The real story behind the ‘Macbeth Shakespeare

The last movie adaptation of ‘Macbeth’ is now in our billboards. Therefore, I will take the opportunity to explain what’s true in Shakespeare’s tragedy.

It is common knowledge that there’s great literary works inspired by events that happened really, and not because it is true the notion that reality is always stranger than fiction, unverifiable. There she blows history href=”https://hipertextual.com/analisis/in-the-heart-of-the-sea” whaler Essex, from the island Nantucket in Massachusetts, which was sunk by a sperm whale in 1820, and another whale, albino in this case, that was about the Chilean island of Mocha in 1839 and was known as Mocha Dick; with his own experience as a whaler, both they inspired Herman Melville to write his mythical novel, Moby Dick (1851). Or where, centuries earlier, to produce nothing less than Macbeth (c. 1606). Let me tell it.

The Scottish king who inspired a tragedy

Note that what the British bard knew on Macbeth of Scotland came through the second edition of Features Raphael Holinshed English (1577) to forge King Lear (1606) and Cymbeline (1610 c.); and in turn, this historian was based on another work of dundoniano Hector Boece, History of the Scottish people (1527), written in Latin. One of the sources of Shakespeare had blurred the image of Macbeth to please his patron, King James V of Scotland

In the latter, the author had marred the image of Macbeth to please King James V of Scotland, his patron, enlarging to an alleged his ancestor, Banquo. And the funny thing is that, in the Features Holinshed and presumably the work of Boece, good old Banquo is another Macbeth accomplices in the murder of King Duncan Queen of Scots, while in Shakespeare’s tragedy, remains faithful to the King, some think that to please James IV, who was considered a descendant of Banquo, and others to bring an antithesis of Macbeth as a traitor. If you ask me, I say it may be due to two reasons, and above all, the need to be left alone to Macbeth and his wife in his murder and subsequent paranoia and unfortunately machination: a mostly literary reason; as it must be, you go.

It is clear that Shakespeare adapted the story freely, as he agreed. What really happened to Macbeth, born in the first half of XI century king of Scotland from 1040, resident Dunsinane Castle and died in August 1057, was as follows. Macbeth reestablished picto the order of succession, matrilineal, and ended the internal disorder that I had caused Duncan at home

Findlaech succeeded his father as mormaer of Moray, a provincial peerage Scottish for later destroyed in 1130 by King David I of Scotland, and after marrying her cousin Gruoch, granddaughter of Kenneth II, Dark Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare, lordship could claim the throne of the country when Malcolm II passed away; Alba, if we speak more properly, as it was as it was called the Kingdom between the death of Domnall II in 900 and Alexander III in 1286, that is, when they dominated the Gaelic elites and Norman-Scottish and not speaks only English-speaking or scottish, until the wars of independence waged by the Scots with England, which concluded with the signing of Berwick in 1357.

The fact is that Malcolm II changed the rules to the throne so that she could sit in her own grandson, Duncan I, the first victim of the Macbeth of Shakespeare. He has not been charged in her own bedroom, as in the literary tragedy, but Bothnagowan today Pitgaveny, not far from the ancient cathedral city of Elgin. Thus, re-established the order of succession of the Picts, maternal line, instead of Gaelic tanistry, and ended the internal disorder that Duncan I had caused in the country.

Macbeth pilgrimage to Rome in order to atone for his crime that way, but did not help much. Although Macbeth died the same day of the year he had liquidated Duncan I, on August 15, seventeen years later the Duke of Northumbria, called Siward, failed to overthrow him in 1046, one for whom he tried, Malcolm Canmore, he produced a series of injuries during a bout in Lumphanan, a village that is now part of what is the area of ​​Aberdeenshire, caused his death. Later, Canmore is also out of the way to Lulach I, Grouch son and stepson of the ousted monarch, and proclaimed himself king, Malcolm III of Scotland.

Macbeth he buried on the island of Iona, west of the country, who had served as a necropolis of the kings of Dalriada, escoto kingdom north of Ireland and the Scottish west coast to the middle of the ninth century, and their legitimate heirs. He had died the same day of the year in which the liquid to cheat Duncan I, on August 15. A historical coincidence that it serves as icing on the story that inspired Shakespeare, and knowing, nobody should be surprised.