Grade 9 Context to Macbeth You Won't Learn in School
(An extract from my Ultimate Guide to Macbeth, available on Amazon)
Was Shakespeare a Catholic?
There is a good deal of speculation that Shakespeare might have been Catholic. It was illegal to worship as a Catholic in his lifetime, but Richard Davies, the Archdeacon of Lichfield, who knew Shakespeare, wrote that Shakespeare was a Catholic. We might use this to look at the plot of Macbeth. Shakespeare creates a ‘tyrant king’ which acts as a warning of the dangers of tyranny and repression.
This explains Act IV Scene 3, which is usually heavily cut in performance (and possibly by your teacher when you read the play!) Why was it so important to Shakespeare to have Malcolm pretend to be worse than Macbeth? The whole scene is totally unnecessary to the plot – we simply need to see Macduff’s reaction to his family’s death, which sets up his grief and need for revenge.
Here’s some of what Malcolm pretends he will do as king:
“were I king,
I should cut off the nobles for their lands,
Desire his jewels and this other's house:
And my more-having would be as a sauce
To make me hunger more; that I should forge
Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,
Destroying them for wealth.”
Macbeth was written to be performed at the court of King James. He is the main audience, and then the nobles at court, not theatre goers. Therefore, we might see it as a lesson, played out in front of King James, in an effort to persuade him not to persecute Catholic families following The Gunpowder Plot. This scene is asking him not to take their lands and titles, and not use the plot as an excuse to become a violent, Machiavellian king.
Next, we might ask how much self-interest there is in this advice, if many of Shakespeare’s friends and some of his family are also Catholic.
*Learn this brilliant word. It means using clever, cunning but often dishonest methods that deceive people so that you can win power or control.
Was Shakespeare Homosexual or Bisexual?
Many critics believe that the gender swapping roles of so many of his plays, such as Twelfth Night, and his portrayal of powerful women, such as Lady Macbeth, and her demand, “unsex me here”, can be explained with Shakespeare being homosexual.
Likewise, many of his sonnets were love poems written about, and apparently to, men. It is impossible to know, but fun to speculate.
He himself had only three children, two of whom were twins. Contrast this to Shakespeare’s mother, who had six children, with no twins. This suggests a lack of a sexual relationship with Anne after their first years of marriage.
There were no more children once Shakespeare moved to London to write plays and perform in them, and even though he must have returned frequently to Stratford, having more children appears not to have been a priority for him.
Scholars have long puzzled over the significance of his will, in which he gave his considerable property to his daughter, Susanna, mentioning Anne in the will only once: “I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture”. We might argue that this distance could be explained by his homosexuality, and this would also explain why he had children so young, while still deciding on his sexual identity.
We might use this to look at the ultra-masculine behaviour of Macbeth as a warrior and see masculinity itself as his hamartia. Lady Macbeth perceives masculinity to mean “cruelty” and a lack of “remorse”. Both of these allow men to be incredibly single minded and purposeful.
“unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! …
Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall”.
Giving this view of masculinity to Lady Macbeth could be a way for Shakespeare to highlight what is wrong with his society’s view of how men should behave.
King James was Homosexual
If Shakespeare were homosexual, it might also explain the popularity of his plays with King James. James became the patron of his acting company, so Shakespeare renamed them The King’s Players, and they performed frequently at court.
King James financed the first English translation of The Bible, The King James Bible. In 1611, the year of Shakespeare’s 46th birthday, Psalm 46 has “shake” as the 46th word, and “spear” as the 46th word from the end. Many critics believe this is a coded birthday message to Shakespeare.
Macbeth as a coded message to King James
This would certainly help us assume that Macbeth might also contain coded messages to King James. Shakespeare might well have written the play to show the Court the dangers of a king who was too masculine. Part of his motive might be to persuade the Court to accept James, as an openly homosexual king.
Although homosexuality was frowned on in society, King James was quite open about his homosexual affairs. In 1617 he told The House of Lords why he was honouring his lover with the title Earl of Buckingham: “I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.”
Perhaps part of Shakespeare’s motive was to make society at Court more accepting of their new king’s sexuality. Perhaps James’s patronage of Shakespeare was partly based on their shared sexuality.
Shakespeare the Businessman, rather than an Artist
Shakespeare was also a fantastic businessman. Poems were considered the most worthy kind of literature, and no one had yet written a novel. Books were factual, mainly about history.
So, Shakespeare did not write his plays as an artist, but as a businessman. When we think of literature we imagine a writer drafting and redrafting until the final masterpiece is published. Shakespeare didn’t have time for that – the public wanted new plays quickly. You might think, Shakespeare is our most famous writer. Surely he was the most dedicated to his art?
Yes, and no. He didn’t write down the text of his plays to hand on in his will to his family – the plays were instead recreated from memory by actors in his company after Shakespeare’s death. Yes, he did publish 18 in his lifetime, but they were not big earners. He made much more money from his poetry, which were bound in book form. His plays were simply printed on folded paper, called Folios, because they were not made to last.
We can use this information to argue that Shakespeare was incredibly interested in the context of his time. His main impulse was probably to give the audience what they wanted. Whatever the concerns of the people at the time, and their worries about the politics, war and nobles of the time, would be quickly reflected in his plays.
Did Shakespeare Write to Make Money?
Several times a term, students will tell me that every writer’s purpose was to make money. Usually this is not true. Writers tend to write about a passion, often working at other jobs to make money.
But if we go back before the twentieth century, many writers did see themselves as ‘smiths’ and ‘wrights’, old Anglo Saxon words which mean maker and worker, rather than artists. They were wordsmiths and playwrights.
In Shakespeare’s London, there were 20 theatres with a population of less than 200,000. This is the size of my home town, Swindon, which has only one theatre! So theatre was 20 times more popular than it is now.
Now, a play at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford will last around 4 months. In Shakespeare’s time the play would be performed just once within two weeks. Then it would be on a rotation with loads of other plays, so it might play once every two weeks for a couple of months, or maybe a year.
No one knows for sure, but what is very clear is that plays were not an art form, they were an entertainment and Shakespeare made his money by getting bums on seats. To do that, he had to churn out new plays. So in Shakespeare’s case, his purpose really was to make money.
This is still a pretty dumb answer in an essay though. The trick is to explain how what he wrote or portrayed in the play would have appealed to the thoughts, imaginations, feelings, ideas, fashions, concerns and politics at the time. This would then make sure customers paid to come through the doors.
Do you need to know this stuff? Well, it makes grade 9 easier to get. But I hope it will also help you form your own interpretations and realise their is much more to English Literature than the GCSE exam which is probably destroying your enjoyment of the books you study!
Extremely interesting points made here, worth remembering!