Macbeth
Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, patron of Shakespeare's acting company, Macbeth most reflects the playwright's relationship with his sovereign, it was first published in the Folio of 1623 from a prompt book, is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself, he is wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler; the bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death. Shakespeare's source for the story is the account of King of Scotland.
The events of the tragedy are associated with the execution of Henry Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed, will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as "The Scottish Play". Over the course of many centuries, the play has attracted some of the most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, it has been adapted to film, opera, novels and other media. The play opens amid thunder and lightning, the Three Witches decide that their next meeting will be with Macbeth. In the following scene, a wounded sergeant reports to King Duncan of Scotland that his generals Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, Banquo have just defeated the allied forces of Norway and Ireland, who were led by the traitorous Macdonwald, the Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, the King's kinsman, is praised for his fighting prowess. In the following scene and Banquo discuss the weather and their victory; as they wander onto a heath, the Three Witches greet them with prophecies.
Though Banquo challenges them first, they address Macbeth, hailing him as "Thane of Glamis," "Thane of Cawdor," and that he will "be King hereafter." Macbeth appears to be stunned to silence. When Banquo asks of his own fortunes, the witches respond paradoxically, saying that he will be less than Macbeth, yet happier, less successful, yet more, he will father a line of kings, though he himself will not be one. While the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the witches vanish, another thane, Ross and informs Macbeth of his newly bestowed title: Thane of Cawdor; the first prophecy is thus fulfilled, Macbeth sceptical begins to harbour ambitions of becoming king. King Duncan welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, declares that he will spend the night at Macbeth's castle at Inverness. Macbeth sends a message ahead to Lady Macbeth, telling her about the witches' prophecies. Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husband's uncertainty and wishes him to murder Duncan in order to obtain kingship; when Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she overrides all of her husband's objections by challenging his manhood and persuades him to kill the king that night.
He and Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncan's two chamberlains. They will be defenceless. While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and a number of supernatural portents, including a hallucination of a bloody dagger, he is so shaken. In accordance with her plan, she frames Duncan's sleeping servants for the murder by placing bloody daggers on them. Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish nobleman, Macduff, the loyal Thane of Fife, arrive. A porter opens the gate and Macbeth leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff discovers Duncan's body. Macbeth murders the guards to prevent them from professing their innocence, but claims he did so in a fit of anger over their misdeeds. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires their demise as well; the rightful heirs' flight makes them suspects and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king. Banquo reveals this to the audience, while sceptical of the new King Macbeth, he remembers the witches' prophecy about how his own descendants would inherit the throne.
Despite his success, Macbeth aware of this part of the prophecy, remains uneasy. Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal banquet, where he discovers that Banquo and his young son, will be riding out that night. Fearing Banquo's suspicions, Macbeth arranges to have him murdered, by hiring two men to kill them sending a Third Murderer; the assassins succeed in killing Banquo. Macbeth becomes furious: he fears that his power remains insecure as long as an heir of Banquo remains alive. At a banquet, Macbeth invites Lady Macbeth to a night of drinking and merriment. Banquo's ghost sits in Macbeth's place. Macbeth raves fearfully, as the ghost is only visible to him; the others panic at the sight of Macbeth ragi
Macbeth, King of Scotland
Macbeth was King of Scots from 1040 until his death. He was titled King of Alba during his life, ruled over only a portion of present-day Scotland. Little is known about Macbeth's early life, although he was the son of Findláech of Moray and may have been a grandson of Malcolm II, he became Mormaer of Moray – a semi-autonomous lordship – in 1032, was responsible for the death of the previous mormaer, Gille Coemgáin. He subsequently married Gille Coemgáin's widow, although they had no children together. In 1040, Duncan I was killed in action by Macbeth's troops. Macbeth succeeded him as King of Alba with little opposition, his 17-year reign was peaceful, although in 1054 he was faced with an English invasion, led by Siward, Earl of Northumbria, on behalf of Edward the Confessor. Macbeth was killed at the Battle of Lumphanan in 1057 by forces loyal to the future Malcolm III, he was buried on the traditional resting place of Scottish kings. Macbeth was succeeded by his stepson Lulach, but Lulach ruled for only a few months before being killed by Malcolm III, whose descendants would rule Scotland until the late 13th century.
Macbeth is today best known as the main character of William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth and the many works it has inspired. However, Shakespeare's Macbeth is based on Holinshed's Chronicles and is not accurate. Macbeth's full name in Medieval Gaelic was Mac Bethad mac Findlaích; this is realised as MacBheatha mac Fhionnlaigh in Modern Gaelic, anglicised as Macbeth MacFinlay. The name Mac Bethad, from which the anglicised "MacBeth" is derived, means "son of life". Although it has the appearance of a Gaelic patronymic it does not have any meaning of filiation but instead carries an implication of "righteous man" or "religious man". An alternative proposed derivation is that it is a corruption of macc-bethad meaning "one of the elect"; some sources make Macbeth a grandson of King Malcolm II and thus a cousin to Duncan I, whom he succeeded. He was also a cousin to Thorfinn the Mighty, Earl of Orkney and Caithness. Nigel Tranter, in his novel Macbeth the King, went so far as to portray Macbeth as Thorfinn's half-brother.
However, this is speculation arising from the lack of historical certainty regarding the number of daughters Malcolm had. When Cnut the Great came north in 1031 to accept the submission of King Malcolm II, Macbeth too submitted to him:... Malcolm, king of the Scots, submitted to him, became his man, with two other kings and Iehmarc... Some have seen this as a sign of Macbeth's power. Whatever the true state of affairs in the early 1030s, it seems more probable that Macbeth was subject to the king of Alba, Malcolm II, who died at Glamis, on 25 November 1034; the Prophecy of Berchán alone in near-contemporary sources, says Malcolm died a violent death, calling it a "kinslaying" without naming his killers. Tigernach's chronicle says only: Máel Coluim son of Cináed, king of Alba, the honour of western Europe, died. Malcolm II's grandson Duncan King Duncan I, was acclaimed as king of Alba on 30 November 1034 without opposition. Duncan appears to have been tánaise ríg, the king in waiting, so that far from being an abandonment of tanistry, as has sometimes been argued, his kingship was a vindication of the practice.
Previous successions had involved strife between various rígdomna – men of royal blood. Far from being the aged King Duncan of Shakespeare's play, the real King Duncan was a young man in 1034, at his death in 1040 his youthfulness is remarked upon. Duncan's early reign was uneventful, his reign, in line with his description as "the man of many sorrows" in the Prophecy of Berchán, was not successful. In 1039, Strathclyde was attacked by the Northumbrians, a retaliatory raid led by Duncan against Durham turned into a disaster. Duncan survived the defeat, but the following year he led an army north into Moray, Macbeth's domain on a punitive expedition against Moray. There he was killed in action, at Bothnagowan, now Pitgaveny, near Elgin, by the men of Moray led by Macbeth on 14 August 1040. On Duncan's death, Macbeth became king. No resistance is known at that time, but it would have been normal if his reign were not universally accepted. In 1045, Duncan's father Crínán of Dunkeld was killed in a battle between two Scottish armies.
John of Fordun wrote that Duncan's wife fled Scotland, taking her children, including the future kings Malcolm III and Donald III with her. On the basis of the author's beliefs as to whom Duncan married, various places of exile and Orkney among them, have been proposed. However, E. William Robertson proposes the safest place for Duncan's widow and her children would be with her or Duncan's kin and supporters in Atholl. After the defeat of Crínán, Macbeth was evidently unchallenged. Marianus Scotus tells how the king made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050, Marianus says, he gave money to the poor as if it were seed; the Orkneyinga Saga says that a dispute between Thorfinn Sigurdsson, Earl of Orkney, Karl Hundason began when Karl Hundason became "King of Scots" and claimed Caithness. The identity of Karl Hundason, unknow
Three Witches
The Three Witches known as the Weird Sisters or Wayward Sisters, are characters in William Shakespeare's play Macbeth. They hold a striking resemblance to the three Fates of classical mythology, are intended as a twisted version of the white-robed incarnations of destiny; the witches lead Macbeth to his demise. Their origin lies in Holinshed's Chronicles, a history of England and Ireland. Other possible sources, aside from Shakespeare's imagination, include British folklore, such contemporary treatises on witchcraft as King James VI of Scotland's Daemonologie, the Norns of Norse mythology, ancient classical myths of the Fates: the Greek Moirai and the Roman Parcae. Productions of Macbeth began incorporating portions of Thomas Middleton's contemporaneous play The Witch circa 1618, two years after Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare's witches are prophets who hail Macbeth, the general, early in the play, predict his ascent to kingship. Upon killing the king and gaining the throne of Scotland, Macbeth hears them ambiguously predict his eventual downfall.
The witches, their "filthy" trappings and supernatural activities, set an ominous tone for the play. Artists in the eighteenth century, including Henry Fuseli and William Rimmer, depicted the witches variously, as have many directors since; some have exaggerated or sensationalised the hags, or have adapted them to different cultures, as in Orson Welles's rendition of the weird sisters as voodoo priestesses. Some film adaptations have cast the witches as such modern analogues as hippies on drugs, or goth schoolgirls, their influence reaches the literary realm as well in such works as the Discworld and Harry Potter series. The name "weird sisters" is found in most modern editions of Macbeth. However, the First Folio's text reads: The weyward Sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the Sea and Land... In scenes in the first folio the witches are called "weyward", but never "weird"; the modern appellation "weird sisters" derives from Holinshed's original Chronicles. However, modern English spelling was only starting to become fixed by Shakespeare's time and the word'weird' had connotations beyond the common modern meaning.
The Wiktionary etymology for "weird" includes this observation: " was extinct by the 16th century in English. It survived in Scots, whence Shakespeare borrowed it in naming the Weird Sisters, reintroducing it to English; the senses "abnormal", "strange" etc. arose via reinterpretation of "Weird Sisters" and date from after this reintroduction." One of Shakespeare's principal sources for the Three Witches is found in the account of King Duncan in Raphael Holinshed's history of Britain, The Chronicles of England and Ireland. In Holinshed, the future King Macbeth of Scotland and his companion Banquo encounter "three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world" who hail the men with glowing prophecies and vanish "immediately out of their sight". Holinshed observes that "the common opinion was that these women were either the Weird Sisters, that is… the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or fairies endued with knowledge of prophecy by their necromantical science."Another principal source was the Daemonologie of King James published in 1597 which included a news pamphlet titled Newes from Scotland that detailed the infamous North Berwick witch trials of 1590.
Not only had this trial taken place in Scotland, witches involved confessed to attempt the use of witchcraft to raise a tempest and sabotage the boat King James and the Queen of Scots were on board during their return trip from Denmark. The three witches discuss the raising of winds at sea in the opening lines of Act 1 Scene 3; the news pamphlet states: Moreover she confessed that at the time when his Majesty was in Denmark, she being accompanied with the parties before specially named, took a Cat and christened it, afterward bound to each part of that Cat, the cheefest parts of a dead man, several joints of his body, that in the night following the said Cat was conveyed into the midst of the sea by all these witches sailing in their riddles or Cues as aforesaid, so left the said Cat right before the Town of Leith in Scotland: this done, there did arise such a tempest in the Sea, as a greater has not been seen: which tempest was the cause of the perishing of a Boat or vessel coming over from the town of Brunt Island to the town of Leith, of, many Jewels and rich gifts, which should have been presented to the current Queen of Scotland, at her Majesty's coming to Leith.
Again it is confessed, that the said christened Cat was the cause that the King Majesty's Ship at his coming forth of Denmark, had a contrary wind to the rest of his Ships being in his company, which thing was most strange and true, as the King's Majesty acknowledges – Daemonologie, Newes from Scotland The concept of the Three Witches themselves may have been influenced by the Old Norse skaldic poem Darraðarljóð, in which twelve valkyries weave and choose, to be slain at the Battle of Clontarf. Shakespeare's creation of the Three Witches may have been influenced by an anti-witchcraft law passed by King James nine years a law, to stay untouched for over 130 years, his characters' "chappy fingers", "skinny lips", "beards", for example, are not found in Holinshed. Macbeth's Hillock near Brodie, between Forres and Nairn in Scotland, has long been identified as the mythical meeting place of Macbeth and the witches. Traditionally, Forres is believed to have been the home of both Macbeth. However, Samuel Taylor Coleridge proposed that the three weird sisters should be seen as ambiguous figures
Macbeth (2015 film)
Macbeth is a 2015 British-French film tragedy based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name. The film was directed by Justin Kurzel from a screenplay adapted by Jacob Koskoff, Todd Louiso, Michael Lesslie, it stars Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth. The film was theatrically released on 2 October 2015 in the United Kingdom and on 4 December 2015 in the United States, it was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and received positive reviews from film critics who praised Fassbender's performance, as well as those of the rest of the cast, the visual style, the script, the direction and the war sequences. Despite the positive critical reaction, the film was a commercial failure, grossing $16 million worldwide against its production budget of $20 million; the film starts with the funeral of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's child, with both parents grieving for their loss. Macbeth, who supports King Duncan in the civil war, is leading royal troops into a final battle.
Macbeth emerges victorious. The battle is observed by three women with an infant, they approach Macbeth and Banquo, hailing Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor and future King, Banquo as a father of Kings, before disappearing in the mist. Duncan hears about Macbeth's victory and is brought the Thane of Cawdor who, deemed to be a traitor because he has allied himself with the Norse invaders, is stripped of his title and executed; the King orders his servants to take the title of Thane of Cawdor to Macbeth, who reacts uncertainly. Macbeth sends a message ahead to Lady Macbeth, telling her about the witches' prophecies. Lady Macbeth prays to the dark spirits in the village church, asking them for guidance; when Macbeth returns, tells her that Duncan will stay one night as their guest, she urges Macbeth to kill the King to fulfill the prophecy made by the witches. Duncan arrives at the village and a feast is being held, where the King pronounces Malcolm as his heir. Macbeth still hesitates and Lady Macbeth persuades him to commit the deed, while she slips a sleeping potion to the King's servants.
After the feast ends, Macbeth sees the ghost of one of the dead boy soldiers who gives him a dagger and leads him towards Duncan's tent. Macbeth brutally slays Duncan. Malcolm enters the tent and, flees in fear. Shaken, Macbeth gives her the dagger he has used to kill the King. Lady Macbeth rebukes him, saying that he should have left it in the tent and she goes herself to place the dagger in the hands of the sleeping chamberlains, she meets Macbeth in the church where they both wash the blood from their hands and she tells him that the water has washed their deed away. In the morning, Macduff finds Duncan dead, Macbeth slaughters the sleeping servants to prevent their denial of the murder. Macduff and Lennox, a Scottish noble, discuss that as Malcolm has fled to England that puts him under suspicion of being involved in the murder, they admire Macbeth's justice on the supposedly-treacherous servants. With Malcolm gone, Macbeth is asked to become King of Scotland. After the coronation he sits in a sour mood in his chamber.
He complains that killing Duncan was for nothing as Macbeth has no heirs to inherit the crown which will pass to Banquo and his son, according to the prophecy. He finds out that they both plan to leave; as Banquo is becoming suspicious, Macbeth sends three assassins to murder him. Banquo is killed. During the evening, Macbeth makes a comment about Banquo not keeping his promise to be at the feast; when the assassins arrive, Macbeth asks if they have succeeded and is enraged when he finds out that Fleance has escaped. Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost in his armour standing among other guests next to the table. Macbeth is afraid and starts to talk to the ghost, unseen by anyone else present. Lady Macbeth tries to calm everyone by claiming that her husband is unwell, but Macbeth continues to rave, which prompts Macduff and his wife to leave the feast despite the King ordering them to stay. Lady Macbeth takes Macbeth back to their chamber. Macbeth travels by night to talk to the three witches. Once he finds them, they show him a vision of slain soldiers who tell him to beware of Macduff, that Macbeth shall be King until Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill, where the royal castle is built.
The ghost of the slain boy soldier who gave him the dagger tells Macbeth that he won't be slain by any man born of a woman. The King is found wandering the hills by Lennox. Anxious at this, in a fit of rage, Macbeth orders Macduff's family and servants to be killed. Lady Macduff and her children are captured and burned at the stake, while a distraught Lady Macbeth watches the execution. After the burning she takes out the dagger, used to kill Duncan and washes it. Meanwhile, Macduff meets up with Malcolm, gathering troops in England. Ross and Angus inform Macduff about the murder of his family and servants. Stricken with grief and anger, Macduff swears revenge and he and Malcolm join forces to challenge Macbeth. Haunted by guilt, Lady Macbeth returns to the church in her village, now abandoned, laments the terrible deeds that have been done, how her hands are covered in blood, she sees the ghost of her dead child, which she urges to go to bed. She wanders in the hills and sees the three witches as she walks towards them.
In the castle, rumours spread that Macbeth has gone mad and his subjects fear h
Macbeth (1911 film)
Macbeth is a 1911 film adaptation of the William Shakespeare play Macbeth. Like all films of the time, it is black-and-white, with English intertitles. William Barker Frank Benson as Macbeth Constance Benson as Lady Macbeth Murray Carrington Guy Rathbone Macbeth on IMDb
Siward, Earl of Northumbria
Siward or Sigurd was an important earl of 11th-century northern England. The Old Norse nickname Digri and its Latin translation Grossus are given to him by near-contemporary texts. Siward was of Scandinavian origin a relative of Earl Ulf, emerged as a powerful regional strongman in England during the reign of Cnut. Cnut was a Scandinavian ruler who conquered England in the 1010s, Siward was one of the many Scandinavians who came to England in the aftermath of that conquest. Siward subsequently rose to become sub-ruler of most of northern England. From 1033 at the latest Siward was in control of southern Northumbria, that is, present-day Yorkshire, governing as earl on Cnut's behalf, he entrenched his position in northern England by marrying Ælfflæd, the daughter of Ealdred, Earl of Bamburgh. After killing Ealdred's successor Eadulf in 1041, Siward gained control of all Northumbria, he exerted his power in support of Cnut's successors, kings Harthacnut and Edward, assisting them with vital military aid and counsel.
He gained control of the middle shires of Northampton and Huntingdon by the 1050s, there is some evidence that he spread Northumbrian control into Cumberland. In the early 1050s Earl Siward turned against the Scottish king Mac Bethad mac Findlaích. Despite the death of his son Osbjorn, Siward defeated Mac Bethad in battle in 1054. More than half a millennium the adventure in Scotland earned him a place in William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Siward died in 1055, leaving one son, who would succeed to Northumbria. St Olave's church in York and nearby Heslington Hill are associated with Siward. Source material on Siward's life and career is scarce, only a small and unrepresentative amount of information exists. No contemporary or near-contemporary biography has survived, narratives from around the time of his life such as the Encomium Emmae and the Vita Ædwardi Regis scarcely mention him. Anglo-Norman histories may or may not be reliable depending on their source material, but useful ones include the Chronicle of John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Orderic Vitalis.
Other sources include. Legendary material, such as that in hagiography or medieval sources such as John of Fordun or Andrew of Wyntoun, is not regarded as useful beyond its limited potential for cleanly preserving earlier source material. Siward's career in northern England spanned the reigns of four different monarchs, it began during the reign of Cnut, lasted through those of Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut into the early years of Edward the Confessor. Most important was the reign of Cnut, in which so many new political figures rose to power that some historians think it comparable to the Norman conquest five decades later; these "new men" were military figures with weak hereditary links to the West Saxon royal house that Cnut had deposed. As Cnut ruled several Scandinavian kingdoms in addition to England, power at the highest level was delegated to such strongmen. In England, it fell to a handful of newly promoted "ealdormen" or "earls", who ruled a shire or group of shires on behalf of the king.
Siward was, in the words of historian Robin Fleming, "the third man in Cnut's new triumvirate of earls", the other two being Godwine, Earl of Wessex and Leofwine, Earl of Mercia. Northern England in the 11th-century was a region quite distinct from the rest of the country; the former kingdom of Northumbria stretched from the Humber and Mersey estuaries, northward to the Firth of Forth, passing the western Kingdom of Strathclyde, it met the Kingdom of Alba. Northumbria had been united with the West Saxon English kingdom only in the 950s, by King Eadred, subsequent control was exerted through the agency of at least two ealdormen, one to the north and one to the south of the River Tees; the former is associated with the stronghold of Bamburgh, while the latter is associated with the great Roman city of York. It was a politically fragmented region; the western part, from Lancashire to Cumberland, was settled by Norse-Gaels, while in the rest of Northumbria English and Anglo-Scandinavian regional magnates—thegns and high-reeves—exercised a considerable degree of independence from the ealdormen.
One such example was the magnate Thurbrand, a hold in Yorkshire based in Holderness, whose family were at odds with the ruling earls at Bamburgh. Historians claim Siward to be of Scandinavian origin, a conclusion supported by the Vita Ædwardi Regis, which states that Siward was " Digri in the Danish tongue". Legendary material incorporated in the Vita et passio Waldevi comitis, the hagiographic biography of Siward's son Waltheof, states that Siward was the son of a Scandinavian earl named Bjorn and provides a genealogy claiming that he was the descendant of a polar bear, a commonplace piece of Germanic folklore. Historian Timothy Bolton has argued that the similarities between these genealogies is evidence of a shared family tradition between the descendants of Siward and Thorgil Sprakling. Bolton hypothesized that Siward's alleged father Bjorn was a historical figure, a brother of Thorgil Sprakling. Siward would have been first cousin
Hector Boece
Hector Boece, known in Latin as Hector Boecius or Boethius, was a Scottish philosopher and historian, the first Principal of King's College in Aberdeen, a predecessor of the University of Aberdeen. He was born in Dundee where he attended school and was educated at the nearby University of St Andrews, he left to study at the University of Paris where he met Erasmus, with whom he became close friends while they were both students at the austere Collège de Montaigu, to whose reforming Master, Jan Standonck, Boece became Secretary. By 1497 he had become a professor of philosophy at Collège de Montaigu. In 1500, he was induced to leave Paris for Aberdeen by a generously financed offer to become the first principal of the newly established University of Aberdeen, created at the behest of James IV by William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen under the authority of a Papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI. From onwards, he worked with Elphinstone, to set up the new university and by 1505, regular lectures were taking place at King's College.
The university structure was modelled of Orléans. As intended, Boece was installed as the first principal of the university and gave lectures on medicine and on divinity. At the end of 1534, Boece became Rector of Fyvie, he died in Aberdeen two years at the age of 71. Boece published two books, one of biography and one of history. In 1522 he published the Vitae Episcoporum Murthlacensium et Aberdonensium and in 1527 the Historia Gentis Scotorum to the accession of James III of Scotland; the former was the basis of a poem in Scots by Alexander Gardyne. Reception of the HistoriaThe Historia is the work for which Boece is remembered, as the second scholarly history of the Scots to be written, it was written in a flowing and pleasing style, became popular, led to ecclesiastical preferment and royal favour. By modern standards it is overly patriotic, has many inaccuracies; the historical account of Macbeth of Scotland, in particular, flattered the antecedents of Boece's patron King James IV of Scotland, maligned the real Macbeth.
The work was well received at the time, both in Europe and in Scotland, after its translation from Latin into French and in 1536 from Latin into Scots by John Bellenden. There are some glimpses in the Historia of contemporary Scotland, such as the statement that the Eurasian beaver, soon to become extinct in Scotland, was still common around Loch Ness. Continuations of the Historia and its influenceBoece's Historia as published terminated in 1438. In the early 1530s the scholar Giovanni Ferrerio, engaged by Robert Reid of Kinloss Abbey, wrote a continuation of Boece's history, extending it another 50 years, to the end of the reign of James III. John Lesley in his De Origine, Moribus, et Rebus Gestis Scotorum, Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, provided further continuations; the metrical translation into Scots by William Stewart, not published until the nineteenth century provided some expansion. The chronicler Polydore Vergil made some use of Boece for his 1534 Historia Anglica. David Chalmers of Ormond in his Histoire abbregée wrote about the French and Scottish monarchies, relying on Boece for the Scottish account.
The Historia was translated into English for Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England and Ireland. The account in Holinshed's Chronicle was used by William Shakespeare as the basis of his play Macbeth. George Buchanan made heavy use of Boece in his Rerum Scoticarum Historia. Boece's sourcesBoece's claimed; the works of John Fordun and Walter Bower defined the tradition which he attempted to make seamless, filling the gaps in the chronicle, applying the approach common to humanists of his period. The works of Tacitus had been rediscovered, in the 14th century, contained material relevant to British history. There was a group of sources that remain debated: material from Elphinstone, the authors Veremundus, Cornelius Hibernicus, John Campbell. No written record of these works survives. Sharp criticism of the sourcing of Boece's history was voiced in the sixteenth century by Humphrey Lhuyd and John Twyne. In the eighteenth century the historical content of the earlier parts of work was dismantled by Thomas Innes.
Boece shared in the credulity of his age. The charge of inventing his authorities brought against Boece, has been the subject of recent scholarship. One example of Boece being cleared of the charge of fabricating his work concerns the Battle of Luncarty Luncarty Clan Hay, he was suspected by the Scottish historian John Hill Burton of inventing that battle but, Walter Bower writing in his Scotichronicon around 1440, some 87 years before Boece first published his Scotorum Historia, refers to the battle briefly. The "John Campbell" is tentatively identified as Boece's contemporary John Campbell of Lundie. "Veremundus", it is argued, may be a Richard Vairement of the 13th century. Evonium List of legendary kings of Scotland Sleuth hound Robert. "Boece, Hector". A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen. 1. Glasgow: Blackie and Son. Pp. 262–68 – via Wikisource. Cousin, John William. "Boece
