Why Shakespeare? (ENGL162), Spring 2022

Writing Assignment One: Listing Patterns on Page & Stage
Prompt 2 of 2: Deconstructed Essay
Due: Mon., 3/7 by 11:59:59 PM

Writing Assignment One is designed to help you figure out how a Shakespeare play works on its own terms. To do
well on this assignment, you?ll need to push yourself to carefully observe patterns you might not have noticed before.
We will focus especially on poetic language on the page and on performance on the stage.

Our focal text for this assignment is Macbeth on the page (the course text) and on the stage (The Royal Shakespeare
Theatre performance of the play, which you can access via the Library database Drama Online). This assignment is
designed to be completed in three parts: 2 list groups + a short writing assignment based on those lists. The writing
component is described below; be sure to carefully read and complete the list groups, described in a separate handout and available
on Canvas, before beginning this final phase. List-making is the key to succeeding on this assignment.

DECONSTRUCTED ESSAY

For the final phase of this assignment, you will write what we might think of as a deconstructed essay: you will submit
three separate sections that, if joined together with an introduction, conclusion, and connecting paragraphs, could
become a standalone essay. But for this assignment, you?ll stop short of that last step. Instead, submit:

Analysis #1: Patterns on the Page (400 words)
Analysis #2: Patterns on the Stage (400 words)
Synthesis: Insights for Macbeth (200 words)

Analysis #1 and Analysis #2:
? In 400 words, help the reader of your essay to see two patterns you have observed.
? ?Analysis? literally means to unloose or break up. That?s precisely the work your analysis should do: you should

break up the passage into pieces, then use the best pieces as evidence to convince the reader that what you?re
seeing is actually a pattern and not a mere coincidence.

? Don?t simply restate the evidence from your list. Rather, select the best evidence and present that evidence in a
logical order. As readers, we respect and are persuaded by writers who sift the evidence and present us with a
crafted narrative (rather than a litany of also, also, and another?).

? Quote direct evidence from the text. When you quote (instead of paraphrasing), you are following one of the
most important rules of effective writing: show, don?t just tell.

? Use the first person plural ?we? to draw readers into the conversation. For instance: ?If we look at the lines
that immediately follow, we see that Lady Macbeth picks up on and plays with this pattern of sounds.?

? Critique verbs such as ?think,? ?believe,? and ?feel? should give way in your analyses to evidence verbs such as
?demonstrate,? ?reveal,? or even ?suggest.? (Remember that understanding precedes critique.)

? Use specific character names, place names, appropriate literary terms, etc., whenever possible.
? Each analysis section should be 400 words (no less than 350 and no more than 450).
? Each analysis section should consist of two full paragraphs, one for each pattern. The patterns may be related

or unrelated. You need not argue that the two patterns complement each other; however, if the patterns do
build on each other, strikingly contrast each other, or otherwise pair well, don?t hesitate to point that out.

Synthesis:
? In 200 words, suggest how your specific evidence from one scene of the play (your analyses) leads to insight(s)

about the whole play.
? How do the various parts add up to something bigger? What does someone learn from reading your analysis?

What might they understand about the play or about a character or about the context or some other aspect of
the play that they might not have been able to see or understand before?

? Think of this final section as the one where you help a reader move from specific observations (analysis #1
and #2) to a broader insight.

? Aim for 200 words (no less than 150 and no more than 250). This section should be just one paragraph.

Why Shakespeare? (ENGL162), Spring 2022

Logistics
? Cite passages by act/scene/line number(s) based on the course text (1.3.9-12 = act 1, scene 3, lines 9-12).
? You are not allowed to use first person singular pronouns (I, my, me, mine) except when quoting the text. The

reason? Pushing subjective reactions to the sideline for this essay will help you focus on objective evidence.
? To receive full credit for ?Logistics,? your heading should follow this template:

[Your Name]
ENGL162- [Your Section] / [TA?s Last Name]
Focal Scene: 4.1 [Indicate your focal scene]
Word Counts: 362 / 408 / 211 [Indicate word counts for each of the 3 sections]

? I do not expect you to use outside sources for this assignment, but if you do so, you must cite them properly.
? Use standard formatting: 12 point Times font with 1? margins and double spacing. PDF submissions only.

GRADING BREAKDOWN
Lists: 30 points (15 points each)
Analyses: 50 points (25 points each)
Synthesis: 10 points
Logistics: 5 points for carefully following directions about word counts, word usage guidelines, etc.
Quotation: 5 points for accurate and consistent citation of act, scene, and line numbers

Note: 40% of your grade depends upon completing lists on time and following directions (30 % for lists + 5% for logistics + 5%
for quotation citation). The takeaway: get in there and start digging. Don?t overthink it. If you do the work, you will have plenty of
good material to work with when it comes time for writing.

Why Shakespeare? (ENGL162), Spring 2022

Writing Assignment One: Recognizing Patterns on Page & Stage
Prompt 1 of 2: List Groups
Due: See details below

Writing Assignment One is designed to help you figure out how a Shakespeare play works on its own terms. To do
well on this assignment, you?ll need to push yourself to carefully observe patterns you might not have noticed before.
We will focus especially on poetic language on the page and on performance on the stage.

Our focal text for this assignment is Macbeth. This assignment is designed to be completed in three parts: 2 list
groups (due in your discussion section as detailed below) + a short writing assignment based on those lists (see
separate assignment prompt on Canvas for details).

The list groups, worth 30% of this assignment, will anchor your work for the final writing stage. Therefore, students
hoping to succeed will want to devote significant time and energy to the list-making process.

LIST GROUP ONE: OBSERVING THE PAGE
Due in Discussion Section for Week Five

MARK THE TEXT AS YOU READ
As you read through the play for Week Five, pay careful attention to tone, imagery, and figurative language.
? Make notes in the margins of your text, use a highlighter, and circle words or phrases that suggest a pattern and/

or seem to deviate from your expectations as a reader.
? Don?t slow down too much while reading?just mark confusing or surprising passages and move on. You?ll come

back later to look more closely at these passages, to figure out precise terminology, and so on.

FOCUS ON ONE SCENE
Narrow in on one scene from Macbeth. Maybe it?s your favorite scene, maybe it?s the one for which you made the
most notes, maybe it?s a scene you don?t feel you completely understand but that you want to figure out. This is going
to be your scene for the rest of the assignment, so pick one that will allow you to succeed when creating the lists
described below.

LIST OBSERVATIONS ON POETIC TONE, IMAGERY, & FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE PATTERNS
Focusing on 40-60 lines from your scene, make 3 lists as described below and start filling in everything you notice. As your lists develop,
note any patterns that emerge. Cite act, scene, and line numbers for each example on your list.

? Page List #1: Tone. Look for evidence of tone by considering the tone indicators that we talked about in lecture:
diction, details, and audience. List at least 3-5 indicators of tone, and identify whether those indicators reveal a
pattern.

? Page List #2: Imagery Echoes. What sort of images is the poetry filled with? Remember, imagery is indicated via
concrete references to physical things?to stars, trees, horses, buildings, etc. List all the examples of imagery that
you find. Then use some marking system (colors, symbols, etc.) to group the imagery into 3-4 broader categories.

? Page List #3: Figurative Language Echoes. Use the ?Figurative Language? reading assignment for help with
labeling what you see. Within a couple minutes, you?ll probably see puns, similes, metaphors, personification, and/
or hyperbole, but keep digging deeper, keep diversifying your findings. Do you see litotes? Metonymy? Anaphora?
List at least 10-15 examples of figurative language from a variety of figurative language categories.

? List Synthesis: Write 2 sentences about patterns and/or categories that you see emerging from these 3 lists.
Important Note: Your grade for this portion of the assignment is tied to completion, not perfection.
? These lists are brainstorming spaces, which means that not every observation that makes your list needs to be

amazing. Quantity is as important as quality?you want to use the lists to begin generating lots of ideas.
? Cite each example by act, scene, and line number from the course text (for example, act 1, scene 3, lines 9-12

should appear as 1.3.9-12).
? Lists must be typed.
? You must submit a PDF version of your list via Canvas before your discussion section begins for Week Five. Lists

not submitted by the start of your individual discussion section will be docked 5 (out of 15) points.
? You must also have a hard copy of your list in-hand during your discussion section.

Why Shakespeare? (ENGL162), Spring 2022

LIST GROUP TWO: OBSERVING THE STAGE

Due in Discussion Section for Week Six

WATCH THE PLAY; RE-WATCH AND RE-WATCH YOUR SCENE
Once you have carefully read and analyzed the language of the play on the page, it?s time to see what the actors do
with it on stage. Get out your book and notes, settle in, and see what happens. By the time we meet for our first
lecture class of Week Six, you?re required to watch the entire Royal Shakespeare Theatre performance of Macbeth
(directed by Polly Findlay; starring Niamh Cusack and Christopher Eccelston), so this part of the assignment begins
by doing your homework for class. When you?re ready to make your lists, re-watch your scene at least two more times while
paying close attention to as many details as you can.

LIST OBSERVATIONS ABOUT ACTORS & ENVIRONMENT FOR YOUR SCENE
Focusing on your scene, make 2 lists as described below and start filling in anything you notice:

? Stage List #1: Actors. Carefully observe how the actors on the stage give life to the words you read on the page.
You might begin by thinking about all the characters in your scene, but you might eventually narrow in on one or
two actors. Pay special attention to the following:
? Pace: How quickly do they speak? Which words do they emphasize? Is there a pattern to their pacing?
? Voice: How do they use their voice? Do they modulate between loud and soft?
? Movement: Are their movements exaggerated? Economical? Slow? Quick? How do they use space between

themselves and other characters and/or objects? What does their posture communicate?
? Tone: What can you notice about tone? Do characters come across as sincere? Eager? Disinterested? Fuming?

Frustrated? Distracted? How do they indicate tone with their bodies?
? Spatial Relationships: How do actors orient themselves?with?scene partners in the playing space? Do actors

change the distance between themselves and scene partners? How do actors use height levels within the scene?
Do they orient their bodies facing towards or away from their scene partners?

? Stage List #2: Environment. Carefully observe how the stage itself becomes a place where words can come to life.
Pay special attention to the following:
? Costumes: What do costumes tell you about context?time period, relationships among characters, power

dynamics, etc.? What are the dominant colors and textures?
? Stage: What is the shape and appearance of the stage? Think about its ?bones,? so to speak: what is the basic

architecture of the stage, and how does it affect what actors can and can?t do? Pay attention to exits and
entrances.

? Theater: What is the shape and appearance of the theater? Again, think about its ?bones.? What does it allow
an audience to do or see?

? Design: What is added to the ?bones? of the stage and/or theater to create meaning? What texture(s) and
color(s) are emphasized? How are props used? How are they moved on and off stage? What kinds of lighting
are used?

? Music: Does music play a role? How does it enhance or change the play on stage in ways you might not have
imagined when reading it on the page? What musical style(s) is used? How loud or soft is it? Do the musicians
remain in the background, or do they interact with the actors?

? List Synthesis: Write 2 sentences about patterns and/or categories that you see emerging from these 2 lists.

Important Note: All of the info from the ?Important Note? for the previous lists applies, except: ?Stage Lists? are
due at the beginning of your Week Six discussion section meeting

THE RSC SHAKESPEARE
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

Chief Associate Editor: H?lo?se S?n?chal
Associate Editors: Trey Jansen, Eleanor Lowe, Lucy Munro,

Dee Anna Phares, Jan Sewell

Macbeth
Textual editing: Dee Anna Phares and Eric Rasmussen

Introduction and ?Shakespeare?s Career in the Theater?: Jonathan
Bate

Commentary: H?lo?se S?n?chal
Scene-by-Scene Analysis: Esme Miskimmin

In Performance: Karin Brown (RSC stagings) and Jan Sewell
(overview)

The Director?s Cut (interviews by Jonathan Bate and Kevin Wright):
Trevor Nunn, Gregory Doran, Rupert Goold

Editorial Advisory Board
Gregory Doran, Chief Associate Director,

Royal Shakespeare Company
Jim Davis, Professor of Theatre Studies, University of Warwick, UK

Charles Edelman, Senior Lecturer, Edith Cowan University,
Western Australia

Lukas Erne, Professor of Modern English Literature,
Universit? de Gen?ve, Switzerland

Jacqui O?Hanlon, Director of Education, Royal Shakespeare Company
Akiko Kusunoki, Tokyo Woman?s Christian University, Japan

2

Ron Rosenbaum, author and journalist, New York, USA
James Shapiro, Professor of English and Comparative Literature,

Columbia University, USA
Tiffany Stern, Fellow and Tutor in English, University of Oxford, UK

3

4

2009 Modern Library Paperback Edition

Copyright ? 2007, 2009 by The Royal Shakespeare Company

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of
The Random House Publishing Group, a division of

Random House, Inc., New York.

MODERN LIBRARY and the TORCHBEARER Design are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.

?Royal Shakespeare Company,? ?RSC,? and the RSC logo are trademarks
or registered trademarks of The Royal Shakespeare Company.

The version of Macbeth and the corresponding footnotes that appear in this volume were
originally published in William Shakespeare Complete Works, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric

Rasmussen, published in 2007 by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-1-58836-833-1

www.modernlibrary.com

v3.1

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CONTENTS

Cover
Title Page
Copyright

Introduction
What Is Tragedy?
The King?s Play
The Weyard Sisters
How Many Children?
The Word Incarnadine

About the Text

Key Facts

The Tragedy of Macbeth
Act 1

Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Scene 6
Scene 7

Act 2
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4

Act 3
Scene 1

6

Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Scene 6

Act 4
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3

Act 5
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Scene 6
Scene 7

The Songs

Textual Notes

Scene-by-Scene Analysis

Macbeth in Performance: The RSC and Beyond
Four Centuries of Macbeth: An Overview
At the RSC
The Director?s Cut: Interviews with Trevor Nunn, Gregory Doran,

and Rupert Goold

Shakespeare?s Career in the Theater
Beginnings
Playhouses
The Ensemble at Work
The King?s Man

Shakespeare?s Works: A Chronology

7

The History Behind the Tragedies: A Chronology

Further Reading and Viewing

References

Acknowledgments and Picture Credits

8

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS TRAGEDY?

Macbeth is Shakespeare?s shortest, quickest tragedy. Its colors are
black and red. It summons up dusk and midnight and at last a poor
player who struts and frets with empty sound and fury, his life a
snuffed out candle. But along the way we witness high passion,
vaulting ambition, alliances made and broken. Macbeth himself is
great in action but not in judgment. Give him a task on the battlefield
and he will carry it through with aplomb. But give him words and he
will be first easily led, then hesitant. His wife chides him for this but,
ironically, as the two of them wade deeper into blood, he becomes
more purposeful, she a nightmare-beset shadow of her former self.

Every day you will find some local ?tragedy? described in the pages
of your newspaper: a child drowns, a car crashes, a woman is
murdered. The word is used so frequently, and sometimes with regard
to misfortunes that in the overall scale of things are so commonplace,
that it has been emptied of its primal force. If the word had been
treated with the respect it deserves, kept ready for the truly awesome
and the world-historical horrors, then a phrase such as ?the tragic
events of September 11? might have had genuine force instead of
being a mere formula that rolls off every politician?s tongue.

?Is this the promised end?? asks the Duke of Albany at the end of
Shakespeare?s King Lear. ?Or image of that horror?? replies the Earl of
Kent. Every human death is, for those who witness it, an image of our
own promised end, but until relatively recently the word ?tragedy?
had not been applied to the mundane cycle of death, the expirations
and silencings that occur every hour, every minute, every second. In
Shakespeare?s world the term was reserved for two exceptional kinds
of disaster. One was the catastrophe that seemed cosmic in its scale

9

and horrific in its particulars, so genuinely seeming to be an image of
the apocalypse, the promised end of all things. When William Caxton,
England?s first printer, wrote of ?tragicall tidings,? the sort of thing he
had in mind was the fall of ancient Troy?the end of a whole
civilization, a turning point in history.

The second traditional sense of the word tragedy was shaped less by
scale than by structure. ?Tragedie,? wrote Geoffrey Chaucer, father of
English verse, ?is to seyn a certeyn storie, / As olde bookes maken us
memorie, / Of hym that stood in greet prosperitee, / And is yfallen
out of heigh degree / Into myserie, and endeth wrecchedly.? The
higher they climb, the harder they fall: tragedy is traditionally about
heroes and kings, larger-than-life figures who climb to the top of
fortune?s wheel and are then toppled off. It is a structure saturated
with irony: the very quality that is the source of a character?s
greatness is also the cause of his downfall.

This is why talk of a ?tragic flaw? is misleading. The theory of the
flaw arises from a misunderstanding of Aristotle?s influential account
of ancient Greek tragedy. For Aristotle, hamartia, the thing that
precipitates tragedy, is not a psychological predisposition but an
event?not a character trait but a fatal action. In several famous cases
in Greek tragedy, the particular mistake is to kill a blood relative in
ignorance of their identity. So too in Shakespeare, it is action (or, in
Hamlet?s case, inaction) that determines character, and not vice versa.

In Shakespearean tragedy, the time is out of joint and the lead
character is out of his accustomed role. Hamlet the scholar is happy
to be presented with an intellectual puzzle, but unsure how to
proceed when presented with a demand to kill. Macbeth the soldier,
by contrast, relishes violent action but is restless when it comes to
waiting for his reward. Hamlet meditates on the nature of providence,
while Macbeth is prompted to take his fate into his own hands.
Imagine Macbeth in Hamlet?s situation. He would have needed no
second prompting. On hearing the Ghost?s story, he would have gone
straight down from the battlements and ?unseamed? King Claudius
?from the nave to th?chops.? His courage and his capacity to act are
without question.

10

King Lear cannot let go of the past, Macbeth cannot wait for the
future, Hamlet cannot stop worrying about the future: none of them is
content to live in the moment. This is not so much an individual
tragic flaw as a universal human failing. We are creatures bound by
time but always longing for another time.

Macbeth is more like Hamlet than he appears to be at first glance.
He has a conscience. When his ambition is stirred by the weyard
sisters? prophecies, he tries to slap it down: ?Stars, hide your fires: /
Let not light see my black and deep desires.? And when he returns to
his castle: he soliloquizes on the afterlife every bit in the manner of
the Danish prince. But where Hamlet is profoundly alone, unable to
bring himself to confide in Ophelia because Gertrude has destroyed
his faith in womankind, Macbeth has a wife to take charge of him.
She enters as he is concluding his conscience-ridden soliloquy and
with a few brisk exchanges and put-downs (?When you durst do it,
then you were a man?) she changes his mind and settles him to the
terrible feat.

His conscience is still working after the regicide, as he is haunted
by the sound of the voice crying ?Sleep no more.? His wife, on the
other hand, is cool and practical (?A little water clears us of this
deed?). But as the play progresses, in one of Shakespeare?s finest
structural movements, a reversal takes place. It is Lady Macbeth who
sleeps no more, whose mind is emptied of everything save the night
of the murder, who cannot wash away the blood (?All the perfumes of
Arabia will not sweeten this little hand?). Macbeth, by contrast,
steeps himself so far in blood that it becomes easier to carry on than
to turn back. He does not tell his wife about the plan to murder
Banquo and Fleance, and by the fourth act, when he massacres the
innocent Macduffs, she has temporarily disappeared from the action.
By the fifth, he is willing on the final encounter: ?Blow wind, come
wrack, / At least we?ll die with harness on our back.? The final
thoughts inspired by his wife are fatalistic: she began by spurring him
to take his destiny into his own hands, she ends as the provocation to
his meditation on the meaninglessness of life.

Bound by time but always longing for another time: in the face of

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this dilemma, Shakespearean tragedy pulls in two different directions.
There is a movement toward acceptance of the moment, which means
acceptance of death. Thus Macbeth: ?She should have died hereafter.
/ There would have been a time for such a word.? And Hamlet: ?If it
be now, ?tis not to come: if it be not to come, it will be now: if it be
not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.? And Edgar in King
Lear: ?Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming
hither: / Ripeness is all.? This is a kind of tragic knowledge that
derives from the classical philosophy of Stoicism. Stoicism meant
resignation, fortitude, suppression of emotion.

But Shakespeare was also skeptical about Stoicism. It is the Stoic
philosophy that he mocks when a grieving father refuses comfort in
Much Ado About Nothing: ?I will be flesh and blood,? says Leonato,
?For there was never yet philosopher / That could endure the
toothache patiently, / However they have writ the style of gods / And
made a pish at chance and sufferance.? The trouble with Stoicism is
that it neglects the capacity to feel, something which makes us human
just as much as the capacity to reason. The counter-movement in
Shakespearean tragedy is toward an acknowledgment of the
emotions, as they express themselves in the body. Gloucester in King
Lear has no eyes and yet he sees how the world goes: he sees it
feelingly. Before Macduff can act like a man in taking revenge against
Macbeth for the murder of his family he must first feel his grief as a
man?he must let himself be a weeping human before turning himself
into an alpha male.

?A play read,? mused Dr. Samuel Johnson in his preface to
Shakespeare, ?affects the mind like a play acted.? It doesn?t: what you
have with a play acted is the actor?s body. Shakespeare was not a
Stoic because he was a player. A player works with his body as much
as with his words. In the theater, the body is a supremely expressive
instrument of feeling.

?Words, words, mere words,? says Hamlet-like Troilus in
Shakespeare?s acrid Trojan tragedy Troilus and Cressida, ?No matter
from the heart.? In the end, what matters about Shakespearean
tragedy are not the fine words of resignation and Stoic comfort, but

12

the raw matter of the heart and the solid presence of the body. The
body in pain. The body emptied of life but still available for a
farewell kiss or blessing. The bodies of Romeo and Juliet, of Othello
and Desdemona, come to rest in an embrace. Horatio, best of friends,
is there to bid Hamlet?s body goodnight. Lear is allowed to mourn
over Cordelia; when he has said goodbye to his daughter he is ready
for his own heart to break. Macbeth is the loneliest of the tragedies
because the Macbeths, having begun the play as one of the few
happily married couples anywhere in Shakespeare, drift apart and
each dies profoundly alone. There is no Horatio or Earl of Kent to
?Give sorrow words? on behalf of the audience. Only in this play
could Shakespeare have described life as a walking shadow, a poor
player, a tale ?Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying
nothing.?

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THE KING?S PLAY

Macbeth is a play about how dreams may become nightmares, how a
castle that by day seems the pleasant seat of nesting birds is
transformed by night into hell itself?with a grimly witty Porter at
the gate. And how the world may be turned upside down: the sun
refuses to rise the morning after Duncan has been killed and other
strange phenomena are interpreted as disruptions of the natural
order.

The English court, in contrast, is represented as a haven, a place of
grace and ?healing benediction.? Malcolm?s stay in England serves as
an education into virtue. His conquest of Scotland, with the worthy
English Siward in support, is made to seem like a restoration of
nature, the moving trees of Birnam symbolic of spring and rebirth.
The play was written in the first few years after King James united
the thrones of Scotland and England: Macduff?s final entrance with
the tyrant?s head and his announcement that the time is free express
hope for an end to the uncertainty about the nation?s future which
had attended the final years of the Virgin Queen?s reign.

Within weeks of James VI of Scotland becoming James I of England
in 1603, Shakespeare?s acting company were given the title ?The
King?s Men.? In return for this honor, they were expected to play at
court whenever required. They duly gave more command
performances at royal events than any of their rivals: between ten and
twenty shows per year for the rest of Shakespeare?s career.

Two years after his accession, in the summer of 1605, King James
visited Oxford University. At the gates of St. John?s College, there
emerged from an arbor of ivy three undergraduates cross-dressed in
the female garb of prophetesses or ?sibyls? from classical antiquity.
The first hailed him as King of Scotland, the second as King of
England, and the third as King of Ireland. They reminded him that
three prophesying sisters had told the ancient Scottish thane Banquo
that, though he would not be king himself, his descendants would one
day rule an immortal empire. Some time before, James himself had
commissioned a family tree that traced the Stuart line back to Banquo

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and Fleance: the sisters were now reconfirming their prophecy.
Macbeth was almost certainly performed in the king?s presence,

possibly in the summer of 1606 during a visit from the Danish king.
This may explain why Norway is made Scotland?s enemy in the
opening battle, where it was Denmark in the Chronicles that were
Shakespeare?s source. Macbeth is steeped in the preoccupations of the
new king: the rights of royal succession, the relationship between
England and Scotland, the reality of witchcraft, the sacred powers of
the monarch (James revived the ancient custom of ?touching? his
subjects in order to cure them of scrofula, ?the king?s evil?). And
there was one enduring concern inherited from his predecessor?s
reign: anxiety about high treason and Roman Catholic plots. The
Porter?s reference to ?equivocation? has often been seen as an allusion
to the verbal cunning shown by Father Garnet, leader of the British
Jesuit community and confessor to the Gunpowder Plot conspirators,
during his trial in the early months of 1606.

?Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none,? says the Third Witch
to Banquo. When Macbeth returns to the weyard sisters in the second
half of the play he sees a vision of the generations begotten by
Banquo: ?A show of eight kings and Banquo last: with a glass in his
hand.? Some critics have supposed that the glass was a mirror pointed
at King James sitting in the audience, creating a reflection of his
image onstage as Banquo?s ghost walks behind. It is more likely to
have been a representation of a magic crystal of the sort that was
supposed to contain visions of the future. In dramatic terms, there is
perhaps also an echo of the diamond given by Banquo to Macbeth on
the night of the murder just before he sees another vision, that of a
dagger with its handle toward his hand. Whatever the precise nature
of the glass, there can be little doubt that the king imagined within it
is James, the ?two-fold balls? representing the orbs of Scotland and
England, the ?treble sceptres? denoting his claim to be King of Great
Britain, Ireland, and France.

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THE WEYARD SISTERS

A more difficult question is the precise nature of those prophetic
females who open the play. Whether or not there were such things as
witches was a fiercely debated subject in the period. In his treatise Of
Demonology, King James affirmed that there were. He believed that,
nine times out of ten, witches were women, but women with
unnaturally masculine features such as facial hair, that they were in
league with the devil, that the