In the following scene, soldiers report to King Duncan of Scotland that his generals Banquo and Macbeth have just defeated a rebellion allied with forces from Norway and Ireland and led by the traitorous Thane of Cawdor.

With this news of his family's murders, Macduff is stricken with grief, but he is quickly provoked to vengeance by Malcolm who explains that he has raised an army with the help of the English King Edward.

Meanwhile, Prince Malcolm's allied forces plan to join up at Birnam Wood, additionally supported by Macduff and defecting Scottish thanes alarmed by Macbeth's recent barbarities.

He implies that Lady Macbeth's death was a suicide, declares his benevolent intentions for the country, promotes his thanes to earls, and invites all to see him crowned at Scone.

A principal source comes from the Daemonologie of King James published in 1597 which included a news pamphlet titled Newes from Scotland that detailed the famous North Berwick witch trials of 1590.

[5] The publication of Daemonologie came just a few years before the tragedy of Macbeth with the themes and setting in a direct and comparative contrast with King James' personal obsessions with witchcraft, which developed following his conclusion that the stormy weather that threatened his passage from Denmark to Scotland was a targeted attack.

One of the evidenced passages is referenced when the women under trial confessed to attempt the use of witchcraft to raise a tempest and sabotage the boat King James and his queen were on board during their return trip from Denmark.

[14] As presented by Harold Bloom in 2008: "[S]cholars cite the existence of several topical references in Macbeth to the events of that year, namely the execution of the Father Henry Garnet for his alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, as referenced in the porter's scene.

[15] Shakespeare, by having Macbeth say that demons "palter...in a double sense" and "keep the promise to our ear/And break it to our hope", confirmed James's belief that equivocation was a "wicked" practice, which reflected in turn the "wickedness" of the Catholic Church.

Likewise, the critic Andrew Hadfield noted the contrast the play draws between the saintly King Edward the Confessor of England who has the power of the royal touch to cure scrofula and whose realm is portrayed as peaceful and prosperous versus the bloody chaos of Scotland.

In the words of Jonathan Gil Harris, the play expresses the "horror unleashed by a supposedly loyal subject who seeks to kill a king and the treasonous role of equivocation.

[44] It is also widely believed that the character of Hecate, as well as some lines of the First Witch (4.1 124–131), were not part of Shakespeare's original play but were added by the Folio editors and possibly written by Middleton,[45] though "there is no completely objective proof" of such interpolation.

After Macbeth is unexpectedly greeted with his new title as Thane of Cawdor as prophesied by the witches, Banquo comments: New honours come upon him, Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould, But with the aid of use And, at the end, when the tyrant is at bay at Dunsinane, Caithness sees him as a man trying in vain to fasten a large garment on him with too small a belt: He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause Within the belt of rule while Angus sums up what everybody thinks ever since Macbeth's accession to power: now does he feel his title Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief Like Richard III, but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall.

He may also have intended an elaborate compliment to James's belief in the divine right of kings,[clarification needed] although this hypothesis, outlined at greatest length by Henry N. Paul, is not universally accepted.

This dependence, though most closely associated with A. C. Bradley, is clear as early as the time of Mary Cowden Clarke, who offered precise, if fanciful, accounts of the predramatic lives of Shakespeare's female leads.

[62] According to the actor Sir Donald Sinden, in his Sky Arts TV series Great West End Theatres Contrary to popular myth, Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth is not the unluckiest play as superstition likes to portray it.

[77] Sir William Davenant, founder of the Duke's Company, adapted Shakespeare's play to the tastes of the new era, and his version would dominate on stage for around eighty years.

[88][89] In contrast to Hannah Pritchard's savage, demonic portrayal, Siddons' Lady Macbeth, while terrifying, was nevertheless – in the scenes in which she expresses her regret and remorse – tenderly human.

Unlike his English counterparts, he portrayed the character as achieving his stature after the murder of Duncan, growing in presence and confidence: thereby enabling stark contrasts, such as in the banquet scene, which he ended babbling like a child.

Robert Elliston, for example, produced a popular adaptation of Macbeth in 1809 at the Royal Circus described in its publicity as "this matchless piece of pantomimic and choral performance", which circumvented the illegality of speaking Shakespeare's words through mimed action, singing, and doggerel verse written by J. C.

[99] From that time until the end of the Victorian era, London theatre was dominated by the actor-managers, and the style of presentation was "pictorial" – proscenium stages filled with spectacular stage-pictures, often featuring complex scenery, large casts in elaborate costumes, and frequent use of tableaux vivant.

[100][101] Charles Kean (son of Edmund), at London's Princess's Theatre from 1850 to 1859, took an antiquarian view of Shakespeare performance, setting his Macbeth in a historically accurate eleventh-century Scotland.

[102] His leading lady, Ellen Tree, created a sense of the character's inner life: The Times' critic saying "The countenance which she assumed ... when luring on Macbeth in his course of crime, was actually appalling in intensity, as if it denoted a hunger after guilt.

His desire for psychological credibility reduced certain aspects of the role: He described Macbeth as a brave soldier but a moral coward, and played him untroubled by conscience – clearly already contemplating the murder of Duncan before his encounter with the witches.

[115][116] Late nineteenth-century European Macbeths aimed for heroic stature, but at the expense of subtlety: Tommaso Salvini in Italy and Adalbert Matkowsky in Germany were said to inspire awe, but elicited little pity.

Using the imposing spectacle of Fort St. Catherine as a key element of the set, the production was plagued by a host of mishaps, including Charlton Heston being burned when his tights caught fire.

[129][128] The RSC again achieved critical success in Gregory Doran's 1999 production at The Swan, with Antony Sher and Harriet Walter in the central roles, once again demonstrating the suitability of the play for smaller venues.

[130][131] Doran's witches spoke their lines to a theatre in absolute darkness, and the opening visual image was the entrance of Macbeth and Banquo in the berets and fatigues of modern warfare, carried on the shoulders of triumphant troops.

In Soviet-controlled Prague in 1977, faced with the illegality of working in theatres, Pavel Kohout adapted Macbeth into a 75-minute abridgement for five actors, suitable for "bringing a show in a suitcase to people's homes".

[135] The same director's tour of London in 1987 was widely praised by critics, even though (like most of their audience) they were unable to understand the significance of Macbeth's gestures, the huge Buddhist altar dominating the set, or the petals falling from the cherry trees.