King James I was a generous patron to Shakespeare, and his patronage resulted in Shakespeare's becoming quite wealthy. Because of this, Shakespeare tended to alter his source materials and insert references that flattered King James into many of his works.
The setting of the play and its use of medieval Scottish source material is connected to James' own Scottish heritage. Rather than treat, as the source material did, usurpation of a throne as a relatively ordinary occurrence of the period and Macbeth himself as a relatively decent ruler who killed his predecessor and was in turn murdered, Shakespeare emphasizes the legitimacy of Duncan's authority and the heinousness of Macbeth's rebellion against his rightful king. This emphasis on the legitimacy of kingship and the awful consequences of rebellion would obviously meet James' approval.
Finally, the play is deeply religious in focus, concerned witchcraft and filled with Biblical allusions, two key interests of King James.
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/macbeth/jamescompliments.html
Sunday, August 19, 2018
How might Shakespeare's relationship with King James I have influenced Macbeth?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
No comments:
Post a Comment