Macbeth
 Written sometime around 1606 to commemorate King
James I’s ascension to King of England and unification
of the Scottish and English crowns.
 Shakespeare based the story on Holinshed's Chronicles
and it’s account of Scottish History and set the play in
11th Century Scotland.
Inverness, Scotland
Inverness Castle
King James I of England
and James VI of Scotland
King James I of England
 Received rule of Scotland as James VI from 1567-1625
when his mother, Mary Queen of Scots (daughter of
Elizabeth’s cousin, King James V of Scotland) was
removed from the throne by Protestant rebels. He was
one year old.
 Claimed the English throne when Queen Elizabeth I
died in 1603, unmarried and heirless.
 Claimed succession as the great-grandson of Margaret
Tudor, Henry VIII’s older sister.
James I & The Supernatural
 Married Anne of Denmark in 1589.
 Her voyage to Scotland was halted by severe storms
that the captain deemed unnatural in the way they
singled out the ship.
 The captain made the proclamation that the storms
must have been caused by witchcraft.
Anne of Denmark
King James in Love <3 <3
 In a fit of love, James decided to sail to Denmark
himself to retrieve his new queen.
 They were married in Copenhagen and spent six
months there before returning to Scotland in May of
1590.
 Once again, severe storms that seemed aimed at the
ship plagued the journey they were nearly sunk off of
the coast of Scotland.
 There could be only one explanation . . .
Witchcraft!
 The matter was investigated and it was found that a
large number of witches (reports vary from 38 to 600)
had gathered at North Berwick Kirk in Scotland under
the leadership of James’s political enemy and first
cousin Lord Bothwell during the time of the unusual
storms.
 Satan himself alledgedly presided from the altar in the
embodiment of Bothwell.
 Witnesses testified (under torture) that
Satan/Bothwell had bid them to use their magical
powers to murder the King.
Daemonologie
 In 1597 King James published Daemonologie in
response to, “the fearful aboundinge at this time in this
countrie, of theses detestable slaves of the Devill, the
Witches or enchaunters.”
 Goals of the book: 1.) to prove the reality of witches
and witchcraft against the doubts of skeptics.
 2.) to show what severe punishment witches and other
magical operators merit.
A Not So Blasted Heath . . .
Forres, Home of Witches . . .
A Real Witch From Forres!
Remember, Remember the fifth of
November!
 The Gunpowder Plot was a plan to assassinate King
James I by blowing up the House of Lords on
November 5, 1605.
 The plan was a conspiracy including, among others,
Guy Fawkes. Burning Guy Fawkes in effigy was the
origin of the Guy Fawkes day bonfires that are still
celebrated in Great Britain.
Equivocation & Mental Reservation
 Equivocation is the misleading use of a term with more
than one meaning or sense (by glossing over which
meaning is intended at a particular time).
 Mental reservation is a form of deception which is not
an outright lie. It was argued for in moral theology as a
way to fulfill obligations both to tell the truth and to
keep secrets from those not entitled to know them (for
example, because of the seal of the confessional or
other clauses of confidentiality).
Equivocation & Mental Reservation
 In wide mental reservation, equivocations are used
to imply an untruth that is not actually stated.
 In strict mental reservation, the speaker mentally
adds some qualification to the words which he utters,
and the words together with the mental qualification
make a true assertion in accordance with fact.
The Great Equivocator
 Father Henry Garnet, a Jesuit priest known for his
publications on equivocation and mental reservation
allegedly learned of the plot through confession
 Anti-Catholic legislation introduced after the
discovery of the plot eliminated the protection of the
confidentiality of confession in matters threatening
the crown.
 Garnet was tried and naturally equivocated during the
trial.
 It didn’t help and on May 6, 1606 he was executed.
The Stuart Legacy
 Fleance, the son of Banquo is, according to
Hollinshed’s Chronicles escaped Macbeth and became
steward to the king of Scotland.
 His later descendents began the Stuart line of kings
from which James was descended.