Macbeth Trail Part I

For my last big birthday, I was gifted a seat at The Globe to see Macbeth, the most quoted of all the plays and well up my personal hit list.

What a great day out in perfect weather.

Macbeth wasn't in my mind at all when I went exploring along the coast of Fife to the Wemyss caves to see the Pictish rock carvings but when I climbed up to Castle Macduff on the cliff above, the ruins stirred a thought or two.

Pictish rock art

Of course, this isn't the castle of Macduff who was "from his mother's womb, untimely ripped" thus allowing him to evade the restriction of the witches' prophecy and to kill Macbeth. This is a much later edifice but looking at the ruin from the opposite hill, I thought it would be a perfect place to stage an out-door production of the Scottish play with plenty of opportunity for " exits and entrances".

Macduff Castle

This rather tenuous link started me off on a trail to visit as many of the places associated with the real Macbeth as I could manage.

Shakespeare's Macbeth is nothing like the real historical figure and the play for all its magnificent drama was written to please the newly crowned James I, fresh down the road from Edinburgh where he had been Jamie the Saxth. (VI)

Where the Bard got the idea is unknown but he was an astute business man and, no doubt, had been reading up on Scottish history looking for material to dramatise for his acting company, the King's Men and their new royal patron.

Holinshed's Chronicles, his most likely source, drew heavily on the works of Boece and Leslie where the totally fictitious Banquo first makes an appearance, designed to give the Stewart dynasty an ancient lineage.

Buchanan, that Calvanist, scholar and tutor to the young King James VI drily noted "some of our writers relate a number of fables more adapted for theatrical representation than history".

How true these words would come to be.

Dunsinane hill on the left

Dunsinane Hill seemed a good place to begin though chronologically, it comes at the end of the story.

It has the best quotes.

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

Shall come against him

High Dunsinane

At just over 1000ft,it is quite a pleasant climb with great views over Strath Tay and Angus from the summit. The extensive ramparts of the Iron Age fort are still very obvious and it is quite possible that the real Macbeth did choose to make a stand here against Malcolm Canmore and his Northumbrian allies though it certainly was not the site of a royal palace.

Iron Age ramparts probably reinforced in Macbeth's time

Macbeth wasn't killed at Dunsinane in 1054. Though defeated at the Battle of the Seven Sleepers as it was called, he retreated to his power base in Moray and reigned for another three years. The losses inflicted on Malcolm and Siward, Earl of Northumbria, including the loss of Siward's son, were such that they were not able to secure their victory until 1058 with the death of Macbeth and later, that of Lulach, his adopted son who only reigned for seven months.

To Dunsinane, it is about 16 miles from Birnam - a long way to carry a tree! It may be that the army assembled under the cover of the trees to conceal their numbers or maybe they did carry branches as a sort of camouflage making it difficult for the defenders to assess their strength.

The great wood is no more.  One mighty tree remains that might just have been a seedling in Shakespeare 's day but nothing that reaches back to Macbeth. 

The ancient trees of Birnam

Much traduced by his later biographers and by W.S., he was, by the standards of his time, a good king, a better one than Duncan who was a poor general and had suffered defeats by the Vikings of Orkney and the Northumbrians. Macbeth was Duncan's cousin not his captain, he was Mormaer of Moray and had accompanied his grandfather to the court of the great Cnut to the exclusion of Duncan.  He had as much right to the throne in that era before primogeniture was established, both cousins being grandsons of Malcolm II.  Another cousin was Thorfinn the Mighty, the viking Earl of Orkney, ruler of the Northern and Western Isles and Caithness!
Macbeth defeated Duncan in battle and was installed as king, seated on the Stone of Destiny at Scone as had all his predecessors. He reigned for seventeen years and was sufficiently secure in his kingship to go on a pilgrimage to Rome.

The Moot at Scone where the Kings of Alba were inaugurated, seated on the Stone of Destiny

I also discovered that the proper pronunciation is Dun-SIN-ane, with the stress on the second syllable as in Dunfermline or Dunvegan. Shakespeare changed it to make his verse scan in iambic pentameter.

I will not fear death and bane

Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane*

... and so it must remain!

*Act V Scene III

The next step must be north to Moray.