Context: Jacobean World, James I & Witchcraft
Shakespeare’s Jacobean Audience
Shakespeare wrote Macbeth around 1606, during the reign of King James I — a monarch with a personal, scholarly obsession with witchcraft. James had written Daemonologie (1597), a treatise arguing that witches were real servants of the Devil who could summon storms, cause disease, and predict the future. He had personally overseen witch trials in Scotland, including the North Berwick trials of 1590 where over seventy people were accused of using witchcraft to sink his ship. For a Jacobean audience, the witches in Macbeth were not theatrical fantasy — they were a terrifying, credible threat.
Understanding this context helps you make sense of the play. The Shakespeare section gives you a printed extract and asks two questions: (i) a close analysis of the extract itself, and (ii) a wider exploration of a theme or character across the whole play. Neither question gives marks for context on its own, so use it to work out what a line meant to its first audience and then get back to the words.
King James I published Daemonologie in 1597, arguing that witches had genuine demonic powers. He personally attended witch trials in Scotland. Shakespeare wrote Macbeth partly to flatter the new king’s interests and validate his fears about the supernatural threat to royal authority.
The Divine Right of Kings
Jacobean society was structured around the divine right of kings — the conviction that the monarch was God’s anointed representative on Earth. To commit regicide was not merely treason; it was a sin against the Almighty. This belief was underpinned by the Great Chain of Being — a rigid hierarchy placing God at the top, then angels, the monarch, nobles, commoners, and animals.
When Macbeth murders Duncan in Act 2, he tears apart this God-given order. Shakespeare makes the cosmic consequences immediate. In Act 2, Scene 4, Ross and the Old Man describe how “dark night strangles the travelling lamp” (the sun is eclipsed), a falcon is killed by a mousing owl, and Duncan’s horses “turned wild in nature” and ate each other. These unnatural events demonstrate that regicide disrupts the entire Chain of Being.
The Chain of Being explains why nature collapses after Duncan’s death. The falcon (noble, representing Duncan) killed by a “mousing owl” (lower, representing Macbeth) is a direct allegory: a lesser being has destroyed a greater one. A Jacobean audience would interpret these as God’s anger. The sun being blocked — “dark night strangles the travelling lamp” — uses violent personification to suggest even the heavens cannot witness the aftermath.
Shakespeare uses this to reassure his audience: those who defy the Chain are always punished. Macbeth’s downfall is not just dramatic justice — it is cosmic justice, restoring the natural order.
The Gunpowder Plot (1605)
Shakespeare almost certainly wrote Macbeth in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot — Guy Fawkes’s failed attempt to blow up Parliament and kill King James I on 5 November 1605. Its failure was presented as divine intervention: God had protected His anointed ruler.
Macbeth’s murder of Duncan mirrors the plotters’ attempt on James, and his destruction reassures both king and audience that regicide can never succeed. The Porter’s reference to an “equivocator” in Act 2, Scene 3 alludes to Father Henry Garnet, a Jesuit priest executed for involvement in the Plot. Garnet defended “equivocation” — giving deliberately misleading answers under oath — which Shakespeare weaves into the play’s wider theme of deception and “fair is foul.”
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was a Catholic conspiracy to assassinate James I. The Porter alludes to Father Henry Garnet (“an equivocator”) in Act 2, Scene 3. The play’s message — that regicides are always destroyed — directly flatters James and reinforces the divine right of kings.
Witchcraft Beliefs and the 1604 Witchcraft Act
In 1604, Parliament passed a Witchcraft Act making it a capital offence to invoke evil spirits. Witches were believed to have familiars — animal companions given by the Devil — and to be capable of controlling weather, cursing livestock, and foretelling the future.
Shakespeare exploits these beliefs from the opening. The witches’ familiars call — “I come, Graymalkin!” (a grey cat) and “Paddock calls” (a toad) — immediately signalling demonic allegiance. Their chant “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” inverts the moral order, establishing the play’s central motif of appearance versus reality. The witches speak in trochaic tetrameter — stressed-then-unstressed rhythm that sounds jagged compared to noble characters’ iambic pentameter — reinforcing that they exist outside the human order.
The witches prophesy that Banquo will be “lesser than Macbeth, and greater” and his descendants will be kings. This flatters James I, who traced his ancestry to the historical Banquo through the Stuart line. In Act 4, Scene 1, the apparition of eight kings followed by Banquo’s ghost represents the Stuart dynasty stretching into the future.
The play explicitly endorses the Stuart claim while condemning anyone who challenges it. Macbeth’s usurpation produces no legitimate heirs — his line ends in destruction, while Banquo’s endures through divine favour.
How Context Helps You Read the Play
Context is not assessed on your Shakespeare question. Use it to sharpen an analytical point, never as a paragraph of its own. Rather than “Jacobeans believed in witchcraft,” write: “Shakespeare’s use of familiars (‘Graymalkin’ and ‘Paddock’) would have immediately signalled demonic allegiance to a Jacobean audience who believed the 1604 Witchcraft Act was necessary to combat a genuine supernatural threat.”