Macbeth: terrorism, gunpowder and treason in James I's London

Secret Life of Books

Macbeth, which actors superstitiously call the Scottish Play, is one of Shakespeare’s shortest and most exciting dramas. It’s also the most horrifying. Join Sophie and Jonty to find out why a play set in 11th-Century Scotland is really about the biggest issues of the day in King James I’s new court in 1606 London. Learn how Shakespeare is taking a major risk using an old tale of kingship to restage the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Find out just how close the Catholic conspirators led by Guido Fawkes came to blowing up the Houses of Parliament and 30,000 people in Stuart London.

During the episode we talk about why it’s a risky choice for Shakespeare to include witches in this play and why “double, double, toil and trouble” is anything but a harmless joke about magic spells and bubbling cauldrons.

This is the play that invents the toxic marriage we later see in Gone Girl and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and we’ll unpack that, along with some famous moments that are deliberately hard to understand - like the dagger Macbeth sees before him, Lady Macbeth’s unwashed hands, and why the forest of Birnam Wood, moves of its own accord. And we’ll settle the age-old question of why Macbeth has trouble sleeping.

Jonty fills us in on how to lift the curse of the Scottish Play if you accidentally say its name, and Sophie gives a 30 second history of the Protestant Reformation. Find out why fans are saying SLOB’s Macbeth in an hour is even better than the real thing!

Shakespeare, Macbeth (New Cambridge Shakespeare, 2019); James Shapiro, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 (Simon and Schuster, 2015); Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespare Became Shakespeare, (Norton, 2004)