The Orygynale Cronykil suggests that Duff was murdered. In John of Fordun's work, the reign of Duff is portrayed as having suffered from pervasive witchcraft. Historically, Duff was a 10th century King of Alba. These served as the basis for the account given in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), on whose narratives of King Duff and King Duncan Shakespeare in part based Macbeth. The overall plot that would serve as the basis for Macbeth is first seen in the writings of two chroniclers of Scottish history, John of Fordun, whose prose Chronica Gentis Scotorum was begun about 1363, and Andrew of Wyntoun's Scots verse Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, written no earlier than 1420. Shakespeare drew mostly from Holinshed's Chronicles (1587).Īlthough characterised sporadically throughout the play, Macduff serves as a foil to Macbeth and a figure of morality. The character is first known from Chronica Gentis Scotorum (late 14th century) and Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland (early 15th century). He can be seen as the avenging hero who helps save Scotland from Macbeth's tyranny in the play. Macduff, a legendary hero, plays a pivotal role in the play: he suspects Macbeth of regicide and eventually kills Macbeth in the final act. Lord Macduff, the Thane of Fife, is a character and the main antagonist in William Shakespeare's Macbeth (c.1603–1607) that is loosely based on history. Not the hero, the warrior, the king, but the tyrant-again-the monster, the freak.John Langford Pritchard as Macduff, depicted by Richard James Lane in 1838 People will point at you, and laugh, and mock you’ll be the prime exhibit in a freak-show, like one of the rarer monsters, a two-headed calf, a mermaid-you’ll be the headline attraction, on the posters, painted upon a pole, letting everyone know, ‘here may you see the tyrant’. (Again it’s a nod forward to Antony and Cleopatra: that public humiliation in a Roman triumph is what Cleopatra dreads and refuses.) You’ll be blinking in the glare of the flashbulbs, unflattering angles on the television news, unkempt and shambling. And live to be the show and gaze of the time, to be paraded in front of all the troops, ours and those few who’ve remained on your side. Then yield thee, coward, says Macduff, uncompromising, turning the knife with coward. I’ll not fight with thee, he says to Macduff. They’ve destroyed me through their deceptions I believed them and it’s all come crashing down. They keep the word of promise to our ear, kept telling me everything would turn out well, that I was untouchable, invulnerable-and then break their word to our hope. Unsurprisingly, he takes the deception personally he’s been let down by voices and words that he trusted. I’m not going to believe these juggling fiends any longer, these trickster devils, who cheat and lie, palter with us in a double sense, deceive with their equivocations. But, cursing aside, that news has cowed Macbeth’s better part of man, his courage, unmanned him, he would say. Accursed be the tongue that tells me so, Macduff that is, who was (technically at least) not of woman born, untimely ripped from his mother’s womb. Temporarily at least, all the stuffing goes out of Macbeth, and he falters in the fight, and turns his ire on the witches, the apparitions, the spirits whose prophecies he trusted utterly, and which have, one by one, been shown to be so false. We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, I’ll not fight with thee.Īnd live to be the show and gaze o’th’ time. That keep the word of promise to our ear,Īnd break it to our hope. MACBETH Accursèd be that tongue that tells me so,Īnd be these juggling fiends no more believed,
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