What is the Role of the Witches in Macbeth?! 1. James VI and I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death. The kingdoms of Scotland and England were individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciary, and laws, though both were ruled by James in personal union. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and a great-great-grandson of Henry VII, King of England and Lord of Ireland (through both his parents), uniquely positioning him to eventually accede to all three thrones. James succeeded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother Mary was compelled to abdicate in his favour. Four different regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1583. In 1603, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died without issue.[a] He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known as the Jacobean era after him, until his death in 1625 at the age of 58. After the Union of the Crowns, he based himself in England (the largest of the three realms) from 1603, only returning to Scotland once in 1617, and styled himself "King of Great Britain and Ireland". He was a major advocate of a single parliament for England and Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonisation of the Americas began. 2. Macbeth begins with the meeting of three witches who plan to meet Macbeth once the battle to quell a rebellion and a Viking invasion has been defeated. We learn from them that their intentions are to trick Macbeth through their words: 'fair is foul and foul is fair". Many Elizabethans believed in the role played by heavenly powers in influencing human affairs. In fact the new King, James I was a believer in witches. In the spring of 1590, James VI returned from Oslo to Scotland after marrying Princess Anne, daughter of the King of Denmark-Norway. The Danish court at that time was greatly perplexed by witchcraft and the black arts, and this must have impressed on the young King James who was 24 years old at the time. The regal voyage back from Denmark was beset by a series of violent storms and James and Anne were very lucky not to have died in a shipwreck. 3. In the summer of 1590 a great witch hunt was instituted in Copenhagen. One of the first victims was Anna Koldings, who under pressure divulged the names of five other women, one of whom was Mail the wife of the burgomaster of Copenhagen. They all confessed that they had been guilty of sorcery in raising storms that menaced Queen Anne's voyage, and that they had sent devils to climb up the keel of her ship. In September two women were burnt as witches at Kronborg. 4.James heard news from Denmark regarding this and decided to set up his own tribunal. This tribunal became known as the North Berwick Witch Trials. The witch trails led to the first major persecution of witches in Scotland under the Witchcraft Act 1563. Several people, most notably Agnes Sampson, were convicted of using witchcraft to send storms against James's ship. James personally supervised the torture of Agnes and other women accused of being witches. 5. Over the next few years James became obsessed with the threat posed by witches and wrote the Daemonologie, 1597; a tract which opposed the practice of witchcraft and which provided background material for Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth. 6. On May 19, 1603, two months after the death of Queen Elizabeth 1 and the accession to the English throne of the Scottish King James, Shakespeareʼs company, the Lord Chamberlainʼs Men, where formally declared to be the Kingʼs Men.The players had every reason to be grateful to their royal master and attentive to his pleasure and interest. It has long been argued that one of the most striking signs of this gratitude is ʻMacbethʼ, based on a story from Scottish history, particularly apt for a monarch who traced his line back to Banquo, the noble thane whose murder Macbeth orders after he has killed King Duncan. 7. As is so often the case with Shakespeare, we do not have a secure date for either the composition or the first performance of Macbeth. The first printed text is in the 1623 First Folio, but the play is usually dated 1606, principally because of a joke made by a minor character that must have provoked a ripple of shuddering laughter among the original audiences. 8. ACT 1-SCENE III. A heath near Forres.! Thunder. Enter the three Witches First Witch! Where hast thou been, sister? Second Witch! Killing swine. Third Witch! Sister, where thou? First Witch! A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, And munch'd, and munch'd, and munch'd:-- 'Give me,' quoth I: 'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries. Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger: But in a sieve I'll thither sail, And, like a rat without a tail, 10 I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do. Second Witch! I'll give thee a wind. First Witch! Thou'rt kind. Third Witch! And I another. First Witch! I myself have all the other, And the very ports they blow, All the quarters that they know I' the shipman's card. I will drain him dry as hay: Sleep shall neither night nor day 20 Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man forbid: Weary se'nnights nine times nine Shall he dwindle, peak and pine: Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tost. Look what I have. Second Witch! Show me, show me. First Witch! Here I have a pilot's thumb, 30 Wreck'd as homeward he did come. Drum within! Third Witch! A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come. 9. Bald Agnes: Agnes Sampson was one of the accused in the Berwick trials. Known as the 'Wise Wife of Keith', she was brought to Holyrood Palace on specific orders by King James where she was stripped bare and her body shaved. She was then interrogated in the monarch's presence before being affixed to a wall through the aid of a "Witch's Bridle". King James wavered for a while before declaring Agnes guilty of sorcery. She was then taken to Castle Hill, an infamous spot for the execution of convicted witches, where she was strangled and burned at the stake. However some say that this wasn't the last of Agnes Sampson, and her vengeful ghost, known as 'Bald Agnes', is still rumoured to roam nude around Holyrood Palace, the place of her terrible captivity.