The Rest Is History - 104. Macbeth

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

Something wicked this way comes. Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook take a deep dive into the real history of Scotland’s most notorious king. Was he really the murderous man of Shakespeare’s writing? Plus the boys examine the play for its insight into the politics of the time in which it was written. And we discover Dominic’s missed vocation. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Joey McCarthy Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. What rhubarb, senna or what purgative drug Will scour these English heads? Now that's the line spoken by Macbeth in Shakespeare's Scottish play that in May 1849 contributed to one of the worst riots in the history of New York City,

the Astor Place Riot of 1849. Tom Holland, are you familiar with the Astor Place Riot? This is a, what, a riot about? About my bed. About my bed. No. Yeah, so this is a bizarre but true story. So mid-19th century America,

all sorts of sort of nativist passions and so on, anti-English passions, and there's this great row in New York between the supporters of two actors, Edwin Forrest, who's the sort of all-American hero, and William Charles McCready, who is batting for Britain. And the great crowds who cheer their man on, who think that their man is better at Shakespeare,

better at playing Macbeth. That's a great reason to have a riot. I mean, you've got to have a riot. You know what they shouted? No. From the stalls? Down with the codfish aristocracy. I think that's a kind of anti-English line of some kind.

So, yes. So, our subject is the Scottish play. It is. Which has inspired passions down the ages. And rumours of curses and all kinds of things. Witches. Well, actually, you know the reason I really wanted to do this was because they are made a theatre in London, which is my favourite theatre. Favourite theatre.

Yeah, I do have a favourite theatre. And they they were due to kick off with a performance of Macbeth today with Saoirse Ronan. Yeah. As Lady Macbeth. And I had tickets and it's just been cancelled because of. Because of Covid. Because of Covid outbreak. I mean, the whole play hasn't.

But the tickets that I had have been cancelled. That's very sad. So that is a shame. I should say to the listeners, this is a very unusual podcast, isn't it? It is. Because we're actually for once in the same room. It is.

Which is a bit weird. So we're really taking a punt here because obviously we're doing it on Macbeth, which is incredibly unlucky. So something awful is clearly going to happen over the course of recording this podcast. but also we're having to adjust to actually yeah kind of looking at each other it's very disconcerting actually just kind of sitting side by side talking to each other in a way that you just I've completely forgotten how to do yeah

you just wouldn't sit like this in real life would you no I mean not that this is not real life but anyway um so Macbeth so I but the other reason I wanted to do it is because I think that um the historical figure of Macbeth which lies behind the kind of bloodstained tyrant of Shakespeare's play he wasn't at all a bloodstained tyrant he was actually a pretty good king I mean he was such a good king that in the 11th century he was able to go on pilgrimage to Rome which is kind of the measure of of how well your your kingdom is doing and you can leave it behind yeah exactly so the so so the question is why how and why did this very effective um really quite popular king become you know this kind of byword for tyranny yeah um and the answer to that question i i propose goes to the heart of the making of Scotland so the fashioning of

Scotland out of the various constituent parts that make it up okay so before we get into that I'll just say for the listeners we will talk about the play Tom mentioned very ominously that he thought we might get halfway through and he would have got them at Beth's birth which I think is bad planning. But we're going to get to the play probably in the second half and we'll talk about the witches. We'll talk about James I. We'll talk about the Shakespearean context, the curse, and a couple of notable productions of Macbeth. But first, Tom sent me a message yesterday saying that he had gone down a rabbit hole of Scottish medieval politics.

And I want to see him clamber. Well, yeah. So obviously all early medieval history is incredibly complicated. Yeah. A, because the sources are often very sparse. Yeah. And B, because they're often overwritten by people who have a kind of set interest in rewriting them.

Yes. So it's very difficult and complex. And I think, you know, I put my hand up that I know the history of early medieval England much better than I do the history of early medieval Scotland. And there's a similar process by which kind of fragmentary kingdoms start to cohere. And then like Wessex and Mercia and England. Exactly, become England. So a similar process happens in Scotland, but it's more complicated in Scotland because in Scotland you have people speaking basically different languages so to be very very reductive yeah if you think of Scotland

you think of the lowlands and the highlands and then you quarter it so the um the southeast corner Lothian up to up to the Firth of Forth is basically a part of the kingdom of Northumbria, which is English speaking. And so the borough in Edinburgh reflects, you know, it's like a kind of the borough that Anglo-Saxon kings built. They're kind of fortified marketplaces. So that's... Middlesbrough. Yeah.

And so Edinburgh was for a long a kind of a Northumbrian stronghold. Then you think of the um the southwest so uh strathclyde strathclyde right and that is the the it's it's a welsh-speaking kingdom with the great rock of dumbarton yeah um alt clut uh the rock of the clyde yeah incredibly romantic then the uh the northeast of the of the highlands uh you've got a kind of great mountain range going through the middle, kind of separating the highlands. On one side, the western side of that, you've got the kingdom of Dalriata, which is Gaelic speaking, and has very, very strong links to Northern Ireland. And then on the other side, you have mysterious people who the romans knew as picts yeah and um in due course the picts come to call themselves picts they kind of appropriate 1066 and

all that absolutely the picts and the scots so the scots so the scots is the name that the people of dalriada apply to themselves but the complexity here is that the Scotty were originally Irish yes I remember that okay so that's also very complicated and and they derived their name from Scotter do you know who Scotter was no she was the Egyptian princess who discovered Moses in the bulrushes and she is then yeah it's unexpected unexpected so she is then supposed to have travelled to Ireland and established this royal line. Unlikely, I would say. Implausible, as your father would say.

So the kings of Dalriada claim a line of descent from the Irish or Scots. From ancient Egypt. Ultimately from ancient Egypt, because it's a marker of class now in fact this is not true or at least the archaeological evidence suggests it's not true so all so there's there's there are kind of tales of the irish colonizing dalriada right but there is no archaeological evidence for this just whatsoever you you were right you have gone down a rabbit hole i know i know i know. I know. But this is all complicated

because it's all about basically kind of kings manufacturing backstories for themselves. So which bit is Macbeth from? Okay. So just, we'll come to that. But just keep in mind that you've got

the Picts, you've got the Scots, then you've got the Picts, you've got the Scots, then you've got the British, the Welsh-speaking Britons of Strathclyde, and then you've got the English of Northumbria. Okay. And this is the kind of st up all the rubble fashion it together and construct a new kingdom the new kingdom of england yes the same process basically happens when the vikings attack because because they they smash they smash up um northumbria as you'll know from burner cornwall yes and and basically bambra is the kind of only survivor. It's kind of semi-independent.

They attack and sack the fortress of Dumbarton. So the kingdom of the Britons is, I mean, it's patched together, but it's a shadow of its former self. That's Trask Live, isn't it? Yes. And there's a battle in which an alliance of the Dariardans, so the Scottish and the Pictish kings, are attacked by the Vikings

and kill both the kings of Pictland and Dalriarda. And I was reading a history of early medieval Scotland and it's an absolutely classic kind of sentence of the kind that you get in histories of early medieval Scotland. And it said, this is one of the most decisive battles in british history however we have no idea when it was fought or where right or who was killed yeah to even know so we don't even know the names of the king right but basically all right story so

all of these kingdoms either get kind of smashed to pieces or decapitated yeah and out of this carnage yeah there emerges a shadowy figure um please tell me this is my birth no no it's a guy called kenaid mcalpin who is commemorated as kenneth mcalpin yeah and this inaugurates a wave of people called kenneth and malcolm it does we're hundreds of years away from at this point right uh yeah so we're about 870 so we're hundreds of years away from a Beth at this point, right? Yeah, so we're about 870. So we're about 100 years, 120 years from his birth. Okay, but we're getting there. We're getting there. Because the thing about the thing about Kenneth McAlpin, yeah, is that he establishes a line of kings. But also, he seems to have fused the Dalriada and the Pictish traditions.

So people debate whether he was a Pict who spoke Gaelic, whether he was a Gael who kind of had married into the Picts. I mean, it's unconfusing. But basically he's able to... So he's either a Pict who spoke Gaelic or a Gael who spoke Pictish. He doesn't speak Pictish. He definitely doesn't speak Pictish because the significant thing that happens

is that over the course of the century that follows, Pictish starts to vanish. Okay, let's not get into Pictish okay he definitely doesn't speak Pictish because because the significant thing that happens is that over the course of the century that follows Pictish starts to vanish okay let's not get into Pictish no I know but but but the tradition the tradition that comes to be told is that the Gaels had conquered the Picts and kind of wiped them out which is why Pictish again this is this is a kind of back projection of what seems to happen which is that there is a kind of pooling of Pictish and Dariadan identities and interests the kings who who follow Kenneth MacAlpine yeah most of whom are called either Malcolm or Kenneth very very confusingly they're able to establish this kind of kingdom that that that combines the best of the Pictish and and the Scottish traditions but because it's it's uh it's Gaelic speaking

yeah it comes to be known as Alba which is the Gaelic for the whole of Great Britain but it comes to be particularly associated related to Albion yes so initially so it's Alba is the kind of Gaelic version of Albion yeah uh but but the kingdom of Alba comes to be this this Dalriard and Pictish um okay so so that's what's going on then over the course of the 9th century obviously you have the the English state emerging and becoming increasingly powerful um so you have Athelstan for instance yeah who launches an invasion to impose English supremacy on it and becomes emperor of all Britain becomes emperor of all Britain uh but the but that his successors discover that they

can't basically keep a hold on the northern reaches i mean not just of of britain full stop but of um you know the northern reaches of northumbria yeah um and so basically the scottish king starts to kind of annex them but it's all very incoherent it's inchoate it's not entirely clear what's what this is not in any way stable yeah and a crucial complication here which is a kind of gap in the sources and so it's quite hard it's like kind of looking for a black hole is the uppermost reaches of what had been Pictland so what is now kind of Inverness, Moray Forth that kind of region so it this had been a Pictish kingdom called fortry you right as if we need another kingdom and it re-emerges about 150 years later as the kingdom of moray and that's macbeth's kingdom

that is macbeth's kingdom okay so i can see macbeth at the end we're we're we're in a massive tunnel but i can just about make out at the end of it so so the two the two aspects of scotland when macbeth is born in about a thousand a.d yeah they have to be born in mind which are subsequently kind of overwritten and and reconfigured are firstly the kingdom of alba of scotland does not yet correspond to scotland as it is now because because the kingdom of moray it it's you know it's a co-kingdom it's a kind of sub-kingdom but it's not entirely absorbed into the kingdom of scotland and it's you know it's a co-kingdom it's a kind of sub-kingdom but it's not entirely absorbed into the kingdom of scotland and it's mainly in the highlands or yeah it's so it's around inverness

yeah uh cordor yes so all these kind of places yeah um and the other thing is that the the line of succession from kenneth mcalpin is incredibly confusing and i'm aware that everything i've said up till now is confusing. So I'm hoping the listeners won't be running off howling, their eyeballs dropping out at all this. Or just asleep. But basically there is no single accepted line of succession from it. Because under Scottish law, Gaelic law,

descendants of the great-grandfather can can inherit the throne so that means in effect that kenneth mccarpen had two sons so there are two lines of succession and they basically kind of alternate so there's no kind of primogeniture there is no are you elected by a group of nobles how's it work yeah basically right basically uh it's yes i mean if you're um you're if you're an atheling to put it in the kind of English terms yeah you are kind of worthy to to inherit and and that depends partly on whether you you know you have the right line of descent it's partly whether you're you're of military age it's partly your record it's partly your marriage it's partly how many kind of backers you have so so we have a question about this Tom yeah we can we can we can drag this back towards the questions that the listeners sent in

SHSK English says was it usual for Scottish kings to name their successors as Duncan names Malcolm? no right okay so it's not usual and this kind of plunges us into the key about what's happening with Macbeth Okay, so it's not usual. And this kind of plunges us into the key about what's happening with Macbeth and why he's such a significant figure for subsequent Scottish history.

Great, great. So early 11th century, the age of Cnut. Yes. Great, you know so england danish king england england's focus is kind of the north sea empire isn't it of canute and and all that stuff yes um 1005 yeah you have one of these classic events of early medieval scotland when kenneth the son of malcolm is killed by malcolm the son of kenneth so malcolm the son of kenneth becomes malcolm the second right um and he's the king of scotland yep he's he's a very effective player

but his first so the king of scotland this is not moray no he's the king of scotland so moray is still part we'll come to moray in a minute. But we need to get Malcolm II. So he's the King of the rest of Scotland? Yes, basically. Well, he's the King of Scotland because Moray is not yet a part of Scotland. Yeah, okay, fine. I mean, it is kind of complicated but you've just got to keep in your mind that

there is no Scotland. There is no United Scotland. Yes, it doesn't correspond to Scotland as it is now. So 1006, he attacks There is no United Scotland. There is no... Yes, it doesn't correspond to Scotland as it is now. Yeah. So 1006, he attacks Northumbria. Okay. I was dreading you were going to say Kenneth, the son of Malcolm. No, he attacks Northumbria and he gets defeated by...

I think it's the son or the nephew of the Northumbrian Earl. And do you know what he's called? Kenneth. No, he's called Uhtred. Oh, Uhtred. Very nice. All fans of Bertrand Cornwall. Very good. and do you know what he's called kenneth no he's called utrid oh utrid very nice very good um and uh the scots get the scots army gets wiped out all the nobles get um they get um beheaded the heads get taken to the um the women of bambra who braid their hair

oh nice uh and then they're each woman who braids the hair of a severed head gets a cow for her work from Utrecht. And then they're stuck on spikes around Bamburgh and Durham. So this is a kind of great victory for Northumbrian arms. And it looks like Malcolm is, you know, he's a busted flush before he's even begun. Angela Rayner would say that's just how we do things in the North. Yes, yes. Well, yes, they're treated like scum.

These poor Scottish nobles. But Malcolm is, he's a survivor and he's a canny player and he retrenches and he consolidates his power. And then in 1018, so kind of 15 years later, he invades again. And this time it's a smashing success. And this is the Battle of Carham, which effectively establishes that the River Tweed is the border between what will become Scotland and England. And the English lands of Lothian, which have been part of Northumbria, become a part of Scotland. And so this is all kind of happening on. Now, Malcolm wants to nail down his son has died, but his grandson is a guy called Duncan. We all know Duncan.

And Duncan, in turn, has two sons, Malcolm and Donald Bain. Okay, yes, this is all very familiar. So Malcolm wants to nail down Duncan as his heir, despite the fact that there are kind of alternative candidates. Yeah. heir despite the fact that there are kind of alternative candidates yeah and one of those candidates is the king of moray who is called macbeth finally okay so how old is macbeth at this point so um well so um malcolm dies in 1034 so macbeth he's probably born around a thousand so he's in his mid-30s um and he is so his grandfather was called Rory all right Rory so it's his grandfather Irish or Gaelic Gaelic Gaelic yeah yeah because they're all they're all starting to speak Gaelic by this point his father is called

Finlay he's a rather ineffectual guy who is, you know, he wants to, you know, he has ambitions to become more powerful than he is as king of Moray. But he's a bit ineffectual. Right. He gets murdered by his nephews. So Macbeth's cousins. Macbeth has to flee, probably to Ireland. Okay. Then Macbeth comes back. By this time one of it the elder of his

cousins has died but there's the younger one a guy called Giller Comgain so not Malcolm not Kenneth so this is an exciting development he gets burnt to death we don't know whether it's Macbeth who does it but perhaps it was okay I mean Macbeth stands to benefit and then Macbeth marries so Macbeth marries a woman who is a descendant of Kenneth McAlpine from the opposite line from the one that Malcolm II has come from so that gives him a bit of a bit of a claim right it does so he's now secure on the throne of Moray yeah and he's married this woman yeah who becomes Lady Maceth. And do you know her name? Sheila. Gruwok.

Gruwok. Okay. Gruwok. And she has a son, Lulak. So what language is this? This is Gaelic. Okay, that's Gaelic as well. So there's always, from the play, there's always this famous question.

How many children did Lady Macbeth have? Yeah. Because she describes having babies, but then she says she has no you know yes they have no children yeah but actually they have one they have this this lulok lulok lulok lady macbeth does so he this becomes macbeth's foster son so macbeth is an obvious candidate for those who are opposed to duncan yeah and duncan unlike Duncan, unlike in Shakespeare's play, is not a kind of wise old guy with a long white beard. He's a rather rash, hot-tempered guy, again, in his mid-30s, same age pretty much as Macbeth.

And he decides that he's going to launch a pre-emptive strike against Macbeth because he can see that that um Macbeth is consolidating his power in Moray uh Duncan doesn't really want a bit of this you know so he invades Macbeth goes out to meet him kills Duncan in battle and so Macbeth is then the only candidate to become king and becomes king so Macbeth has been very hard done by at this judging so far. I mean, he hasn't behaved badly at all. Well, apart from burning his uncle, his cousin to death, perhaps.

But that's the context of general bad behaviour, I would say. Yes, yes. I mean, that's kind of very much par for the course of what's going on. So he's not Richard III. He doesn't stand out to people at the time. No, not at all.

As tyrannical. Absolutely not. No, not at all. So then he's not toppled straight away. No, not at all. As tyrannical. Absolutely not. No, not at all. So then he's not toppled straight away. No, no, no. He's 14 years or something. No. So he becomes king in 1040.

Yeah. And Duncan's sons, Malcolm and Donald Bain, flee, as they do in the play. In the play, they go to England. Probably they go to Orkney, which is a kind of further complicating factor because orkney is norse is viking okay so that's a kind of further yeah you know let's not get into the game yeah no we won't we won't and macbeth um rules very very successfully and so you know i said he goes to rome so he and grew up go to r Rome and they kind of issue charters handing out their land and things before they go. And, you know, this is the oldest named chart.

This is the oldest charter naming a queen of Scotland. It's Lady Macbeth. I mean, it's kind of amazing. It is amazing. Yeah, it's absolutely brilliant. So he so he could not have gone to on pilgrimage to Rome. And he could do that because he was a great and famous king, incredibly powerful. Yeah.

Nobody, you know, was going to challenge his authority while he was away. So the fact that Macbeth can do the same is a tribute to, you know, how firmly rooted. Does no revolt or anything like that? Yes, absolutely. So this is kind of basically, he's establishing an entire new dynasty. Yeah. The dynasty of Moray. Basically, the dynasty of Kenneth McAlpine has been parked

and you could see that, you know, if they'd had children, if Lulac in turn had his children, that this would set Scotland

on a kind of completely new dynastic course. Yeah. However, that is not what happens. Do we have time? Will you get through this

before the break? Yes, I will. How much time have I got? I don't know, you've got a few minutes. Okay, this is very Rachel Morley. So, 1054, the English invade again. So it was the English, wasn't it? Well, it isn't always, because actually the English haven't been invading very much.

So this is the first invasion since Athelstan's invasion, about 100 years, you know, over 100 years before. Yeah. And it's not entirely an English invasion because by this point, the Earl of Northumbria is a Scandinavian, Earl Seward. Right, yes, yes.

And he's married Uhtred's granddaughter. And basically he's invading Scotland just for the fun of it because he's a Scandinavian warlord and because he can. So he goes and he crosses the Firth of Forth, struck up into the highlands. Macbeth, it seems, was aiming for a hill fort called Dunsinane.

But he doesn't fight there. He gets kind of cornered. And there's an incredibly brutal battle on the feast day of the seven sleepers of Ephesus. Christians who went to sleep during persecution and wake up a century later and everything's great so this is known as the battle of the seven sleepers Macbeth ends up losing so he has to kind of flee but Seward it's bad for him too because his son and heir dies in the battle which again is kind of mentioned in the play yes but but unlike

in the play Macbeth is not finished you know he's able to kind of fight on because he is kind of mentioned in the play yes but but unlike in the play Macbeth is not finished you know he's able to kind of fight on because he's kind of doing the classic guerrilla tactics of retreating up into the highlands that you know people have always done in Scotland and the following year Seward dies of dysentery which is a kind of bad way for a viking warlord to go occupational hazard when you're leading armies in um medieval period but things but but obviously macbeth's prestige and stability of his his reign have been severely knocked yeah and so uh he has you know this kind of threatening figure of malcolm the son of duncan hovering in the background who's in alliance with the with the nor Orkney. And the Norse of Orkney attack in 1057, and Lulac is slain.

Actually, by this point, Macbeth has retired and gone to a monastery. Oh, right. So Lulac is kind of, yes, yes. So Lulac is kind of ready to become king, but gets killed, I think, treacherously. The implication is in kind of, you know, he goes to negotiations and gets stabbed,

kind of very Game of Thrones style. to negotiations and gets stabbed. Yeah. Kind of very Game of Thrones style. Yeah. So Macbeth comes out of retirement, meets with Malcolm and is defeated and Malcolm becomes king. But again, it's the measure of the respect in which Macbeth is held that,

unlike in the play where, you know, Macbeth's body and that of Lady Macbeth are exposed to kind of be a wonder and a horror to the Scots, Macbeth is given a very honourable burial on the Isle of Iona, which is the traditional burial place for the Kings of Scotland.

So he's laid to rest there. But obviously his, you know, his dynasty is finished and the dynasty of Kenneth MacAlpine has returned to the throne. And this essentially establishes the kind of the myth that Kenneth McAlpine was the undisputed founder of Scottish royalty and that there is this continuous line that can be traced. And that Macbeth is a usurper.

And this obviously becomes incredibly important during the 13th and 14th century in the war with England, when England is trying to annex the Scottish kingdom. Because the kings of Scotland need to assert the fact that they have a kind of a lineage that is as straight and clear and distinguished as the English one yeah and Macbeth simply doesn't fit into this story so he has to be cast as a usurper great so Macbeth has lived and died that was the real Macbeth and now we'll take a break and then the second half the three witches all that kind of stuff. So we'll see you after the break. and on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com. A drum, a drum, the rest is history. The second part doth come. That's terrible, isn't it? That's absolutely shocker. That's great. I think you should do that every time. Yes.

So we're talking about Macbeth. In the first half, we've plunged into the absolute bog that is early medieval Scotland. And we've now dragged ourselves out of that bog. Well, you were in that bog. Yeah, I was in that bog. You were just kind of watching, offering questions scoffers laughing laughing um so basically we've we've established the reason why um macbeth is kind of transformed into this figure of a usurper yes um and uh by the 16th century when ralph hollinshead the great chronicler not just of

england but of scotland and ireland is doing his his chronicle um macbeth the story of macbeth with the the three weird sisters and banquo and macduff and all that kind of stuff it's it's there as history yes um and dominic we we have a question here uh from barry grogan if james the first of eng, the sixth of Scotland, wasn't king, would Shakespeare have ever written Macbeth? It appears to be somewhat of a Scottish story for the newish Scottish king of England. So what is the context for Shakespeare

deciding to pick up on this story that he's found in Holland's Chronicle and running with it? Well, I think, I don't know whether you'll disagree with this or not, but I think there's no possibility he would have written Macbeth had it not been for James becoming king. I mean, I suppose there's an outside possibility, but it's deliberately written for a new Stuart king. So to give the context here, Elizabeth I has died in 1603 and James VI of Scotland has become the first Scottish king to rule England as well. So there's this sort of... The Anglo-Scottish stuff is in the ether.

There's a lot of anxiety. It's an incredibly paranoid time anyway, as everybody knows, you know, fears of plots and so on. Now, the Gunpowder Plot plays a huge part... Yes, so Macbeth is written and comes out in 1606. That's when we think it was first performed. So I don't want to go down yet another rabbit hole. OK, and the gunpowder plot is yet another okay but the gunpowder plot is 1605 yes so it's absolutely written in the shadow of that

so that's what we think so basically Shakespeare and his company they end up becoming the king's men they have the patronage of James which obviously you want if you're a theatrical company company um james believes that he is descended from banquo so banquo is in the the holland's head chronicles in 1577 but he's macbeth's collaborator so shakespeare changes banquo's character so banquo becomes the voice of virtue you know horrified by macbeth's crimes the ghost of the feast and all that stuff and And Fleeance's son escapes. Exactly. To become the forefather of Mary, Queen of Scots and James. Precisely.

So it's a bit of, it's clearly flattering James in that sense. The gunpowder plot stuff is absolutely fascinating. So this is what helps us to date it because Shakespearean historians have sort of, you know, it's all very unclear with Shakespeare. When some plays were written, who wrote, you know, Shakespeare and a collaborator or what um and when they were performed but we are pretty sure that this is written and performed after the gunpowder plot because there is a whole scene in which the porter who is there for comic relief gives this speech in

which he is mocking basically the speech that a Jesuituit called henry garnett gave at his trial after the gunpowder plot so garnett relied upon a defense called equivocation you'll know much more about me than well he writes the pamphlet but he writes the pamphlet about it doesn't he and and and um uh james again remind me what it is it's a well doctrine of so equivocation up until 1605 basically means something that's ambiguous yeah so it's you know it's it's something that could be one thing or the other but after this pamphlet is found and and um garnett is the uh i mean he's the kind of jesuit superior in england so he's top jesuit uh and he he he was very against the gunpowder plot but he'd been told about it but he'd'd been told about it under the law of confession.

He couldn't reveal it. But he kind of writes to his superiors in Rome and says, please do what you can, pull strings to try and stop this from going ahead. But it does go ahead. And so obviously he is absolutely in the firing line. So he gets arrested. And the agents who arrest him discover this pamphlet in which he's written

about equivocation being justified um and and and the the way that garnett uses equivocation is basically that you say one thing meaning the other so that you you won't get in trouble for catholics so it's a way for catholics to practice their faith without kind of drawing attention to themselves but this is incredibly controversial. Everybody mocks it and says this is terrible, weasley behaviour. And he gets executed. He gets executed.

And so we know I think he's executed or he uses the equivocation defence, saying one thing and thinking another or whatever, in March 1606. And then the porter's speech in the play the porter was mocking equivocation I think or talking about it so Faith here's an equivocator that could swear

in both the scales against either scale who committed treason enough for God's sake yet could not equivocate in heaven so basically everybody thinks right 1606 it must be done in reaction to that because it's in the air. But generally, obviously, you've had the gunpowder plot, the attempt to kill the king.

You know, Macbeth is a play about killing a king. So it's kind of there. And it's in the context of there have been gazillions of plots against Elizabeth I and against James in Scotland and again in England. So it sort of feels very timely. And of course, there's one other element, which we'll probably come to now. Yeah, so we've got John Liddle. Is the role of witchcraft in Macbeth reflective of contemporaneous beliefs

or is a Shakespearean era addition? So I guess by that, I mean, you know, is it something that comes from the 11th century? Let's not go back to the 11th century. But no, it's fine, Dominic, because it isn't. Because it's absolutely expressive of the witch craze, but specifically of James. So James, such a strange thing.

We talked about James I in this podcast before. A fancy for courtiers with long legs, tongue too big for his mouth, slobbering, wisest fool in Christendom, all of this stuff. But the weirdest thing about him, I think, is this obsession with with witches so he writes a thing called demonology 1597 where he talks about demons

vampires werewolves and witches above all and you know why you I'm sure you do know because he believes he's he's been targeted by witches so this really weird thing he sailed over to copenhagen to get anne of denmark his wife and it was very stormy and when he got there there was all these storms and the danes said oh this is undoubtedly the work of witches because the danes are obsessed with witches too the great trier witch trials in germany were taking place so the danes had heard about this they're very excited about witches james who's clearly a bit of a you know james loves a conspiracy theory and he's just interested in the occult and all this kind of stuff he says oh yes i probably have have been the target of of witches he gets back and um they have all these witch trials the north berwick witch trials and he's trying to round up now what's

unclear is he really wants people to find that the third Earl of Bothwell is chief witch and is orchestrating this because the Earl of Bothwell is his great enemy and has been plotting against him. So they're constantly kind of interrogating his women and saying, have you been consorting with the Earl of Bothwell and Satan and plotting against me?

So all these women, lots of people are killed. It's a terrible story. And James writes at length in this book, Demonology. And in Demonology, it talks about the witch trials. So the really fascinating thing is that James is obviously

completely obsessed with conspiracism plots, understandably, because he's been the attempted target of them. He's obsessed with witches. And Shakespeare takes some of the stuff from James's own book and puts it in the play he does but just just to complicate the story somewhat um

august 1605 so if macbeth is written in 1606 yeah kind of year before there's plague in london yeah so there's a lockdown um and james goes goes to Oxford to sit out the plague. And as he rides into Oxford, he's met by three young men dressed as nymphs. And these three young men in Latin hail him kind of along the lines of, you know, hail James of scotland hail james king of great britain and so on um and this is written by a guy called matthew gwynn who's who's a kind of very scholarly playwright who's taken it from holland's head and he's taken the the uh they're not called witches in holland's head the three women who who hail macbeth um it's interesting so he they're called i think weird women yeah that kind of thing um and so people have obviously kind of thought

well you know is this is this an influence and almost certainly i mean it seemed it seems impossible that it wasn't um i mean, you know, Shakespeare might have... How would Shakespeare know about it? Well, so he's not in London at the time, so maybe he was in Oxford as well. We don't know. I mean, you know, he's King's Men. Or maybe he heard about it. At this moment with the three nymphs, this has been scripted and it's kind of a big public... Yeah, so it's a big kind of public mask.

So Shakespeare could have been, yeah, watching. Yeah, so he could have watched it. I mean, I think the consensus is that he wasn't there, but he would obviously have heard about it. And if he's researching Macbeth, then definitely he would have heard about it. And if he'd seen that James loved this, then he'd think he'd put it in. But obviously the three weird sisters

are much more menacing and dangerous. Well, they're equivocal. I mean, they're equivocate. You know, Macbeth talks about the equivocating fiend. And I think that one of the things that also reflects that the gunpowder plot is the sense that the people in Protestant England absolutely have was that this was the work of the devil and that therefore kind of the the process of plotting against the king you know it must come from kind of you know the evil of human nature which is

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth but it also somehow comes from a kind of darkness that is more hellish and more infernal than just human nature and that's kind of I mean that that's the essence of the play isn't it it's the fusion of personal evil yeah and a kind of supernatural darkness but is it kind of personal evil though you know Shakespeare was writing this at about the same time i mean give or take a year as anthony and cleopatra and and there's a similar kind of you know anthony and cleopatra gets a lot of that from plutarch there's a kind of nobility to anthony and cleopatra that is undone tragically their ambition leads them astray and stuff there's a bit of that in macbeth and lady macbeth yeah they're not pure evil no they're not but that's but that's the tragedy isn't it that macbeth is a kind of great man who's yeah who's who's won a great battle and who is given you

know all kinds of titles um and lady mcbeth is clearly a kind of very powerful figure yeah great hostess yes right well i can't you know brilliant clams what could be more fun than staying there but but they they take this step and from that point on it's it's downward i mean they that's the essence of the what is fascinating actually macbeth is very short so my breath is about half as long as hamlet i think and um some shakespearean scholars say you know macbeth and lady macbeth leaked by shakespearean standards very quickly from thought to deed and their motivation is not always entirely clear and some shakespearean scholars think that the text that we have is a fragment of the original

macbeth and that what we have basically is a prompt script so a script that was sort of hanging around um for the actors but is not the definitive i mean as insofar as shakespeare ever did definitive texts but there is a bigger macbeth there there is a kind of Ur-Macbeth, in which the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are more fleshed out. People doing GCSE English must be quite relieved. They must be, yes, I suppose that's true. But, of course, I mean, you know, whether that's true or not, it's a play that becomes so famous.

You know who's a big fan of Macbeth? Who? Samuel Pepys. I didn't know that. Pepys, in his diaries, goes to see it. I think he goes about a dozen times. He'll often just say, you know, I went again to see Macbeth.

Brilliant. Loved it. What do you think the appeal was? Well, what is the appeal of Macbeth? I mean, the appeal of Macbeth is it's very action heavy for a Shakespearean play. I think the supernatural is absolutely part of it. The idea of killing a king is obviously fascinating, particularly, I mean, we live in an age of, you know, we live in an age of assassinations anyway, as did they. Yes. The idea of killing... Well, so they don't show the death of Duncan on stage.

Yeah. Which is unusual and may well, I guess, reflect sensitivities. Yes, I'm sure. Showing a Scottish king being murdered on stage. I'm sure.

Not a good thing. I mean, you think about James I, James VI of Scotland and the experience of his mother. I mean, his mother executed... Okay, so we've got a question here from SO3 Clausewitz,

friend of the show. To what extent has Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth coloured subsequent perceptions of ambitious and powerful women? What, if any, impact did this portrayal have on the attitudes of contemporary audiences to their recently Tudor queens Mary and Elizabeth? I don't know the answer to that. I'd have thought Shakespeare would have been straying into dangerous waters there, but I guess there's a kind of... The idea of the powerful woman, obviously, is on people's minds in a way that it wouldn't have been 100 years earlier, right? I mean, Henry VIII broke with Rome

because he believed no woman could rule England unchallenged. Then two women do. And then the great other glamorous kind of heroine of the second half of the 16th century, Mary, Queen of Scots, is James's mother, and she's involved in a billion plots, and she's executed. So it kind of makes sense that it's in the ether as a character. So it's an incredibly political

play yeah it's a very political play and i think i do think the lady macbeth and yeah i mean the obvious model for her i think is cleopatra the idea that i did that the romans had of the sort of demonic monstrous woman crazed with ambition who drives the noble man this noble general but he's got one factor for it, he's weak he's basically he's henpecked and drags him down

and what's interesting is that that archetype has endured ever since so Lady Macbeth Hillary Clinton was a Lady Macbeth figure for Bill Clinton people said in the 1990s cherie blair and now you know i've seen it you know lots of times um boris johnson's wife now carrie is described as lady mcbeth the power behind the throne she got him to sack sajid javid as chancellor all this kind of thing i mean this is the classic yeah thing that political

women have to have to endure that they if you know that they're working behind the scenes in this conspiratorial kind of spider's web yes way yes um so um you mentioned um the uh the bust up uh in new york yes are there other you but you also at the top of the show said that you were going to unleash. I was, I've got, I've got other performances of Macbeth at my sleeve. Okay. So what have you got for us?

So if I was going to go back and see one production of Macbeth, it would be the so-called Voodoo Macbeth. Do you know the Voodoo Macbeth? No. So this was done by Orson Welles in 1936. I mean, Orson Welles, as many listeners will know,

was sort of making great films and plays when he was about four and he was twenty I think when he made this so is this before

after the war of the worlds on the radio that gets everyone I think it might actually be before I think it's a couple of years before and it's part of

the federal theatre project which is this big kind of new deal kind of social democratic programme and he does it in Harlem. He puts on a production of Macbeth in Harlem.

And he says he wants to set it in Haiti. So Macbeth is a kind of slave king who's taken power. He has a black cast, 150 people. So it's Duncan White? No, they're all black. They're all black. They're all black. And at first, the local Communist Party, very big in Harlem,

protests against it and says, no, he's exploiting black labour. He's going to show black people in a bad light and it's sort of making fun of black people. But actually, after the first night, it's a tremendous success. And you can see online, listeners can look it up, amazing photos of Harlem basically gridlocked, people desperate to get into it.

God, how brilliant to have that when you're 20. You're a 20-year-old director. It's a landmark play, The Voodoo Macbeth. I mean, obviously, you probably couldn't really do it now. It would be cancelled for some. But, no, that's a...

And there's also another 1930s sort of related Macbeth production which is interesting so Shostakovich's Dmitri Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Matsensk so there's a 19th century novel taking the Macbeth story

and setting it in kind of Russia this opera which Shostakovich regards as a great work this is the work that Stalin goes to see and he doesn't like it because he doesn't like it's avant-garde music and he walks out so he's a massive conservative he is a massive well artistically Stalin's incredibly conservative but also Stalin likes kind of Shakespeare and he likes you know this kind of stuff so he's a he's

appalled by Shostakovich's opera and afterwards Pravda condemns Shostakovich Shostakovich is in fear for writing writing modernist rubbish modernist rubbish and Shostakovich's opera. And afterwards Pravda condemns Shostakovich. Shostakovich is in fear of his life. For writing modernist rubbish. Modernist rubbish. And Shostakovich then goes back and ends up writing, I think it's his Fifth Symphony, much more kind of traditional music that Stalin likes. So that's another interesting production. I have one more Macbeth story, actually.

It's on my sleeve. So about 20-odd years ago, I once did a play at the Edinburgh Festival did you? about it was Jean-Anne Weese played Beckett

about Thomas Beckett having heard the way you read opening lines and what people don't know is that it took Dominic about 10 goes to do that because he kept corpsing

yeah I did or I was doing various Scottish accents so I played Beckett in this play got I think two stars and the Scotsman had a five. Okay. And once we'd done it,

sort of student play, we never spoke of it again. Then many years later, I got a random phone call when I was about to start doing my PhD and it was the director of this play. And he said, I am about to take a production to America of um of macbeth and we've got stilt

walkers it's a huge thing we've got lots of money and one of the actors has dropped out the last minute and basically i'm utterly desperate we're leaving on monday we'll be gone for six months touring america which could you join the production and i said well who would i be playing and he said said, Macbeth. Oh, Dominic. And I didn't do it. Now, here's the thing. You turned it down.

Now, here's the thing. That man went on to direct Paddington and Paddington 2. Oh, Dominic. So if I'd only played my cards right, I would have been Paddington, and you'd be doing this with Ben Whishaw. Hollywood's Dominic Sandbrook. Yeah.

Well, I mean, having heard you read, do you want to just do it with a Scottish accent? Because it's... My Scottish accent is shocking. No, but go on. What rhubarb senna or what purgative drug will scour these English ends? Well, so that, I think, leads us on very neatly to the idea that Macbeth is

a cursed play. So we've got lots had loads of questions about that so Julian Lennock speaking for many many others what is the story behind the play being cursed uh Julian's mum is an actress and only refers to it as she's Chilean and spits and knocks on wood if you say its name but don't people walk around the theater and they turn around three times and something like that you have to swear or something she's Chilean and spits and knocks on wood if you say its name but don't people walk around the theatre and they turn around three times

and have to swear or something something like that so I read online and doing my intensive research that this is because provincial plays

used to put on Macbeth when they were running out of money that's what it says in Wikipedia yeah not true according to you

well so I'm drawing on James Shapiro okay he's probably a more authoritative who i think i think must have written about the bust up in new york because he wrote a whole book about american reactions to shakespeare which i haven't read but i have read his book on 1606 the year of king lear yeah which is also the year of macbeth and he writes loads about macbeth so i i checked

it and he says that um the origins of this curse is as late as the um it's the end of the 19th century and it originates with max beer boom who's writing a review of a play and he just for fun he makes up a story that he attributes to john aubrey the um the 17th century brief lives brief lives guy who actually lived in broadsville the village where i grew up so we're very proud of him anyway so he fabricates a story which he attributes to John Aubrey. But the boy who was playing Lady Macbeth gets sick. Yeah. And so Shakespeare himself has to step in to play Lady Macbeth.

And obviously Shakespeare has a beard. You know, he's bald. He's unconvincing. He's unconvincing he's unconvincing um and uh so this is the origins of the curse well that's it that's that's not much of a curse yes it's it's um it's and and that's where that's apparently where it begins that's where the story begins from but there well but obviously he's going with the grain of the fact that that are all these witches and devils and the smoke of thunder. Well, you're quoting James Shapiro's version. The version I read came from Sir Donald Sinden.

Yeah, well, I'd back James Shapiro. Sir Donald Sinden. Sir Donald Sinden any time. So I reckon that's it. And I reckon we've done Macbeth now, haven't we? We have. I think that world of Scottish politics in the Middle Ages, I mean, you're welcome to return to it at your leisure. It is interesting, though, don't you think?

I think it is interesting. It is, you know, for the whole future of the United Kingdom. And the fact that it kind of, you know, the idea of Scotland begins in such a kind of complex, tortuous, twisted way. And it's exactly the same with English identity. Of course it is. Of all national identities. I mean, I think that Scottish identity is kind of weaker than English identity for quite a while. And it's really the English invasions that really consolidates it and kind of prompts the construction of this backstory, which basically shunts Paul Macbeth to one side.

Yes, it's weird, isn't it? Macbeth is probably the single best known. Do you think it's the best known or sort of artistic depiction of Scottishness over the centuries? It's certainly the most famous depiction of a Scottish king, isn't it? Yeah.

Other than Braveheart, which I know you're... I think it's more famous than Braveheart. Yeah, let's hope so anyway. Anyway, I think that's enough Macbethery. It is. So we will say goodbye. And what are we doing next? I can't remember.

Oh, we've got Mary Beard talking about classics. Yes, very exciting. Coming on Thursday. Yeah. So Beard talking about classics. Yes. Very exciting. Coming on Thursday. Yeah. So we will see you then. Goodbye. Thanks for listening to the Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.