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Holinshed simply says that Macbeth, with the support of Banquo and others, slew Duncan at Inverness or other place which has never really been identified. Shakespeare picked Inverness for
the deathblow, but he was almost certainly wrong. John of Fordun, writing about 1385, says that Duncan was mortally wounded at Bothgofname and was taken to Elgin, where he died. Bothgofname - meaning 'hut of the
blacksmith' in Gaelic - could be a number of places. Macbeths wife is not linked with this killing. It was Shakespeare who introduced her as a spur and fellow conspirator, and invented a murder that copied the killing
of Duff, an earlier king he had noticed in Holinshed. King Duff, history says, met his end at the castle of Forres. The killing was arranged by his host the captain, urged on by the lady, his hosts wife. Befuddled with
drink, the royal chamberlains were blamed for it afterwards. All this Shakespeare transferred to Macbeths time. Then he wrote a new role for Macbeths wife, his imagination fired by another reference in Holinshed.
According to this, Macbeths wife lay sore upon him to attempt to usurp the kingdom, as he was very ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire to bear the name of a queen. In fact, Holinshed lifted that reference himself,
from a romantic history written about 50 years earlier by Hector Boece, who seems to have invented the lady's fit of ambition, since previous writers say nothing of it. Alas for Shakespeare, Macbeths wife
appears to have been a loyal and blameless lady. From a previous marriage, she brought him a stepson, Lulach, whom Macbeth seems to have cherished, and who was crowned king after Macbeth, before being killed in
his turn. Nor was she ever called Lady Macbeth. Macbeth, meaning 'Son of Life', or 'of the Elect', is not a surname. The kings wife would have been addressed as the lady Gruoch in Gaelic. The name is recorded in
Fife, where she and her husband are said to have gifted land to the Celtic monks of St Serf's Island, Loch Leven. And what about the witches? Holinshed had already written about three women 'in strange and wild
apparel', who promised Macbeth the thanedoms of Cawdor and Glamis as well as the throne; and who informed Banquo that his heirs, not Macbeth's, would rule Scotland. The prophecies , according to Holinshed, drove Macbeth
to think of taking the throne, and later to kill his friend Banquo. Developing this Shakespeare turned the woman into the secret, black and midnight hags of the kind King James I, his patron, had written about in his
volume 'Daemonologie'. And so were created the chanting crones with their cauldron who have become attached to the tale of Macbeth, adding to its superstitious horror and poignancy.The earliest known Scottish history
of Macbeths reign says nothing of witches. They only enter the story in a popular chronicle, 'The Orygnale Cronykil of Scotland'. Written by Andrew of Wyntoun, Prior of St Serfs, some 350 years after, this mentions
'weird sisters' who offer Macbeth the crown, but quite different honours. Hence the present castles of Glamis and Cawdor have no connection at all with this part of Macbeth's story - indeed, there were no stone castles
in mid 11th century Scotland; only halls and fortifications of wood. Nor can the 'blasted heath' and the 'witches stone' beside Forres be anything but inventions provoked by the legend. If there were no prophecies, and
no evil 'Lady Macbeth', why did Macbeth kill Duncan and Banquo, if not to seize the throne and prevent Banquo from founding a royal line?. To begin with, Macbeth did not kill Banquo because Banquo did not exist. The
invention of Banquo began, not with Shakespeare, but with Hector Boece, who produced Banquo and his son Fleance from nowhere. By linking Fleance with Wales and the ancestors of the Stewarts, Boece managed to eliminate
the Stewart's connections with the archbishop of Dol in Brittany - a tender point at time when relations between the kings of France and Scotland were bad. The creation of Banquo served another purpose. It
disguised the fact that the line was founded by Duncan sprang from an unorthodox marriage. Crinan, father of Duncan, was not only abbot of Dunkeld but very probably connected with the minting of money. It was even
possible that he and Bethoc, Duncan's mother, had had several partners in marriage By the time Boece was writing, a much married clergyman, who was also a professional moneyer, was the last person a king would want to
claim as a forebear. (Indeed, so worried by this was one later historian, that he took the risk of proclaiming that Duncan's son Malcolm was a bastard).  |
