MACBETH By William Shakespeare
Modern Verse Translation by Migdalia Cruz
Dramaturgy Website by Peter Ruiz
Glossary
Graymalkin: literally means "gray cat." The gray is of course the color; the malkin was a nickname for Matilda or Maud that came to be used in dialect as a general name for a cat—and sometimes a hare—and for an untidy woman as well. Witch 1’s familiar.
Harpier: Derived from Harpy. In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, a harpy is a half-human and half-bird personification of storm winds. Witch 3’s familiar.
Hell’s Acheron: Ancient Greek mythology saw the Acheron, sometimes known as the "river of woe", as one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld. In Dante's Inferno, the Acheron river forms the border of Hell. Following Greek mythology,
Hurly Burly: Busy, boisterous activity
Libertine: a person devoid of most moral principles, a sense of responsibility, or sexual restraints, which they see as unnecessary or undesirable, and is especially someone who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour observed by the larger society
Macdonald: The leader of the rebel forces during the battles at the start of the play.
Neptune: In Roman religion, originally the god of fresh water; by 399 BCE he was identified with the Greek Poseidon and thus became a deity of the sea.
The Prince of Cumberland: Title given to heir apparent of the Throne of Scotland
Paddock: A toad. Witch 2’s Familiar.
Roman fool: Likely a reference to the Roman Marcus Cato. Cato fought against Julius Caesar in a civil war, and when he was defeated, he chose to commit suicide rather than live under Caesar’s rule.
Sweno: The King of Norway who are the Scots are fighting at the start of Macbeth.
Scotland’s orbs: A reference to Scotland’s Symbols of Sovereignty.
Scepters of Wales: A reference to Wales’ Symbols of Sovereignty.
Thane: A man who held land granted by the king or by a military nobleman, ranking between an ordinary freeman and a hereditary noble
Wassail: A beverage made from hot mulled cider, ale, or wine and spices, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing, an ancient English Yuletide drinking ritual and salutation either involved in door-to-door charity-giving or used to ensure a good harvest the following year.
Pronuncations
Pronunciations: In the text, { } notes pronunciation of previous word.
Scone = Skoon Forres = For-Rez
Glamis = Glarms Sweno = Swee-no
Cawdor = Cordoor Birnam = Burr-nam
Colmekill = Coomekill Dunsinane = Done-see-nayne
Nonpareil = Nonparay Acheron = Ackeron
Hecate = Heck-eight Siward = See-word
pEOPLE
Macbeth, (died August 15, 1057, near Lumphanan, Aberdeen [now in Aberdeenshire], Scotland), king of Scots from 1040, the legend of whose life was the basis of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. He was probably a grandson of King Kenneth II (reigned 971–995), and he married Gruoch, a descendant of King Kenneth III (reigned 997–1005). About 1031 Macbeth succeeded his father, Findlaech (Sinel in Shakespeare), as mormaer, or chief, in the province of Moray, in northern Scotland. Macbeth established himself on the throne after killing his cousin King Duncan I in battle near Elgin—not, as in Shakespeare, by murdering Duncan in bed—on August 14, 1040. Both Duncan and Macbeth derived their rights to the crown through their mothers.
Macbeth’s victory in 1045 over a rebel army, near Dunkeld (in the modern region of Perth and Kinross), may account for the later references (in Shakespeare and others) to Birnam Wood, for the village of Birnam is near Dunkeld. In 1046 Siward, earl of Northumbria, unsuccessfully attempted to dethrone Macbeth in favour of Malcolm (afterward King Malcolm III Canmore), eldest son of Duncan I. By 1050 Macbeth felt secure enough to leave Scotland for a pilgrimage to Rome. But in 1054 he was apparently forced by Siward to yield part of southern Scotland to Malcolm. Three years later Macbeth was killed in battle by Malcolm, with assistance from the English.
Gruoch (Lady Macbeth)
Gruoch ingen Boite was a Scottish queen, the daughter of Boite mac Cináeda, son of Cináed II. She is most famous for being the wife and queen of MacBethad mac Findlaích (Macbeth). The dates of her life are uncertain. Gruoch is believed to have been born 1015 or before, the daughter of Boite mac Cináeda; her mother's name is not known. Before 1032 Gruoch was married to Gille Coemgáin mac Maíl Brigti, Mormaer of Moray, with whom she had at least one son, Lulach mac Gille Coemgáin, later King of Scots. Gille Coemgáin was killed in 1032, burned to death in a hall with 50 of his men. The next year one of her male relatives, probably her only brother, was murdered by Malcolm II. After the death of Gille Coemgáin, Gruoch married her husband's cousin, Macbeth. Macbeth may have been responsible for Gille Coemgáin's death, and certainly benefited from it, becoming Mormaer of Moray himself. It is unclear if Macbeth married Gruoch as an ally succoring the widow of a kinsman, or as a conqueror claiming the widow of an enemy. Macbeth killed King Duncan I in 1040 and succeeded him to become King of Alba. Gruoch became his queen. In grants made to the church of St Serf, they are identified as "Machbet filius Finlach…et Gruoch filia Bodhe, rex et regina Scottorum", king and queen of Scots. Gruoch and Macbeth did not have any children, however, Macbeth did accept her son, Lulach, as his heir. Lulach is sometimes mistakenly identified as Macbeth's son, when in fact he was his stepson. Macbeth died 15 August 1057, and Lulach succeeded him to become king of Scots. It is not known what became of Gruoch or even if she survived Macbeth. Her date of death is not known. Fictional accounts tell of her death by suicide the same year Macbeth died, however, there are no valid sources supporting this. Gruoch is named with Boite and also with MacBethad in charters endowing the Culdee monastery at Loch Leven.
kING eDWARD
Edward the Confessor was one of the last Anglo-Saxon English kings. Usually considered the last king of the House of Wessex, he ruled from 1042 to 1066. Edward was the son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy. He succeeded Cnut the Great's son – and his own half-brother – Harthacnut.
James I, king of Scotland (as James VI) from 1567 to 1625 and first Stuart king of England from 1603 to 1625, who styled himself “King of Great Britain.” James was a strong advocate of royal absolutism, and his conflicts with an increasingly self-assertive Parliament set the stage for the rebellion against his successor, Charles I.
Shakespeare wrote Macbeth during King James I reign. King James was a patron of Shakespeare’s Company "Kings Men” and claimed to be related to Banquo.
King James led the North Berwick Witch trials which are referenced by the witches in the first scene when Witch one says
“But in a sieve, I’ll follow his sail,
And like a horny rat without a tail,
I’ll do, I’ll do, I’ll do him.”
He wrote a compendium on witchcraft lore called Daemonologie which was used for Witch hunts.
wITCHES
“The term Weird Sisters was first used by Scots writers as a sobriquet for the Fates of Greek and Roman mythology. Through its appearance in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, the expression passed to William Shakespeare.”
Fate, Greek Moira, plural Moirai, Latin Parca, plural Parcae, in Greek and Roman mythology, any of three goddesses who determined human destinies, and in particular the span of a person’s life and his allotment of misery and suffering. Homer speaks of Fate (moira) in the singular as an impersonal power and sometimes makes its functions interchangeable with those of the Olympian gods. From the time of the poet Hesiod (8th century BC) on, however, the Fates were personified as three very old women who spin the threads of human destiny. Their names were Clotho (Spinner), Lachesis (Allotter), and Atropos (Inflexible). Clotho spun the “thread” of human fate, Lachesis dispensed it, and Atropos cut the thread (thus determining the individual’s moment of death). The Romans identified the Parcae, originally personifications of childbirth, with the three Greek Fates. The Roman goddesses were named Nona, Decuma, and Morta.
Hecate was the chief goddess presiding over magic and spells. She witnessed the abduction of Demeter’s daughter Persephone to the underworld and, torch in hand, assisted in the search for her. Thus, pillars called Hecataea stood at crossroads and doorways, perhaps to keep away evil spirits. Hecate was represented as single-formed, clad in a long robe, holding burning torches; in later representations she was triple-formed, with three bodies standing back-to-back, probably so that she could look in all directions at once from the crossroads. She was accompanied by packs of barking dogs.
Many elements of the witchcraft scenes in Macbeth conform to James’s ideas and beliefs in witchcraft as expressed in Daemonologie, News from Scotland and his anti-witchcraft legislation. This includes ideas such as the witches’ vanishing/invisible flight, their raising of storms, dancing and chanting, sexual acts, their gruesome potion ingredients and the presence of animal familiars.
Scholars are divided as to whether Shakespeare’s portrayal of witchcraft panders to the King’s interests, or whether it is a more subversive comment on his involvement with witch-hunting, or perhaps a mix of the two. It seems noteworthy that although the play Macbeth is contaminated with the witchcraft of the ‘Weyward Sisters’, and Macbeth himself is spurred on by their prophecies and the urging of his somewhat witchy wife, Shakespeare places the responsibility for Duncan’s murder on Macbeth himself and Macbeth’s downfall is a result of his tyranny as King. His greatest error in his dealings with the witches seems to be his credulity and naivety with their double-speaking prophecies.
North Berwick Witch Trials
“James VI was travelling to Denmark to collect his new bride Anne of Denmark in 1589. During the crossing the storms were so severe that he was forced to turn back. James became convinced that this was the work of witches from North Berwick, intent on his ruin. There was talk at the time that one of them had sailed into the Firth of Forth on a sieve to summon the storm, thus dually proving her guilt as not only a witch, but also as a would-be regicide.
James’ hatred and obsession of witches and witchcraft became well known. It was no accident that Shakespeare wrote the witches in Macbeth during the reign of King James in the early 17th Century, in fact the North Berwick Witch’s adventure in the sieve is even mentioned in the play. In the opening scene of the play, Shakespeare’s First Witch cries
“But in a sieve, I’ll thither sail
And, like a rat without a tail,
I’ll so, I’ll do, I’ll do”
At which point they promise to conjure up a storm. This does seem a very unlikely coincidence; it is clear James’ disdain for witches had spread countywide. James had been King of Scotland after his mother Mary Queen of Scots abdicated in 1567, although regents ruled on his behalf until he came of age in 1576. James became King of England in 1603 on the death of Elizabeth 1 and appears to have continued to be fascinated by the dark arts: releasing his best-selling book, ‘Daemonologie’, which explored the areas of witchcraft and demonic magic, shortly after assuming the throne.
However, Scotland was where he began his crusade against this supposed daemonologie. The witch trials of North Berwick are particularly noteworthy due to the sheer number of ‘witches’, the consensus being around 70, that were tried from such a tiny and seemingly insignificant town in Scotland, on this single occasion.”
Migdalia oN tHe wITCHES
“Macbeth for me is about the witches. What are they and want do I want
them to say? For me they are women of color surrounding this world,
contextualizing it in order to recreate it. Their power comes from their
sexual attraction—that is scary and powerful and alluring—in particular
to men who think they hold the power. I don't want old hags in the
forest. That witch idea died decades ago. So what does a modern witch
look like? What do powerful women look like? Or women who
understand fate and destiny. I wanted to play with them and
contextualize the play through them, so I added words for them. But
Shakespeare also added words for them—or somebody added words for
them; they added songs from Thomas Middleton in the middle of
Shakespeare. So I thought: ‘if he's stealing from other people, he might
as well steal from Cruz,’ so I added intros to scenes, songs, etc., making
it sound more like a play of mine. From there I began to re-construct the
play as I understood it from a modern woman’s gaze.”
MACBETH AND THE GUN POWDER PLOT
“There are numerous references to the Gunpowder Plot in Macbeth, including the references to Garnet and equivocation. Throughout the play are also words which held a particular significance in post-Plot England – ‘blow’, ‘vault’, ‘train’ – as well as a violent vocabulary of destruction that echoes literature on the imagined violence had the plot been successful. The play’s themes of secret plotting, usurpation and regicide would have been hugely resonant for the audience of the day.
Scholars disagree on the meaning of these references. Some think the play offers straightforward support for James’s absolutism and anti-Jesuit views; others think that Macbeth offers a more subtle critique of monarchy, for example by reducing the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate forms of violence. It is also possible that the version(s) of Macbeth performed in the 1600s and 1610s were different to the surviving text of 1623, accommodating different reactions in the immediate aftermath of the plot and after some time had passed.”
Father Equivocator is a phrase in the play.
An Equivocator is a respondent who avoids giving a clear direct answer
Shakespeare uses "equivocator" as an allusion to Father Henry Garnet, a Jesuit priest who persuaded Catholics to speak ambiguously or "equivocate" when faced with Protestant persecution. Garnet was executed by the British government as a conspirator in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot.
THE BREHON LAWS
OR LAWS OF HOSPITALITY
Law of Protection
A very important principle of Irish law is the right of any freeman to provide legal protection to another person of equal or lesser rank for a specified period of time (an aire ard - high lord - 15 days, an aire tuiseo - lord of precedence - 10 days). To kill or injure a person under protection is to commit the crime of diguin, 'violation of protection'. The fine for this violation is the payment of the protector's honor price as well as the appropriate payment to the victim or kin.
It was illegal, even for a cleric or a laymen of named rank to give protection to various categories of offenders - runaway wife or slave, a fugitive killer, an absconder from his kindred, a son who fails to look after his father, just to name a few.
Things to THINK ABOut While reading
Imagery of Blood
Our first image of Blood comes in scene Act 1 Scene 2. We see a bloody Captain arrive post battle covered in blood. This moment of blood is seen as a symbol of victory but as we progress throughout the play we have the blood on Macbeth’s hands after killing Duncan and later the imagined blood of Lady Macbeth in her “out, out damned spot” moment as a symbol of guilt.
Imagery of Birds
The Raven: Due to its connection to eating dead flesh, ravens are often associated with loss and ill omen. Yet, its symbolism is complex. As a talking bird, the raven also represents prophecy and insight. Ravens in stories often act as psychopomps, connecting the material world with the world of spirits.
The Owl: The screech of an Owl is thought to symbolize death.
Nature and The Unnatural
Nature is mentioned throughout the play meaning both the physical world and human nature. These meanings are used interchageably and sometimes at the same time. Macbeth goes against nature in the killing of his king, his friends, Macduff’s wife and multiple children. We meet The Witches in a storm as a foreshadowing of the tumultuous things to come. The way the forest moves towards Macbeth and that he is killed by a man who is not born of a woman is also where we see nature flipped.