CONTEXT

• Macbeth was written by Shakespeare in or around 1606.
• Shakespearean Tragedy needs...

  • a tragic hero
  • good vs evil
  • hamartia
  • tragic waste
  • conflict
  • supernatural
  • catharsis
  • fate
  • lack of poetic justice
• The Great Chain of Being is the hierarchical structure of all matter. It was a large belief in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Era, with God at the top, all the way down to rocks and minerals at the bottom.
• The Divine Right of Kings was the belief that the monarch was in charge because God chose them to be his representative on Earth. It also includes the theory that the monarch only answered to God.  
• In the Jacobean Era, there was lots of superstition regarding the supernatural. King James I even wrote a book about witches, and there were lots of witch trials carried out around this time. People suspected of being witches were stereotypically old women, with pets like black cats, or who live alone. 
• Most people were Christian in Shakespeare’s times, so the large majority of audiences believed in the Divine Right of Kings and the Great Chain of Being. There were tensions between Protestants and Catholics at the time, signposted by the famous Gunpowder Plot, which happened the year before Shakespeare wrote Macbeth.
• King James I came to the English throne in an odd way. He was allied with Elizabeth I, and did not protest too vigorously when she executed his mother (Mary, Queen of Scots), as he hoped to one day be Elizabeth’s successor. Elizabeth had no children, and therefore James VI of Scotland swiftly and smoothly also became King James I of England.