Gone Medieval - The Real Lady Macbeth with Val McDermid

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Lady Macbeth is best known to us as Shakespeare’s scheming, sleepwalking villain. But, as with most of his so-called history plays, Shakespeare’s version of the Macbeths is largely fictional.  Dr. Eleanor Janega talks to the best-selling crime writer - and Gone Medieval fan - Val McDermid who has dragged the truth about the real Queen Macbeth out of the shadows to reveal a woman caught up in the patriarchal prejudices and vicious political intrigues of her time.  Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. The audio editor and producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here. A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions. The men hunting her are determined to kill her because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no ordinary lady.

She's the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth. Hang on a moment, I hear you say. Is that the same Lady Macbeth who dies after sleepwalking? Well, yes and no. Nor are the three companions with her witches. They are a healer, a weaver, and a seer. As with most of his so-called history plays,

Shakespeare conjured up a myth about the mythbaths, as murderous conspirators. To be fair, to the bard, he was using some pretty dodgy sources, and he also had audiences to entertain, and a king obsessed with witches to keep on the right side of. But now, the brilliant, best-selling crime writer Val McDermott has dragged the truth about Lady Macbeth out of the shadows. In her new novella, Queen Macbeth,

Val McDermott has set out to overturn Shakespeare's propaganda and present us with a woman caught up in the patriarchal prejudices and vicious political intrigues of her time. And I am delighted that Val McDermott is joining me on Gone Medieval today to tell us about the real Queen Macbeth. So first of all, Val, welcome to Gone Medieval. It's a delight to be here. I feel you need to fang her a little bit, you know.

Okay, so that makes two of us. We're doing well. So if we could just, you know, be calm enough to actually talk today. I'm really excited because, you know, this is a household name, Lady Macbeth. But for fictive reasons, and you've actually gone and done some actual historical work, which is amazing. And I'm going to start you off. kind of a more personal question, which is how did you make the decision to start writing about Lady Macbeth?

Well, the decision was kind of made for me. Berlin, my publishers, have a series of novellas which look at aspects of Scottish history or Scottish mythology that's informed who we are today. And they've asked writers of fiction to go back and look at the stories to see how much is actually rooted in fact and how we would approach it. And I was given a completely blank slate. They said, you can set it in the present day. Given the state of Scottish politics, I thought writing about a strong woman. when leader was maybe not the way to go. And they said you can set it in the historic period

or you can set it against the Shakespeare. And I thought it was a no-brainer, really, because I knew enough to know that Shakespeare was not, should we say, historically accurate. Yeah, just slightly, slightly. Yeah. Okay, so what is your perception of Lady Macbeth in the Shakespearean version?

You know, when you meet her, what do you think of her? You think of her as overreaching, ambitious, pushy, domineering, running the show basically, and running it in not a very good way, seeking power, seeking privilege, and not a very nice person at all. And then, of course, she has the breakdown and becomes a complete nutter. Which, you know, one of the great nutters of history, which we very much like. But I think you're right. She's a really difficult woman. And I kind of always enjoy it when there are difficult women in history or fiction, because it sort of goes against the grain slightly in that, that often one expects women to behaving well.

But, you know, it's Shakespearean. It's so over the top. Here's a woman that we have made up to reflect all of our concerns about what femininity could be. That it can stick in the craw a bit. She is basically the villain of the peace. She pushes her husband into doing something he doesn't really want to do. And she's responsible for, you know, the death of a king

and the ruination of a kingdom. And it's just not true. Okay, so were you surprised when you started digging into the real Queen Macbeth. You know, this is your starting point, right? Yeah, I was surprised. I was surprised because the Macbeths were not a hated tyranny for a start. The Macbeths were loved and respected by their people.

They ruled for 17 years. Now, in the Middle Ages, you didn't get to rule for 17 years if your people didn't like you, because the next kingdom over would come in and take you over. There would be people being killed and murdered and slain on the battlefield. You just didn't get 17-year run at it. they were so secure in their kingdom that at one point they went off to Rome on a pilgrimage and left a regent in charge and came back in the kingdom was, oh, still there.

They weren't overthrown by their people. They weren't the victims of an uprising against their tyrannical ways. You know, it was somebody who came in from the outside and said, I'm a new throne, as it so often was in the Middle Ages. That's how it happened. Okay, in the person of Lady Macbeth, what do we know about her? Do we have, you know, an idea of her early life at all? She was brought up in a household that was descended from the great king of Scotland,

Kennefer Kalpin, from whom all the sort of rules of Scotland were essentially descended one way or another. So her father was in the direct line, and so she would have been brought up in a relatively comfortable existence, insofar as anybody could be comfortable in those days. It wasn't the time of great luxury and delight. No. And then she married Gilly Comaghan, who was the Mormere of Murray, which is based on the Earl of Murray. and so she went from being the sort of lassie of the household

to being the mistress of the household and he was by all accounts a sort of pretty coarse man not a nice guy by and large it was a dynastic marriage it was a marriage to cement everybody's place in the hierarchy so because she was of the royal line she was the right kind of person

for him to marry so she went from being as the beloved daughter of the house to being the useful wife what happened to Gilly Comagin is an interesting story as well he got his mormir's ship by supposedly conspiring with Malcolm to kill Macbeth's father. And the Moormairship, which theoretically should have gone to Macbeth,

but things didn't go in the direct line of disset. Things went into the line of conquest. That became Gilly Comaghan's place in society. He became the Mormere of Murray. And Macbeth was set off to the sidelines, effectively, to live in his banqueting hall in Mull. And then Macbeth came to the court to pay his obeisance to Gilly Comagin, you know, because he was a kinsman and therefore to say,

my men are at your disposal should you need them. And in my book that is the point where he encounters Gruach, which is her real name. And I chose to make this a love at first sight moment. She'd never seen anybody like him. He was, by all accounts, quite flamboyant. He was handsome. He was red-headed. A man of spirit, I think it's fair to say. It seemed to me that it was entirely possible that faced with that dynastic marriage that she wasn't very keen on and this handsome, vibrant man comes to the court to pay his respect. It's not surprising if there was a sudden moment of, oh my God, he's much nicer. Well, I mean, this is kind of the classic medieval way of looking at romance, isn't it?

You know, this is what we get in courtly love literature up and down the block, because you have women who are in weird marriages as a result of having to be because it's the right thing for your family, and then some handsome young thing comes along, and it destabilizes everything, doesn't it? So really, that's the traditional way to look at things. And a handsome young man who, in a sense, has a right to the position. that your husband occupies. And then there's a very strange occurrence

that Gilly Comigan is celebrating a banquet in his banqueting hall with his 50 closest guard. And the place burns down and they all die. Which is an absolute tragedy, except that that then means that Macbeth can move in on the widow. Tragedy for whom, I suppose is the question here.

It's being a tragedy. It sounds absolutely appalling to us in the modern way. We're horrified when we read about it happening in Kosova in the 90s, and quite rightly so. And part of me is horrified that this is how Macbeth came to the throne. But, on the other hand, if it hadn't been them, it would have been somebody else. People didn't sit around the table and negotiate and say, like, you know, I really fancy your wife, you're going to get a divorce.

Yeah, that happens not so often, you know. And also, it is one of these things, too, where a fire, you know, that is a real good plausible deniability. Because it's really difficult for us now to understand and get our heads round just how often things burnt down. Yes. It would have been a wooden building. And late at night, they'd all have been pissed. Nobody would have probably noticed the fire until they were, oh, my tunic's on fire.

Yeah. Is it very convenient? Very convenient for Gruach and Macbeth. I would argue that that is quite convenient. Well, yes. And there's also the question of Gruach's son, Lulach, who is assumed at the time was the son of Gilly Comaghan.

But I suspect may well have been the son of Macbeth. Macbeth adopted him as his son and made him his ear. There is always this sort of slippage that's going on behind the scenes, you know, there are various airs moving in and out, there are various intrigues, and especially around the time that we're talking because this is what, the early 11th century, things are a bit looser. I mean, all you've got to do is look down to England and see what's going on with this succession on the throne there to see that things get shook up really quickly sometimes. Yeah, there was no newspapers, there was no communication other than word of mouth, really, particularly in Scotland at that time. So you just needed one person to go about saying, this is the case. I know that. I know that. to be the case and suddenly it became the case. So it was an interesting time. Macbeth and his wife assumed that the throne of their kingdom. In the course of time they expanded the kingdom to take over alabah and it was actually the first step on the way to what's modern Scotland. They were not by any accounts tyrannical. They seemed to have been loved by their people which would suggest that they

behaved with a degree of fairness towards them which is not a given in the Middle Ages at all. And this is an interesting notion to pursue and a direct opposition to Shakespeare's view of them. I mean, he just made it up. I guess this is my question, right? Is this a case of Shakespeare just not getting hold of the correct sources? Or is this just Shakespeare having a nice time and writing some fiction, do you think? I mean, is he using unreliable sources or is he himself just dabbling? I think he came across at least one unreliable source and thought, oh, that'll make a good drama.

In fairness, speaking as a matter of fiction myself, I found I was researching a particular historical period and there were three accounts that said nothing happened. And one account is that this happened. I'd go for the one that said this happened. It's a lot sexier, isn't it? But then you have this really interesting story of the warriors dying, of this fire,

of something that can be interpreted if one wishes to as foul play. And did you kind of think that you were going to find anything like that when you started scratching around yourself? I didn't really, because I didn't know enough about it. There's not a lot to know about the historical periods it should be said. Scotland in the 10th century is, in many respects, a blank canvas for reasons that I will explain because you actually have a bearing on what I wrote. I had written this plot, this story, and at one point it's quite crucial that messages are exchanged between

two people in different places. So not unreasonably, I had notes being written and sent off by a trusted messenger and I submitted my first draft and Hugh Andrew who's the publisher at Berlin said there's a slight problem with this. What's the problem Hugh? He said well there wasn't paper in 10th century Scotland. We don't have anything like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Scotland because there was no paper. All we do have is sort of monkish chronicles which don't really have a great deal of connection to the daily lives of the kingdom. So that's one of reasons why there's a big blanks in the day-to-day history of Scotland. We kind of know the big events because the We've written about the big event, but not the nuts and bolts of how things happened within

that big picture. So I had to go away and find another means of communication. So I thought, what did people know about at the time? How could they communicate? And I was discussing this. It so happened I was having dinner that evening with my partner with Nicholas Sturgeon, who, you know, you might say as another strong Scottish woman. And in the course of that conversation, we're all disagreed about who actually suggested it first. We did come up with the solution, which was to use the language of plants. I love this. People did know and understood.

They didn't just randomly send you a bunch of flowers. They said you a bunch of flowers that had a meaning. So I thought this was a good way of having a communication between Ruach and Macbeth when they were separated by a big distance. I got my lesson in history there. I did have another situation where Hugh disagreed with me, but I was able to make a valid argument. At some point at that I'll have them cooking with ginger.

Ginger was in one of the things that are eating or drinking. And Hugh goes, I don't think they would have had. ginger in 10th century Scotland. And I said, well, I think they might have had because the Romans got a long way up Scotland. I mean, people think that Hadrian's wall was as far as they got, but they didn't. They got much further north than that. And the Romans brought herbs and spices that we hadn't had before. And the climate in Scotland would allow you to grow ginger. So I made this argument and to absolutely nail this argument, I got in touch with Mary Beard and said, Mary. And she said, that's

entirely plausible. Yes, thank you, Mary. I'm what to say from my previous historical researchers, entirely plausible is enough for me. Listen, all we need is plausible when we are having a nice time. This is what I would say. And also, I think you're spot on because Ginger was such a big deal for the aristocracy. You know, it was a way of showing that one had refined taste. And so you would have got hold of it one way or another, even if the Romans hadn't brought it up. If you heard that people had it further south or somewhere else, you would go get it.

Yeah. And make an attempt. So I'm with you on this one. And it's also clear that we did have trading contacts with Europe, particularly the Scots. We had good relationships with mainland Europe. From Fife, we had connections to the low countries and to Russia. Border of South, we had connections down into the continent. And of course, Macbeth and Gruach actually went to Rome on our pilgrimage,

which was to be an absolutely astonishing. Imagine. To go from Scotland, where everything was built with wood except great big stone castles, to go to Rome and see what you could do with stone, the cultural life, the warmth, the sun. sunshine, the food. It must have been just astonishing. I always love this because whenever you get travel accounts, for example, as a result of the old alliance, you often have French knights that are going up to Scotland. And to a man, they're all kind of like, oh, it's quite cold, you know, the entire

time, which always makes me laugh. You know, they're used to, you know, pausing about in southern France, and then they have a bit of an awakening when they get to the high list. God, yeah. So these were all things that I was able to argue for and to absorb. And I really enjoyed writing it. I really enjoyed digging into what I could find out. And that's where Gone Medieval came in. And I find myself checking through your back podcasts to find out what people were eating, what people were wearing, what their attitudes to sex were, what their attitudes were after relationships. And that was immensely helpful because you'd done all the work for me. Well, we're here to be of service. Let's just say that. Absolutely. And you were of service. It was great. So I was able to, you know, concoct menus

and particularly to do with the plants of the medications because instead of Shakespeare's three witches, I gave Gruach three serving women, three women that have been with her since childhood. And as would have been the case at the time, when she moved from her father's court to Gillicomaghan's court, she took her woman with her. That was her power base.

That was her source of information. That was her way into the new court that she was going to. And so I gave her these three women, one who's very practical, and one who's good with plants and medicines and is viewed as a sort of witch because she can cure you when you're sick and one who's just in touch with things

and so these three women are at her side throughout and they stay with her almost to the bitter end and that is her source of support and they have their serving man Angus who is there to do things that the women are not able to do because of societal or physical capabilities and that's her wee miniature court. They were there, that was her team.

And I think it's something that as a writer of crime fiction, I have always been conscious of for my earliest days. The thing that I found really difficult about the new wave of feminist crime fiction in the 1980s was you had all these women who were private eyes or whatever, and they were loners. They were just like the men, they were mavericks, they had no friends. And I thought, that's not how my life as a woman works.

You know, I don't have this situation where I don't have people around me that I can turn to. And so right from the very start, I always created female protagonists who had a group of people around them, a group of women mostly around them, who they could turn to when they needed help. You know, if they needed to know something about the law,

they had a friend who was a lawyer, if they needed something to do with police, they had a friend who was a police officer, whatever they did to investigate. They had a way in through their circle of friends. And I think this is how women operate. This is how women have always operated, regardless of whether it's the Middle Ages

of the 21st century. We know who we trust. I think that this is such an important point because one of the things that, you know, forgive me if I launch into a rant that I've made on this podcast many times, but one of the things that often frustrates me when we look at historical figures who are women is we celebrate and uphold women that we perceive to be doing things in a masculine way. So the minute a woman grabs a sword, we're like, oh, this is amazing. What an incredible woman. She's so strong. But, you know, if a woman, quietly wields power in a way that traditionally one would expect her to, that's not interesting. We don't find it interesting when queens are having massive diplomatic power and sending their

ladies out to broker deals behind the scenes. And I think that's interesting. You know, I think it's cool, you know? I think it's more interesting because it's the way that men don't wield power. So often it's about let's get the swords out and let's kill each other on the battlefield. But does the women like Gruach and her women weave their way in and out of the scenes, often completely unnoticed because they're just women. And that gives them a power that the guy who's swaggering with his sword never has because he's obvious. And I like the sort of idea of the subtle power and the subtle stuff that they can do

behind the scenes and exercising what they generally see as the good, not just for themselves, but for the tribe, if you like, for the clan. And that the Macbeth's treated their people, I think, well as evidenced by the fact that they didn't have interior rebellions. There's no evidence of any uprising against them from their own people in the historical record. And I think it probably would be if there had been because there's lots of stuff in the record

about other people being overthrown, kingdoms falling and rising. So I took that as licensed to have them do what they do. Okay, this is something I wanted to ask you about because one of the things I love about the book is that you've really challenged chick. Shakespeare's version of events in very many ways. We've already got on to some of that, just handmaidens as opposed to, you know, witches.

But you, in very many ways, rewrite this very convenient narrative of Shakespeare's. You know, one of the ways that he presents Lady Macbac, for example, is that, you know, she's this bitter, barren shrew, right? Just a horrible woman that everyone hates. And you, on the other hand, have Groch here, and she's politically astute. is this something that you assessed as a result of the fact that we have these fairly happy subjects that we have not a lot of evidence to the contrary? I mean, how are we getting here?

Well, I got it important because it's usually uprisings led by somebody coming in from the outside to say, I'm going to have your throne and your people will have a much better time with me. There was none of that going on as far as we can tell in the Macbeth's history. And there were plenty of people who wanted to go, wanted to take a poppet, the throne that he had. And in the end, that's what overthrew him, was Malcolm coming after him. but I think it's reasonable to make these assumptions that this was a stable kingdom

because there's no evidence to the contrary and there probably would be evidence to the contrary I mean what we know about that period of history is usually things like Malcolm slew Kenneth and Kenneth slew Malcolm which is actually one of the weird lines I found in the historical record and you think which Malcolm who killed you? Who's still alive at the end of this? There weren't any names to go around

but I think in many respects the assumptions I made are not without substance I think it was quite clear that This was of the kingdoms at the time relatively stable. I mean, there are things that Shakespeare wrote that we do know to be the case. You know, we know that Macbeth slew Duncan. He did not kill him up the back stairs in the middle of the night in this castle. He slew him on the battlefield.

That's what happened, and that's what always happened in the Middle Ages, by and large, as people got into a fight in the battlefield killed each other, whatever. Malcolm slew Kenneth, Kenneth, Knew Malcolm. But this is what happened that it wasn't a conspiracy up the back stairs. We know that to be the case for the start. And we also know that she wasn't a barren shoe. She had a son Lula who succeeded to the throne. I mean, I think this one off the case, you know, we all know,

we've all seen it in our lives, you know, powerful couple who have a child who is a complete waste of space. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of that about in the Middle Ages. Yeah. Lulat really was a bit of a waste of space. You know, I mean, you can see his parents going on. When is you ever going to grow up? When's you going to go out and kill something down the battlefield? Come on now.

On son, you've been brought up properly. So, yeah, I think Rulak was a disappointment. You know, you might not have been going about saying to everyone, He's my son Lula, isn't he amazing? You know, because to a certain extent, you'd say, I don't understand what the problem is by having, like, a big fight scene on a battlefield with Macbeth going after Duncan and killing him.

But then it's a bit of a fizzle, isn't it? It's like, ah, and then the sun was kind of nobody, and... Never mind. You have to work within the parameters of the period as well. You can't just rip up the history book insofar as there is a history book. I've got a bit of form for this before. I did a book some years ago called The Grave Tattoo,

which is a contemporary thriller, set against the mutiny on the bounty and its aftermath because what I didn't know and I discovered serendipitously that William Worsworth and Fletcher Christian were at school together. What? Yes, William Worshworth and Fletcher Christian were at the same small primary school in the Lake District together. And there was a strong rumour and persistent rumour

that Fletcher Christian did not die on Pitcairn, but that he came back and was appalled and astonished to find that he was a wanted man with price on his head because, as far as he knew, the last he'd done was set bligh a drift in a boat with land in sight. he wasn't doing that bligh was going to make this mad voyage across the Pacific and so I thought this is really interesting because there's no grave for Fletcher Christian on Pitcairn. There's graves for most of the mutinaires but not Pletcher Christian.

So I started with this as my starting point and read everything I could get my hands on about the mutiny on the bounty in its aftermath. And it seemed to me that it was entirely plausible that he got back because in Dorothy Wordsworth's diary, she talks about William used to work in the garden when the weather was Clement. He'd sit and he had a bower in the garden and he'd sit and write. And Dorothy mentions a sailor coming to see William in the garden and spending at the afternoon talking with him.

And I'm thinking, if I was Fletcher Christian and I came back after doing the Mutiny on the Bounty and settling Pitcair and all that nonsense and found that all they wanted to do was hang me, I'd be fairly brast off. I'd want to tell my story. And you've got your old school pal who's now, you know, the poet laureate, a famous man. And I had this mad notion that Good Wordsworth would have written this epic poem about the Mutiny on the Bounty, Fletcher Christian's version. but he couldn't publish it, of course, because it would be tantamount to saying,

I harboured a fugitive. Yeah, yeah. So I put this together and I had this missing manuscript. I mean, that was the Mcuffin, really. And I went and spoke to Robert Woof, who was at that time, who ran the Wordsworth Centre in the late district. And I laid the story out to him, and I said, what do you think, Robert? He said, it's charmingly plausible.

And that has become really my watchword, as I was saying earlier, my touchstone. Is it plausible? Is it charming? I absolutely love that. Here's one thing that I also love. I just want to drag us back to Rome. This was something that really surprised me when I was having a look at it, which it shouldn't have. Because pilgrimage to Rome is one of those things that is very important to medieval people. A lot of people do it, especially if they are quite high up, if they're well-to-do, which we certainly know that my practice are. And I think that this is such an important point that you managed to make.

but how did you find out about it to begin with? It's there in the record that they went to Rome on a pilgrimage. And of course they'd have gone by sea, which meant it didn't take the months and months it would take to go across it by land and get into various rocks along the way. They'd just go off on their galley, the boats at the time, which lovingly are called Burlins, down the west coast and across the channel

and down the coast of Spain and across, oh, they're right, it's Rome. I did not want to make this about some profoundly religious experience for them because I didn't have the sense that that was what was underlying it. It's just the thing that they probably should do. And Macbeth had this relationship with the monks on the island in Loch Rieven where she ended up. I see Macbeth as being quite pragmatic, a pragmatic man. And I see him as Bill in with the monks was not a bad thing.

Christianity was gaining traction at that time in Scotland and that this was not going to cause him any hurt or any grief to go and see the Pope. how that transpired. You know, being in with the Pope was near a bad thing. So I see that as more of a pragmatic transactional event in their lives. But I think it must have been absolutely astonishing to go there and go like, wow. We knock up these things. I mean, absolutely, you're going to see a completely different way of living, which is one of the things that's so interesting at the time. I mean, I suppose it's still true now. But, you know, in the medieval period, places are really

different. But I think that there's also a really important point here, which is that, If you're able to go to Rome for several months on pilgrimage, that also means that your kingdom is super stable. Because otherwise, if they were really hated, if these were a couple of people who nobody liked, the minute you were out the door, everyone would be like, ha ha! Yeah, absolutely. The kingdom would have fallen. There's no question about it. But, you know, they left a regent and off they went, and it was fine. They came back and everybody was like, oh, it's nice to see you back again.

Do you have a good time? You know, what have you brought us? Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, if you got any good friends? And Ethne, who's the herbalist, will have been absolutely over the moon with what was available to her. I can just picture her potting up all these plants, having our own bit in the building, go,

don't you touch my plants. I love that. So, you know, I think that's, you know, if I didn't have ginger before then, they certainly had ginger after it. Well, there you go, right? You're not going down to the continent without coming back with the good stuff, frankly.

Exactly. What's the point in going otherwise? And I think that's probably no small part of it. You know, they'll have come back with stuff. that have made people go like, whoa, how can we have that? Well, you know, that's what it means to be royal, right? Is to have these connections and make these moves. And this is this consummately royal couple, well-liked, well-connected, moving about.

And you've managed to present that really, really well here in opposition to what we usually see from Shakespeare, right? Because Shakespeare, you know, yeah, he shows them take over the kingdom via treachery, etc. And then, you know, the minute they do, they die. And obviously that's not what happens here. You have this fairly long rain. But also, you manage to talk about what happens to Gwach after Macbeth dies, because he does die. So would you kind of describe as her journey after the death of her husband? She has to make herself secure because she is potentially the rallying figure for their people. If there's going to be an uprising against Malcolm and his people, she's going to be at the forefront of it. So she has to make sure that

she and her women are safe. And so they turn to the monks in the monastery and they secure her because Macbeth's being good to them, he's given them the land, he's been donations to the monastery. So, you know, in a sense, they've kind of already planned a escape route. And she's waiting to see what happens. How's Balcom going to take over the kingdom? How is it going to be?

How pissed off are the people going to be? Is there a chance of rising up against it? So all of this is in her mind. and also because Lulak's around at this point still. And she's got to kind of cover his back as well. So it's important to her that she stays alive. So she's grieving the loss of the man that she loved. But she's also conscious that she has a duty to the kingdom.

And so when they come after her, she has to try and secure herself. And I think there's a lot of bravery in that. The fleeing from sanctuary, they know that Malcolm sent men out to kill her. He sent men out across the kingdom to find where she is and to kill her. It's quite clear that that was the intention. Of course, the good reasons why Shakespeare wrote it the way that he wrote it. I was going to say, what do you think when you've got a situation like that, it's pretty easy for us in the modern period to say,

oh, well, this kind of looks like a question of succession and a question of simply wishing to secure things. But Shakespeare comes about it in a really different way. I guess what do you think was motivating him to depict the Macbeth's in this very particularized way? Politics, plain and simple. There's a new king on the throne in London who was a Scottish. King, James the sixth and first, who was notorious for his hatred of witches. He wrote a book about the awfulness of witches. So that explains why it was important to have a bunch of horrible

witches at the heart of this. Behind the motive engine for the whole thing is these three Eldritch witches on the moor telling Macbeth he's going to be king hereafter. So you better do something about it, son. And at the time also, James was descended from Banco's side of the equation, not from Macbeth's side of the equation, and a less, in some ways, less justifiable claim on the throne of Scotland through ancestry. But it was a way of suking up to the king. It was important to suck up to the king because at that time, there were no actual theatres as such, really. You succeeded because you had royal patronage. Getting to put your plays on at court was a key element to your success as a theatre company.

And if you were putting on plays that the king did not like, you're only going to do very well. So for all sorts of things, Shakespeare was a shareholder in his theatre company. He wasn't just the jobbing playwright or a jobbing actor. He was part of the, if you like, the management. So it was part of his job to make sure that the theatre company persisted. And so let's put on a really good play that warned the cockles of the king's heart. I'll go away and look in the history books to see what I could come up with. And I think that's probably, I mean, plain and simple.

And then he thought, oh, this is a great story. I can do something with this. And off he went. I can't feel angry with him about it. I can't blame him for it. You know, the guy had a living to make. You had a wife and family back in Stratford that were like, you know, needed his income and his own life in London that needed his income.

So I think that's the story behind it, no more, no less. Yeah, I think that all artists to a certain extent are safe. Fair enough when you hear about things like this. You know, it's not his fault if everyone took a play seriously as a piece of history. Yeah. Because it's such a good play, because it's such a powerful piece of dramaturgie, it has become the historical record. People think it's what happened.

People think that Lady Macbeth is this absolute avatar for being a bad wife. It's a hard image to break down. I just thought it. I'm not having it. And quite right too. Do you have any hopes for what the novel is going to achieve in the face of this really solidified idea of Lady Macbeth as a character?

Well, I mean, there's always hope that someone might make a movie out of it, you know, or a television adaptation, that would shift the dial rather more than a small novella being published by an indie publishing house in Scotland. You know, we've sold a lot of books and reached a lot of people, but nothing like the kind of outreach that Shakespeare has. You know, so if there's anybody out there who would like to make a movie of Breed McBeath, you know, feel free to get in touch. Contact Val. I'll contact my agent first. Look, this is a movie that I want, you know, and I think this is interesting, though,

because to a certain extent, I do think the public imagination, or at least, I mean, perhaps I'm here preaching to the choir, you know, listeners to this show in particular, have an interest in myth-busting these essentialist ideas. I mean, certainly let's just look at what the discovery of Richard the Third's body did for the re-evaluation of Richard the Third, which was, again, largely colored by what Shakespeare had to say for quite some time. Yeah, I mean, Josephine Taye wrote the daughter of time way back in the 50s, which debunked the Princess Natar thing of Richard. But she was a writer. She was a novelist. It had a big impact on a lot of people, but it didn't reach the wider consciousness. So, yeah, it took the rediscovery of Richard's body to start things, the dial really moving. So you need to find a way of reaching the opinion formers, the opinion makers.

So like I said, I think the only thing that would really shift the dial from the best is a film. And I don't see why nobody's shown an interest in making the film yet, because, I mean, you know, we all love it. Braveheart. Yes. Didn't we? In New Scotland. Yeah. Medieval historians don't hate that movie at all. You need something that gets right into the heart of popular culture. You know, I'm a writer. I love books. I love reading. I love writing.

But, you know, I do acknowledge that if you really want to change people's view on a wider scale, you need to get into a different kind of popular culture. Well, and I guess that's where Shakespeare's got a leg up on all of us is that, you know, people like plays, people like movies. And I don't blame them. Well, I mean, speaking of plays, kind of a random question to ask you at the end. So we spent this entire time talking about a play and a couple of people whose name is associated with bad luck. So I'm sure you've been asked this a million times, but I'm going to do it anyway. So have you particularly experienced in anything weird and unlucky while you were writing a book trying to save the good name of Lady Macbeth?

It's really weird that you should say that. I hadn't even thought about that. I hadn't even thought about that But we have had the worst year I mean truly we've had the worst year Yeah Beginning of the year My partner nearly died She was really ill

Took her quite a while to recover And then my back completely gave up on me Very swiftly, very suddenly Went really downhill And I spent summer having A major spinal surgery That I'm just recovering from And I did not write a novel this year

For the first time in 40 years Oh my God It's the curse of Macbeth It happened Oh my God You've completely devastated me this morning. Oh, God. We've just moved house as well.

We love this house. It's fabulous new house. But oh, God, this has been the year of living disastrously. Oh, God. You think it's been bad? Let's just say that it is, because then that way you've kind of exercised it. Well, we should have because if I go from the publication date, it's been more than a year since it was published. So maybe I've come out the other side of it.

And my back is much better. I'm fine. I'm walking about it. Everything's fine. This is what we're going with. I choose to believe. Hey, Val, come on the podcast so I can scare you. I don't even thought, but we keep walking about the house said, this has been the worst year.

There you go. I'm blaming Macbeth. That's it. That's it. But, you know, or maybe Shakespeare. Let's just, let's blame Shakespeare instead. Let's not make it about the Megbeth. Okay. Well, well, yeah, Val, thanks for coming by so I could freak you out, I guess. It's just lovely. It's been a real pleasure. Oh, God. All his deed are part. I would have struggled to make the boot as strong as it is without this podcast.

I really leaned heavily into it. So thank you for that. Seriously, the pleasure has been all mine, and I'm sorry for scaring you. Pretty early in the morning, but I might have to go another stiff whiskey. Thanks so much to Val McDermott once again and to you for listening to Gondievel Evil from History Hit. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including My Series Meet the Normans, and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription.

You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all your friends and family that you've Gone Medieval. My co-host Matt Lewis will be back again on Friday and as always, I'll see you again next Tuesday. Until next time.