MACBETH THE KINGIn The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, he refers to Shakespeare’s portrayal of elves as silly deformed creatures as unforgivable and thus he sought to portray elves closer to the original Nordic and perhaps Celtic and Saxon traditions. I would agree with Tolkien in his assessment of Shakespeare’s untruths but would also add that what he did to Macbeth was equally unforgivable. I know that Nigel Tranter’s Macbeth the King was a historical fiction, but even without that obvious bias, the real Macbeth is so unlike Shakespeare’s Macbeth that it is doubtful the two characters were one and the same. Macbeth the King is a historical story that follows the actual story of Macbeth as closely as possible and some of the evidence is sketchy. What we do know is that he ruled Scotland for seventeen years that were relatively prosperous. He defeated King Duncan in battle although whether he killed him in person or not is disputed. In a time when the strongest, most vigorous chieftain became a lord or a king, the fact that he ruled for seventeen years and saw fit to make a pilgrimage to Rome tells us more than Shakespeare’s bastardisation. An absent king would have been more vulnerable and could have returned to find his kingdom in ruins. He was a Pictish king who succeeded in uniting Pictland (Moray) with Alba (Scotland) to create the Scotland we know today. His defeat at the hands of Duncan’s son is chronicled as is his death a year later. We know he was married to Gruoch, who was also of royal descent and that he was her second husband. It may have been a marriage of political convenience but that is nothing new for that era. Tranter’s story fills in the blanks, colouring the landscape and inviting us into a world that for us remains inaccessible unless we have a time machine. He has put a romantic twist on the relationship between Gruoch and Macbeth, which could also be an untruth but believable enough and serves to show us Macbeth the man. We see him enacting just and humane laws relating to the inheritance of land and titles by women, which back then favoured men, establishing merchant guilds and encouraging closer ties between church and state. Some of that we can only guess at to be honest but it does serve to bring us closer to an actual meeting with the historical Macbeth. The Celtic church was different to the Roman Catholic church in that their priests could marry and seem to have been a little more worldly and practical.I found the story one of his more refreshing tales and opened my eyes a little wider to the silliness of Shakespeare’s plays. The Macbeth of Tranter is portrayed as a king, husband and father, but also as a man with faults and failings like all the rest of us. As usual his descriptions are evocative and true to life, which back then was short, sharp and brutal. He manages to portray a divided Scotland that was only just beginning to emerge from the Dark Ages to become a united kingdom. Britain is on the cusp of change just before the Norman invasion. The Danes still hold the northern parts of England against the Anglo Saxons to the south. Scotland was very much on the outer fringes but Tranter has his Macbeth trying to unite a fractured land and finding his worst enemies are not outside Scotland but far closer at hand. His betrayal and eventual death are not spoilers, we already know the end before we start the book. It may not be the exact truth but Macbeth the King serves as a vital counter punch against the folly of Shakespeare and puts Macbeth in his rightful place as a king who for seventeen fruitful years ruled Scotland and was ultimately betrayed by his own people.
