles
Macbeth
By Margaret Zimmerman. Excellent look at the play with various historical nuggets thrown in.
Sources of Macbeth
A theatrical interpretation
The Action of Macbeth and Reality in History
The relationship between the play and historical reality
Roanoke's Macbeth Page
Contains pages on the real Macbeth and the historical background to the play
Enjoying "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare Really quirky site with historical and *pathology* information. Just the type of thing Queen Karen loves.
The Real Macbeth
Essays by Catherine Wells. Shows us how little we really know!
Heart of Darkness
Article from the 'Independent' newspaper.