70 Fun Facts About Macbeth

Macbeth is only slightly more than half the length of which other Shakespeare tragedy?

It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy, more than a thousand lines shorter than Othello and King Lear, which is one reason scholars suspect the surviving text was cut for performance.

The play survives in only one early printed source. What is it?

No quarto edition exists, so every modern edition descends from that single Folio text.

In roughly which year is Macbeth thought to have been first performed?

Most scholars tie it to the aftermath of a notorious Catholic conspiracy against the king, and the Porter's jokes about an 'equivocator' fit topical events of that year.

Shakespeare's main source for the story was which 1587 chronicle history of Britain?

The same book supplied the plots for King Lear, Cymbeline and most of the English history plays.

Which astrologer wrote the earliest surviving eyewitness account of a Globe performance, in 1610?

His diary of plays seen is one of the very few first-hand records of Shakespeare's theatre in action, though oddly it never mentions the cauldron scene.

Which monarch, patron of Shakespeare's company, wrote a treatise on witchcraft called Daemonologie?

He believed he had personally been the target of a witches' murder plot, which helps explain why the play flatters his interest in the supernatural.

Macbeth's Porter welcoming an 'equivocator' is read as alluding to Jesuit Henry Garnet's trial after which event?

Garnet used the alias 'Farmer', and the Porter also welcomes a farmer to hell, which is why scholars date the scene to the year of his execution.

Hecate is widely thought to have been added by a later hand, possibly which fellow dramatist?

Two songs cued in the play appear in full in his own witch play The Witch, which is the main clue to the interpolation.

Banquo, the Weird Sisters and Lady Macbeth were first mentioned in 1527 by which Scottish historian?

He wanted to blacken the real Macbeth's name to strengthen the House of Stuart's claim, and Shakespeare inherited the invention second-hand.

At the start of the play, Macbeth already holds the title Thane of which place?

The witches greet him with that title first, then with a title he does not yet know he has been given, then as king hereafter.

After its treacherous holder is executed, King Duncan gives Macbeth which title?

The news arrives moments after the witches predicted it, which is what convinces Macbeth their third prophecy might come true too.

The rebellion Macbeth and Banquo crush at the play's opening is allied with invaders from which kingdom?

The Norwegian king ends up paying ten thousand dollars for the right to bury his dead, one of the play's stranger anachronisms.

Duncan spends his fatal night as a guest at Macbeth's castle in which town?

No earlier version of the story had the king murdered under Macbeth's own roof; Shakespeare imported that detail from a different chronicle killing to make the crime a violation of hospitality.

Duncan names his son Malcolm heir to the throne by giving him what title?

The announcement blocks Macbeth's hope of inheriting peacefully and is the moment he starts contemplating murder.

Whom does Macbeth kill right after Duncan's body is found, before they can protest innocence?

Lady Macbeth had smeared them with blood and planted the daggers, so silencing them completed the frame-up.

Malcolm flees to England after his father's murder. Where does his brother Donalbain go?

Splitting up, Donalbain says, keeps them both safer where 'there's daggers in men's smiles'.

What is the name of Banquo's son, who escapes the ambush that kills his father?

His escape is what leaves the witches' promise that Banquo will father kings alive, and Macbeth knows it.

Banquo's ghost appears to Macbeth during which occasion?

The stage direction has the ghost sit in Macbeth's own chair, and only Macbeth can see it, so the guests watch their king rave at an empty seat.

In the witches' final vision, how many crowned kings descended from Banquo pass before Macbeth?

The last carries a mirror showing many more, a compliment to the reigning king who counted Banquo as an ancestor.

The third apparition tells Macbeth he is safe until which forest reaches Dunsinane Hill?

Malcolm's soldiers later cut branches to hide their numbers, so the wood does, in a sense, walk.

Macduff holds which Scottish title?

The historical Clan MacDuff really were the most powerful family in that region during the Middle Ages.

Macduff can kill Macbeth despite the prophecy that no man 'of woman born' will harm him. Why?

He was 'from his mother's womb untimely ripped', which the witches' wording technically excludes.

What does Macduff carry on stage to Malcolm in the final scene?

He hails Malcolm as king with the trophy in hand, and Malcolm's closing speech promotes the thanes to earls.

Which three-word cry from Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene has passed into everyday English?

A doctor and a gentlewoman watch her try to wash imaginary blood off her hands, the guilt she had mocked her husband for feeling.

Which attendant tells Macbeth his wife is dead, prompting 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow'?

His name is often heard on stage as 'Satan', an echo many directors lean into as Macbeth's last loyal servant.

Macbeth's Malcolm invites everyone to see him crowned at which traditional site of Scottish coronations?

The Stone of Scone was carried off to Westminster Abbey by Edward I in 1296 and only returned to Scotland in 1996.

Which Faulkner novel takes its title from Macbeth's line about 'a tale told by an idiot'?

Faulkner's working title had been Twilight; the final one comes from the same soliloquy that gives us 'brief candle'.

Actors who consider it unlucky to say the name inside a theatre call it what instead?

Patrick Stewart has claimed an exemption: anyone who has actually played the role is allowed to say it anywhere.

One cure for saying the name in a theatre is reciting a line from which lucky Shakespeare play?

Other remedies include leaving the building, spinning three times, spitting over the left shoulder and swearing before being invited back in.

Which star's tights caught fire in a 1953 Bermuda production often cited as proof of the curse?

Burgess Meredith directed the show, which was plagued by mishaps from start to finish.

The historical Macbeth ruled Scotland from 1040 until his death in which year?

His roughly 17-year reign was mostly peaceful and secure enough for him to leave the country on pilgrimage.

The real Macbeth was killed at which battle?

He was defeated by the future Malcolm III after retreating over the Cairnamounth Pass, far from any castle at Dunsinane.

Unlike the play's murdered guest, how did the historical King Duncan I actually die?

He had marched north on a punitive raid into Macbeth's territory and was killed near Elgin, probably in August 1040.

Where did the historical Macbeth make a pilgrimage in 1050, scattering money to the poor 'as if it were seed'?

A murdering tyrant with a shaky throne does not usually leave the country for months, which is one reason historians think his rule was secure.

What was the name of the real Macbeth's wife, the historical 'Lady Macbeth'?

She was a widow with her own royal blood, and her son by her first marriage briefly succeeded Macbeth as king.

Who succeeded the historical Macbeth as king, ruling only a few months?

He was Macbeth's stepson, and his death at Malcolm's hands ended the line entirely, which is partly why later chroniclers felt free to vilify Macbeth.

Whose Restoration-era adaptation, with flying witches and new songs, dominated the stage for eighty years?

He also expanded Lady Macduff into a virtuous foil for Lady Macbeth, material later productions cut as irrelevant.

Which actor-manager revived the play in 1744, advertising it 'as written by Shakespeare'?

He still could not resist adding a dying speech for Macbeth, and kept the Restoration singing witches.

Which actress, who first played the part in 1785, became the legendary Lady Macbeth of the English stage?

A century later Ellen Terry's gentler reading flopped because audiences still expected the towering figure this actress had created.

The deadly 1849 Astor Place riot was sparked by rival productions of Macbeth starring which two actors?

The feud pitted the first home-grown American star against the leading English tragedian, and the militia opened fire on the crowd.

Orson Welles's 1936 "Voodoo Macbeth" moved the play to a Caribbean island modelled on which country?

The costumes evoked the court of Henri Christophe, and Haitian vodou replaced Scottish witchcraft.

How old was Orson Welles when he directed the 1936 'Voodoo Macbeth' for the Federal Theatre Project?

The Lafayette Theatre production ran ten sold-out weeks and made his reputation five years before Citizen Kane.

Welles shot his 1948 film Macbeth on leftover Western sets at which low-budget studio?

He finished principal photography in 23 days on a $700,000 budget, and the studio later forced him to redub the Scottish accents.

Kurosawa's Throne of Blood transposes Macbeth to Japan using which theatrical tradition?

Kurosawa preferred it to Kabuki, and the witch's shifting faces echo its masks.

In Throne of Blood, Toshiro Mifune's death scene was famously filmed using what?

Mifune waved his arms to signal which way he would move so the archers could aim clear of him; the scene later inspired the knife-throwing death in Carrie.

Roman Polanski's 1971 Macbeth was financed by which unlikely company after major studios passed?

Hugh Hefner met Polanski at a party; the film opened at New York's Playboy Theater and lost the company an estimated $1.8 million.

Polanski co-wrote his 1971 screenplay with which British theatre critic?

They cast a 26-year-old Lady Macbeth on the theory that characters over sixty are too old to be ambitious.

Who replaced Natalie Portman as Lady Macbeth in Justin Kurzel's 2015 Macbeth?

The film opens with the Macbeths burying a child, an invention that reframes her ambition as grief.

Who played the title role in Joel Coen's 2021 The Tragedy of Macbeth?

It was Joel Coen's first film without his brother Ethan, shot in black-and-white in a boxy 1.37:1 frame, and it earned him an Oscar nomination.

Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth streamed on which service in January 2022?

Kathryn Hunter played all three witches, contorting her body into crow-like shapes.

Which composer turned Macbeth into an Italian opera in 1847?

He revised it in French for Paris in 1865, and it remains the earliest of his three Shakespeare operas alongside Otello and Falstaff.

Punchdrunk's immersive New York show Sleep No More was set in a fictional 1930s establishment called what?

Masked audiences roamed five floors freely while the story looped, and the show won a 2011 Drama Desk Award.

The 2001 black comedy Scotland, PA relocates the plot to what kind of business in 1975 Pennsylvania?

The joke began with the writer's realisation that everyone in such a place would be called Mac; the press kit was printed as a CliffsNotes booklet.

Vishal Bhardwaj's 2003 Hindi film Maqbool sets the story of Macbeth against which backdrop?

Irrfan Khan played the Macbeth figure; Bhardwaj followed with Omkara and Haider to complete a Shakespeare trilogy.

The 2010 television film starring Patrick Stewart evokes which 20th-century dictatorship?

The production, which grew out of a Chichester and West End staging, won a Peabody Award.

Who played Lady Macbeth opposite Laurence Olivier in the acclaimed 1955 Stratford production?

One critic said Olivier succeeded by saving his fire for the last act, where most actors have already spent everything.

Who played Lady Macbeth opposite Ian McKellen in the RSC's celebrated 1976 Macbeth at The Other Place?

Trevor Nunn's chamber staging came two years after his own lavish 1974 version was dismissed as an over-elaborate religious spectacle.

The word 'weird' in 'Weird Sisters' descends from the Old English 'wyrd', meaning what?

The 1623 text actually spells them 'weyward'; the modern spelling comes from the chronicle Shakespeare used, which called them goddesses of destiny.

Which Swiss-born painter produced the famous 1783 picture The Weird Sisters or The Three Witches?

James Gillray parodied it in 1791 with three government ministers as the hags.

The First Witch's 'weary se'nnights nine times nine' has been linked to which ship's 567-day voyage?

567 is 7 x 9 x 9, a coincidence scholars use to date the witch scenes to after the ship's return.

A 600-year-old survivor of the real Birnam Wood near Dunkeld is a tree of which species?

Its girth suggests it was already mature when Shakespeare is presumed to have visited Perthshire in 1589.

What blood-smeared object does Macbeth hallucinate before going to kill Duncan?

He returns from the deed still clutching the real weapons, which his wife has to carry back to frame the servants.

How many murderers does Macbeth end up sending to ambush Banquo and Fleance?

He hires two men and then adds a mysterious third, whose identity has kept critics guessing for centuries.

Which thane brings Macbeth word of his newly bestowed title in Act I?

The same nobleman later carries the terrible news of the slaughter of Macduff's family to England.

Which saintly English king, able to cure scrofula by touch, is contrasted with Scotland's bloody chaos?

Critic Andrew Hadfield reads his peaceful realm as the play's deliberate foil to Macbeth's tyranny.

How did Charles Kean stage Macbeth at London's Princess's Theatre in the 1850s?

His antiquarian approach was a reaction against the psychological style of his father, Edmund Kean.

What cry disrupted the 1809 Macbeth that reopened a renovated, pricier Covent Garden for two months?

The manager had raised admission and installed private boxes to pay for the rebuild, and eventually caved to the protesters.

The Restoration adaptation expanded which minor character into a foil for the murderous queen?

It also added flying witches, songs and dances, and held the stage for eighty years until Garrick's revival.

Which actor cut Banquo's ghost from the banquet scene entirely in 1794, showing only Macbeth's reaction?

He gambled that audiences knew the play so well they would supply the apparition themselves.

Whose 1999 Stratford Macbeth is ranked by some critics alongside Olivier's and McKellen's as the century's best?

All three landmark performances began at Stratford-upon-Avon before transferring.