Witches and Jesuits : Shakespeare's Macbeth

217 Pages·1995·9.013 MB·English

by  Garry Wills

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SHAKESPEARE’S MACBET.
A mn
Each year the New York Public Library and Oxford University
Press invite a prominent figure in the arts and letters to give a set
of three lectures on a topic of his or her choice. The lectures be-
come the basis of a book jointly published by the Library and the
Press. Books in this series already published are The Old World’s
New World by C. Vann Woodward and Culture of Complaint: The
Fraying of America by Robert Hughes.
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= Shakespeare's Macbeth —
= | Garry Wills
= The New York Public Library
ape OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
=< New York Oxford -
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Oxford University Press
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and associated companies in
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Copyright © 1995 by Literary Research, Inc.
First published in 1995 jointly by The New York Public Library and
Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1996
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wills,-Garry, 1934—-
Witches and Jesuits : Shakespeare's Macbeth / Garry Wills.
p- cm. Includes indexes.
ISBN 0-19-508879-4
ISBN 0-19-510290-8 (Pbk.)
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Macbeth.
2. Literature and history—England—History—17th century.
3. Macbeth, King of Scotland, 11th cent.—In literature.
4, Gunpowder Plot, 1605, in literature. 5, Witchcraft in literature.
6. Jesuits—In literature. 7. Tragedy. I. Title.
PR2823.W49 1995
822.3'3—dce20 94-14201
24681097531
Printient dh e United States of America
mote Memory af -
Frank and Elsie Meyer
| for oa the nights we spent _
reading Shakespeare together s,
till dawn
The male witch with his magic circle, wand, and robe. From the Art Collection of
the Folger Shakespeare Library. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Acknowledgments
This book began to shape itself in my mind during the early 1960s,
when I taught Shakespeare in the night school at the Johns Hopkins
University. In the early 1970s I commuted from Baltimore to the
Folger Library in Washington while preparing three lectures on
Shakespeare which I delivered as Regents Professor of the University
of California at Santa Barbara. The third of those lectures—“Lady
Macbeth and the Witches’”—was repeated at several universities,
including Yale and Notre Dame, before becoming Chapter Four of
this book. I read for years with a view to expanding that lecture, but I
had no opportunity to deal with the whole play until I was invited to
deliver the Oxford University Press Lectures at the New York City
Public Library in May of 1993.
I am grateful to both institutions—the Press and the Library—for
their gracious treatment at those lectures, and especially to Sheldon
Meyer (of the former) and David Cronin (of the latter), as well as to
the staffs at the Folger and Newberry Libraries. In expanding the
three lectures to seven chapters, I benefited from the expertise of
colleagues at Northwestern—William Monter’s deep knowledge of
Renaissance witchcraft, Lacey Baldwin Smith’s of Renaissance En-
glish history, and Mary Beth Rose’s of Renaissance English literature.
Other scholars who gave generous help are Leeds Barroll and David
« vii »
Acknowledgments
Bevington. I could not take all their deeply appreciated advice (one
sometimes disagreed with the other). Some rightly warned me that
suggestions about performance, in Stuart or in modern times, are
necessarily conjectural and cannot rank with other matters in their
degree of certitude. Admittedly. But I risk such suggestions, since I
try to consider Shakespeare as creating performable meaning, not just
words on a page. I offer some conjectures exempli gratia, to show these
meanings could be performed—not that they had to be done in any
single way.
« viii »
Contents
introduction The Trouble with Macbeth 1
one Gunpowder 11
two Witches 33
three Male Witch 51
four Lady Macbeth 75
five Jesuits 91
six Malcolm 107
seven Macbeth 125
cou lusina) =h e Ts of Performance 145
Appendix I: Date of the Play 151
Appendix II: Text of the Play 159
Key to Brief Citations 165
Notes 167
Line Index to the Play 203
Index of Names 207
« ix »
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