Comparison between the Great Gatsby and Macbeth Essay

Macbeth is one of Shakespe argons most intense receives and one his most complex mental studies. It is also a play more or less which there is a great deal of historical background, which I think youll find interesting because it reveals Shakespeares nonional process. The play was written in 16051606. Its one of the plays where the date is pretty firmly established by internal references to external events, and most scholars puddle concord on the date.Shakespeare was at the height of creative fountains, and his theatrical connection, the Kings Men, was the official royal acting comp both. He had the astronomical Globe Theater, a large common playhouse on the south bank of the Thames. He would soon open the Blackfriars Theater, a sm whole nonpublic theater within the city itself where the plays were performed indoors, and he and his men performed often at the court for the king and his family. The Blackfriars Theater would be exempt from the law prohibiting theaters withi n the City of London by being a private club. It could accommodate only a couple of hundred people, opposed to the Globe audiences of a couple of thousand, and therefore Shakespeare charged a higher expenditure for entry.That in turn meant that the audience was wealthier and more sophisticated than the average attendee at the Globe was. Because the plays were performed indoors by artificial light, they could be done at any time or weather. Because it was a sm every(prenominal)er theater, the acting style apply could be more subtle and chthonicstated than the broad, overly dramatic acting used in the Globe before audiences of s eeral thousand. As far as we know Shakespeares company continue to perform all the plays in both theaters its near that the productions would have differed in the way they were performed.Once you know something of the complex historical background, a very curious situation emerges active this bloody, violent drama the story of this psychotic sea wolf an d his fiendlike wife was actually written as a tribute to Shakespeares royal patron, King pack I of England, who was also king of Scotland. What an unusual way to thank the king for his patronage Of all of his plays, this is a powerful suspense thriller. We may know who the slayer is, but we are fascinated to see if Macbeth gets away with it and to see how he convinces himself to commit the multiple homicides.The historical background is necessary to help you understand wherefore Shakespeare wrote the play the way he did. Without the background there are many drumheadages and references which shuffle no sense to a modern audience. This background also reveals the riveting way Shakespeare used and twisted explanation to make a better play and to address the policy-making agenda of King James. It also shows some of the things way out on at that time in incline society and politics. Macbeth is an openly policy-making play. Macbeth is considered a look play, based on the eve nts in the life of a real historical figure, but it is even more a powerful tragedy.Shakespeare played fast and loose with historical fact in all his history plays, but none more so than this play. When Shakespeare wrote a play like Richard III, he was writing slightly events that had taken place about 100 historic period before, so most people in his English audience had a general sense of what that time was like. In the case of Macbeth, he was writing about a time over 500 years in the past in a country about which most of his English audience was altogether unfamiliar.Shakespeare and his audience did not consider history to be a science, in which the goal was accuracy rather history was an art, related to storytelling. The purpose of history was to make a moral point about the present society. You looked to the past to find or create parallels with the present age that would help you explain how people should persuade right now. Therefore history was often manipulated, change d or simply created to support some political agenda. Every king at this time used history as a tool in his arsenal to help hang on to power.They would hire professional historians to rewrite the past to support their subscribe to to power in the present. Similarly, religious figures would use history as a weapon to attack their opponents. In many accounts written at this time by Protestant advocates, history is seen as the rise of many proto-Protestants, people who lived hundreds of years before Martin Luther, the first official Protestant. These earlier figures are sh deliver to be forerunners who simply didnt commit they were Protestants.The historical sources that Shakespeare used were as much mythologies as theyare reality. Actually there was very little known about the historical Macbeth, so if the historians hadnt made things up they wouldnt have had much to say about him. Shakespeares principal source, Holinsheds Chronicles of sparing History, was a loose collection of go ssip, tales and fantasies, so the material he was using was already seriously flawed from a historical perspective. Shakespeare then used this flawed material selectively, not telling the full story, but only bits and pieces that made for a good drama. He altered historical records to heighten dramatic effect, as well see in the dramatic account of Macbeths first murder.Shakespeare also changed history to simplify complexities and, quite frankly, to kiss up to King James. Shakespeare took a story supposedly circle in the eleventh Century, around the year 1050, and filled it with many references to events taking place in 1605 in England, in particular to one of the most dramatic events in English history, the powder P visual sense, which had happened just the year before. No wonder the play bears little resemblance to the historical reality.The historical Macbeth had become king in the year 1040 when he killed the previous king, Duncan, in battle. To put this in a historical conte xt, this is hardly the Middle Ages its still the Dark Ages, as historians have termed the various stages of European history. It is 26 years before the Norman invasion of England, which is generally considered to be the beginning of the medieval period in Britain. In 1040 Macbeth became king and find outd for 17 years until he was overthrown and killed by Duncans son, who became King Malcolm III. Malcolm is famous primarily because he married an English princess named Margaret who was later made a saint.According to the frugal historian Archibald Duncan, little is known about Macbeth and his lovely wife Grunnich, except that they were pious and endowed a religious house at St. Andrews (which is believably the caddy shack on the fourth green of that famous golf course joke). The couple went on a religious pilgrimage to Rome where, the chroniclers said, they sowed bills like seed. (Many of us when we go on vacation do the same thing.) Thats all we know for certain about the real Macbeth.Now the fact that Macbeth killed the previous king was not a big deal. Ofthe eight Scottish kings who ruled during this time, seven had died unnatural deaths, including several(prenominal)(prenominal) who burned to death until suspicious circumstances. It was super unusual for a Scottish king to die of natural causes in bed. This violent record was largely the result of how Scottish kings came to power. There was no doctor process of succession from one king to the next. In effect, when an old king died every male who was related to the royal family, no matter how distant the relationship, had an competent chance for the bottom. It was a kind of royal free-for-all with the last man standing getting to be the king until he was done in by the next ambitious claimant. Macbeth is overthrown in 1057, still nine years before the Norman French invasion of England under William the Conqueror.Two hundred years pass by. The Norman kings are on the locoweed of England. A successio n of English kings and queens has tried to extend their power north into Scotland, as generations of Scots have raided English settlements to the south. The warfare between these two historic enemies is almost constant. In the mid-1200s the English king Edward, also known as Longshanks and the Scots Killer, has invaded Scotland decided to subjugate it once and for all. He pushes north and reaches the holy place of Scone where the Scottish kings were crowned. Here he seizes the holy relic called the Stone of Scone and takes it back to London where he places it under his throne at Westminster Abbey, where it remained for seven centuries, despite the efforts of Scottish nationalists to steal it back.(Prime Minister Tony Blair lastly give-up the ghosted the stone to Scotland after his election a smart political move.) The direct Braveheart gives you a highly dramatic sense of the conflict at this time between the Scots and the English. The Scots fight back unsuccessfully because the y are not united in their efforts. Finally one man arises who is able to weld the Scottish people into a single nation, Robert the Bruce, and he is able to hand to a Scottish victory. The English have to acknowledge the right of the Scottish State to exist. King Edward is bitterly disappointed and when he dies, he leaves instructions that if England ever mounts a new invasion of Scotland, his bones are to be carried at the head of the army. So you see how bitter the hatred is between the two nations. downstairs Robert the Bruce the Scots succeed in driving the English out, but in 1329 he dies and his daughter ascends the throne. She had married a guy who was like the business music director or steward of the royal estates. Not amazingly the guys name was Steward or as it came to be spelled, Stuart. And so the Scottish throne passed on to this obscure family that had never been more than civil servants. Now every royal family worried about two things succession, or who would inheri t the throne. Henry 8 had gone by five wives trying to sire a male heir to the throne and broken with the Catholic Church over the issue. The second give care was to try and keep the crown within the family against attacks on their legitimacy. So kings were always seeking ways to bolster their claim on the throne in the cognizance of the people. The family of Elizabeth, the Tudors, had had on-going problems in both these areas. The first Tudor, Henry VII, lost his oldest son soon after the boy had been married to Catherine of Aragon. So as not to have to return her substantial dowry to the King of Spain, Henry VII simply married the young widow to his next son, Henry VIII, setting in motion all the turmoil of that kings five wives.Henrys son Edward died while still in his teens, and his daughter, who reigned as Bloody bloody shame Tudor, was unable to bring on an heir. The next Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I, declined to try to have a child by refusing to marry. Her decision caused all kinds of political problems as she approached death in 1603, until she declared on her deathbed that her distant cousin, James VI of Scotland, would rule after her. The Stuart kings, by transmission line, had been very prolific. By the time Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, there had been eight generations of Stuart kings on the throne of Scotland. They were the longest-surviving royal family in all of Europe. They boasted that they would remain on the throne until Doomsday. However, the Stuarts continued to worry about the public perception of their legitimacy.After all the original Stuart king had had little claim to the throne. So it was that in the early 1500s one of the Stuart kings hired a professional historian and ordered him to create an older, more respectable connection to the throne for the Stuarts. This historian made up an ancient ancestor of the Stuarts, Banquo, who lived clear back in the time of old King Macbeth. This Banquo, a thane or nobleman, was told by goddesse s of Scottish destiny that his descendents would eventually become kings of Scotland. These goddesses weregiven special powers to look into the future of the Scottish nation. So the Stuarts had a mystical claim on the throne for several hundred years before they actually were crowned. This Banquo was a comp permitely fictional character that the historian/PR guy simply made up. Not surprisingly this character and the prediction of his descendants rise to power figure prominently in the play.Queen Elizabeths grandfather, Henry VII, had used history in just the same manipulative manner. After he defeated and killed the rightful king, Richard III, in 1485, he hired a number of professional historians to do a hatchet job on poor old Richard. They proved that he was not the legitimate king and was in fact a monster who merited to die so the Tudors could take power.In the mid-1500s Scotland was ruled by Mary, Queen of Scots, a distant cousin of Elizabeth I. Mary has come down in history as a kind of romantic figure, but in reality she was not nearly as sympathetic. She was a Catholic trying to rule a land that was fiercely Presbyterian, and she was not very adept at the politics of power. Plus she had the unfortunate habit of roaming up the castles where her estranged husband was staying. She was finally driven out of Scotland and fled to England where she was given asylum by Elizabeth.Rather than being content and grateful for her cousins kindness, she began almost immediately plotting with malcontents to overthrow Elizabeth. She let it be known that if the Catholic minority in England was able to get rid of the queen, she would graciously accept the crown. Elizabeth tried to ignore the threats and then tried to strangle Mary in an isolated country home where she could cause less trouble. But Mary persisted in her plots. Finally Elizabeth is forced to stop Marys intrigues by having her beheadedNow when Mary fled from Scotland she left her infant son, James, and he was crowned James VI and ruled throughout his childhood. Poor James was manipulated and used by the powerful men who had custody of the young king. He learned to be very slippery and deceitful in order to survive to adulthood. In one of the great ironies of history, when Elizabeth facesdeath she bequeaths the English throne to the son of her mortal enemy, Mary, Queen of Scots. James was finally able to escape from Edinburgh and the clutches of the Presbyterian elders and go to the illegal city of London, the Las Vegas of that age. In 1603 James is crowned James I of England and becomes a dual monarch.A few months later he names Shakespeares company the Kings Men, the royal dramatic company. The company has royal protection from local authorities and they make a great of money performing all the plays Shakespeare had written for the court. Its no wonder that Shakespeare felt compelled to write a tribute to his royal patron, Macbeth. As I said earlier, its an odd play to be a trib ute to a Scottish king, but then Shakespeare made a career out of doing the unusual.Now as Shakespeare pays tribute to James, he also wants to support James political agenda. England and Scotland had been historic enemies, but now they were governed by the same monarch, and he wanted to unite them into a single kingdom. In several plays written before 1603 Shakespeare used the Scots as convenient ethnic targets. (We see this Scots-bashing in Merchant of Venice and Henry V.) After 1603 it became politically inaccurate to take potshots at the Scots. Although James and the other Stuarts wanted a United Kingdom, it would take over 100 years for England and Scotland to merge into a single political entity.To advance the kings agenda, Shakespeare wrote the play in a certain way. He created and emphasized commonality between the two kingdoms. He was also studious not to show Banquo, the kings mythical ancestor, in a bad light. Rather than being actively involved in overthrowing King Dunc an, Banquo just stands around and waits for Fate to fulfill the prophecy of his familys future greatness. (In Holinsheds account Banquo had been an active participant in Duncans overthrow and death.) Having set up the story of the Stuart familys rise to power, Shakespeare shift gears and makes the homicidal maniac Macbeth the protagonist of the play.The other political event which shaped the composition of the play was the criminal faction to assassinate James, his family and most of the Protestant leadership of England in the Gunpowder Plot. This took place in early November of 1605, when a group of Catholic extremists planned to blowup the Houses of Parliament on the occasion of a speech by the king to Parliament. There had been a long history of hostility between the Catholics and Protestants in England through the 1500s, especially during the time of Elizabeth. Catholics considered her an illegitimate ruler and a bastard because she was the child of King Henry VIIIs second wife , after the illegal divorce. The film Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchett, gives you a good sense of the conflict in this time with the Catholic side being represented by the pope and Queen Mary. By contrast with Catholic intransigence, Elizabeth is shown to be much more humane and tolerant.She had seen too much bloodshed over religious differences. She did not much mind what peoples private beliefs were as long as they avoided public display of religious heresies. So under Elizabeth it was not illegal to be a Catholic, unlike Mary Tudors persecution of Protestant dissenters it was just illegal to perform a Catholic mass in public. Understandably Catholics chafed under the restrictions of Elizabeths rule and believed that a strong Catholic monarch could bring England forcibly back to the Catholic faith. When Elizabeth died in 1603 many Catholics hoped their persecution would end with James. After all, his own mother had been a Catholic. However, that belief ignored the fact that James ha d been raised as a Presbyterian, not a Catholic. Also he found Elizabeths principle of allowing private faith a good compromise. And so the more militant Catholics plotted to fill the basement of Parliament with gunpowder and at the critical moment blow it up. Now this plot was the 17th Century equivalent of 9/11 or the harebrained scheme of Timothy McVey to blow up the federal twist in Oklahoma City.The plot was discovered at the last minute. According to the official account released at the time the king himself, with the help of God, covered the plan. He was shown some intercepted messages which referred to strike a blow for the cause and realized that blow could mean an explosion and ordered the building searched. The effect of the discovery on England was electric, traumatic. In a flash the country realized how close they had come to disaster. As the conspirators were arrested, tortured, confessed and were executed more details came out. English society was changed in ways tha t are still visible today. For example to this day on November 5, the day the plot was discovered, called Guy Fawkes Day, children throughoutBritain collect money in the neighborhood to buy fireworks to set off and burn a wooden effigy called the Old Guy in honor of Guy Fawkes, one of the principal conspirators. The revelation of the plot did not ease the plight of Catholics, who were forbidden the vote or the ability to serve in Parliament.One of the other conspirators turned out to be a mystical Jesuit priest named Henry Garnett. Although it was illegal to perform the mass, the Jesuits recruited young courageous English Catholics, trained them in France and smuggled them back into England to perform as priests. Garnett was the confessor of several of the other conspirators and he was detained in the initial investigation. The authorities suspected he was a priest and they asked him under oath if he knew anything about the plot. He denied any knowledge. Subsequent suspects were ar rested and they revealed that Garnett had known about the plan and had advised the conspirators on what to do. He was arrested again, questioned and this time he admitted that he did know about the plot. When confronted with his earlier perjury under oath, Garnett explained that as a Jesuit he was not required to tell the authorities what they wanted to know.In defense of his own faith he had not lied under oath he had simply equivocated. That simply meant he had not told the whole truth and had played fast and loose with the terminology, a lot like a former president testifying under a threat of impeachment. This aspect of the scandal was in some respects the most shocking for the public because he seemed to cast the Jesuits as sneaky, lying shock troops of the Pope who would commit any sin to further their own cause. And so the concept of fabrication became infamous, a kind of shorthand reference to the evil behind the plot. It was so shocking that the legal oath Englishmen took when they testified in court was changed at that time to acknowledge the provision that the oath was taken without equivocation to cover any future Garnetts. That provision continued in the English legal system down to the twentieth century. Both the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day and the legal oath demonstrate how traumatic the Gunpowder Plot was on English society. A lot of best-selling(predicate) works were written at this time which refer to the details of the plot, including at least three plays called Gunpowder dramas. One was called The Whore of Babylon all about the Pope leading a black mass to callforth Satan to engineer the assassination of Queen Elizabeth.The second play was called The Devils hire which traces the efforts of the evils Catholics to engineer the assassination of an English ruler. The third play was Macbeth, according to noted author Garry Wills. In the plays the Jesuits are linked to witchcraft. This was not the first attempt on King James life he had sur vived three earlier assassination attempts. (One reason James may have been able to uncover the plot so quickly is that he had had lots of experience,) The would-be assassins were subsequently tried as witches. In another related case a plot was uncovered to kill James bride, a princess of Denmark. A group of accused witches from a town called Forres, mentioned in the play, had disapproved of James marrying a foreigner, and so the charmed the winds and caused a major fall upon on the North Sea to try and sink the ship bringing the Danish bride to Scotland.As in the other cases the plotters were arrested, tortured, confessed and were executed. As a result of his experiences and his own interest in the occult, James fancied himself an expert and had written a book called Daemonology, all about Scottish witches. In the first two Gunpowder plays listed above it is a male witch that is behind the plots to kill the English monarch. What Shakespeare does in his play is to take the goddess es of Scottish destiny that he had read about in Holinshed and change them into very unusual witches, in keeping with the interest of the principal person for whom he was writing the play, King James.