Macbeth is 1000 years old this year (funny, he doesn’t look a day over 900). Not the play—the actual historic king of Scotland. And, as it turns out, he wasn’t as bad a guy as Shakespeare painted him:
Historians and politicians have begun a campaign to rehabilitate Macbeth by claiming that his reputation has been unfairly maligned by William Shakespeare.
A drive to dispel the Scottish king’s image as an evil murderer, whose name has become synonymous with bad luck and superstition, has been launched in the 1,000th year since his birth.
A group of eminent historians have persuaded politicians in the Scottish Parliament to sign a motion calling for Macbeth’s achievements to be recognised.
He reigned for 17 years—quite a period of time for an early medieval Scottish king, he was a good king and fairly popular (the crops were said to have been good during his reign), he was pious or at least politically savvy (he is known to have visited Rome during the papal jubilee in 1050), and he didn’t murder Duncan in his sleep—he killed him in combat. At that time the succession of Scottish kings was determined by challenge.
Here’s what Shakespeare had to say about him:
MACDUFF
Not in the legions
Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn’d
In evils to top Macbeth.MALCOLM
I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
That has a name…Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 3
So why the smear job? It may have had something to do with the fact that the reigning monarch of England when the play was written was James I who claimed descent from Duncan and Malcolm (who succeeded Macbeth). Nothing like sucking up to the king to give your play a little oomph.
