Macbeth before Shakespeare

Macbeth is arguably the world's most famous monarch. Both the historical king and the literary character have fascinated writers and audiences for centuries, beginning with the poets who recited their verses at the medieval monarch's court. Macbeth's legend began almost immediately after his death as medieval and Renaissance writers gradually replaced the king with a semi-literary character developed and embroidered to suit their own political and cultural agenda. The process of transformation culminated in playwright William Shakespeare's The Tragedie of Macbeth. Investigating the man and the legend, Benjamin Hudson traces the eleventh-century prince's rise to prominence from local warlord to international ruler. Battling Vikings, English, and his fellow Scots, Macbeth was involved in a Dano-Norwegian conflict, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and gave refuge to Norman knights. He was more than a mere warlord. With his queen, Gruoch, the widow of a man who killed Macbeth's father, he was a benefactor of churches. The historical prince was an important innovator who used new fighting tactics, developed an international outlook to government, and encouraged intellectual pursuits. Hudson also tracks the ways in which popularizers developed the women behind the fictional Lady Macbeth and the weird sisters. Drawing on centuries of Celtic and Scandinavian sources, popular entertainment, political theory, folklore, and art, Macbeth before Shakespeare recovers the genuine king from the historical record and shows how he was replaced by the legendary monster of ambition. "Macbeth before Shakespeare is the history of a man and a myth. The man is the historical King Mac bethad while the myth is his literary descendant Macbeth. During the five and a half centuries before William Shakespeare wrote his Tragedie of Macbeth the man was replaced by the myth that was recreated in the hands of successive authors. The real prince's ancestors had been immigrants to Britain from Ireland and Mac bethad's career began after the murder of his father by his cousins. The literary character was created as the family of his rival Malcolm Canmore became supreme and wrote their own history with Macbeth as their villain. The evolution continued and in the fifteenth century he was accompanied by otherworldly beings, diabolical prophecies, and natural phenomenon. Macbeth was recast early in the sixteenth century and took his place in the intellectual warfare of Scotland. The legend moved to England in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles where a new Macbeth had a complex personality with fashionable interests in law and unfashionable ones in the occult. The succession of King James I of England led English acting companies, such as the Lord Chamberlain's Men with actor and playwright William Shakespeare, to produce plays with Scottish scenes or characters. King James became their patron and as a member of the King's Men, Shakespeare wrote his Tragedie of Macbeth, one of their most popular plays from the seventeenth century to the present"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Macbeth before Shakespeare 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Note on Methodology 10 List of Abbreviations 12 Acknowledgments 14 Preface 16 Introduction: A Man and a Legend 20 1. Macbeth: Place and Past 29 2. Macbeth Emerges 53 3. King of All the Scots 77 4. Fame and Defamation 102 5. Not the Beginning of the Legend 121 6. Weird Sisters and the Prior of Loch Leven 143 7. Macbeth and Renaissance Scotland 163 8. The Literary Scot in Tudor England 184 9. Macbeth before Shakespeare 209 Conclusion 224 Appendix 1. The Children of Macbeth? 232 Appendix 2. Andrew of Wyntoun’s Macbeth Episode: A Translation 238 Notes 250 Selected Bibliography 274 Index 306 'Macbeth before Shakespeare' is a history of the medieval King Macbeth and his legend that was the basis for William Shakespeare's 'Tragedie of Macbeth'. It traces the life of the real man and his important innovations, while showing how different legends were created in subsequent eras