History Theatre / Macbeth

** Macbeth's wife, whose name was Gruoch, is obscure so little is really known of her life. There's no indication of her murdering anyone whoever, inciting Macbeth to, or killing herself in guilt over the previous.

* IgnoredEpiphany: Macbeth [[HeelRealization realizes]] several times, the wrongness of what he's done and that he has a chance to turn back, most notably before he has scrupulous thoughts about being ingrateful to Duncan whom he murders at his wife's urging to prove his love for her, and after the feast. He doesn't, and when recalling the witches' prophecy of Banquo's descendants and Macduff, he further silences his conscience by ordering the murder of Banquo, in addition to Macduff's wife and son.

* ItWasHereISwear: Banquo's ghost. It doesn't help his case that Macbeth's the only one who can see the ghost anyway.

* A 2006 Australian film starring Sam Worthington, with a SettingUpdate to the [[Series/{{Underbelly}} Melbourne ganglands]]. It sticks to the play fairly well, but adds a few silent scenes, and suggests that Lady Macbeth acted out of grief of a dead child. And she's also a cocaine addict.

Superstitious actors refer to this as "[[TheScottishTrope The Scottish Play]]" (or, occasionally, "The Tartans"), due to the belief that speaking the main character's name brings bad luck. The head role is "The King" or "Mackers" anywhere outside the play itself. And though the script calls for it, sometimes things still happen, though they are usually less injurious. Some of the wackier ones talk about [[UsefulNotes/McDonalds The Scottish Restaurant]].

Many of the inconsistencies in ''Macbeth'' come from the fact that Macbeth was a real person who was featured in ''Holinshed's Chronicles'', a best-selling popular history of Shakespeare's time. Holinshed played fast and light with the facts in many cases, though -- for instance, he includes legendary or wholly fictional characters such as Fleance, who was supposedly an ancestor of the Scottish royal family. (In the play as produced now, Fleance disappears in Act Three: in the original 1606 presentation, he was brought back on stage after the play in a "dumb show" that explained he was the ancestor of the [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfStuart Stuarts]].) Holinshead also refers to Lady Macbeth as "burning with an unquenchable desire to bear the name of a queen". In reality, he had no historical justification for this -- the only thing that's actually known about Lady Macbeth is that she existed (and that her first name was Gruoch, and that Macbeth was her second husband) -- but Shakespeare turned that one sentence into one of his best-known female characters.

Shakespeare also takes liberties with the facts, although in his case his changes are {{justifi|edTrope}}able as they [[PragmaticAdaptation improve the dramatic tension and the flow of the action]]; after all, he was writing a play, not a history. For instance, he makes Duncan a wise, old good king ([[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation at least superficially]]) instead of a young wastrel, he has Macbeth [[DickDastardlyStopsToCheat kill him while sleeping instead of in a fair fight]], and he compresses the action into two seasons when the real Macbeth ruled for 17 years (and successfully). He also leaves aside the fact that the real Macbeth actually did have a legitimate claim to the throne[[labelnote:*]]For centuries, the succession rule in Scotland was called Tannistry, by which the throne alternated between different branches of descent from the first King, [=Kenneth MacAlpin=]. Duncan's grandfather, Malcolm II, had been the first to attempt to abandon it in favour of his eldest grandson. By Tannistry, it would have been Macbeth's branch's turn[[/labelnote]].

* SymbolicBlood: Macbeth is drenched in symbolic blood, like the blood on the floating dagger and the blood on Lady Macbeth's hands.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Shakespeare changed lots of historical details in order to please the newly crowned King James, who believed himself to be a descendant of Banquo, a friend of and probable co-conspirator with Macbeth that Macbeth eventually killed. [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade The character of Macbeth himself was also changed dramatically]]. In reality, Donnchad (Duncan) failed badly at invading part of England, and so decided to pillage Mac Bethad's (Macbeth's) territory. Mac Bethad defeated him in battle, Donnchad dying, and Mac Bethad became king. He proceeded to rule for the best part of two decades and evidently felt pretty secure in his position since it's documented that he took several months off to go to Rome and get personally blessed by The Pope. The time frame of Shakespeare's play isn't entirely clear but seems to be quite a bit shorter than the seventeen years of Mac Bethad's historical reign.

** The murderers who killed Banquo are never heard from again after reporting his death to Macbeth. Though some productions and possibly the original text depending on which version your reading have them also kill Macduffs family , but even then they disappear afterwards usually.

--> '''Lady Macbeth''': It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good-night."

The play takes place in the Scottish Highlands. Fresh from putting down a rebellion against King Duncan, Lord Macbeth meets three witches who hail him as the future king. [[LadyMacbeth His scheming and ambitious wife]] convinces him to make the prophecy come true by killing Duncan. They succeed, but the two of them spend the rest of the play [[MurderMakesYouCrazy slowly going insane from guilt]]; Lady Macbeth begins sleepwalking, [[ScrubbingOffTheTrauma scrubbing at imaginary bloodstains and hallucinating]], and [[DrivenToSuicide ultimately kills herself]]. Macbeth himself enters into [[TheParanoiac a paranoid frenzy]], [[HeKnowsTooMuch killing every potential rival]] in order to consolidate his power. The witches predict that "[[NoManOfWomanBorn none of woman born]]" shall slay him, which gives him some reassurance... until he meets Macduff, whose family he murdered, and who was "from his mother's womb untimely ripped"—in other words, delivered via crude caesarean section from his mother's dead or dying body, [[ProphecyTwist not "born" as Elizabethans defined it]]. [[DidntSeeThatComing D'oh.]]

* Gregory Doran’s 1999 RSC production, starring Antony Sher and Harriet Walter (and with a young Creator/RichardArmitage in a minor role.) Notable for its claustrophobic intensity, the chemistry between the two leads and its dark humour; often regarded as one of the finest contemporary productions. Filmed without an audience using hand-held cameras and commercially released in 2001.

* DespairSpeech: The "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" monologue. It’s basically Macbeth saying, [[CessationOfExistence “There is no afterlife,]] [[StrawNihilist so life is meaningless.”]]

** Macbeth is perfectly safe so long as the woods of Dunsinane don't come to his castle. Of course, nobody said that those same woods ''still had to be planted in the ground'', as opposed to being used as camouflage by an attacking army

** Initially, Macbeth shows more scruples/hesitancy about killing Duncan than does his wife, and she pushes him into doing it. Afterward, however, Lady Macbeth suppresses any feelings of guilt, and constantly tells Macbeth to stop fretting, whereas Macbeth is haunted by his feelings of guilt—''until'' her repressed guilt comes back in her sleep and drives her to suicide, while he becomes more and villainous and slowly loses all his remaining scruples about killing. Her death takes away the only other person he cared about, and by the end of the play he’s a shell of himself.

* By [[MagpiesAsPortents Maggotpies]] and [[CrowsAndRavens Choughs and Rooks]]: Act 3, scene 4, line 150. After hallucinating Banquo, Macbeth rants about how magpies and crows and ravens bring forth "The secret’st man of blood."

Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb\\

* SuicideByCop: Macbeth’s death has been played like this, as he deliberately launches into single combat with someone he knows can kill him, at a point where he’s passed the DespairEventHorizon and has nothing left to live for.

Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb\\