“I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me” (1.7.62-63). These are the only lines in William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth that allude to a Macbeth family other than the husband and wife duo. While Shakespeare scholars like Cleanth Brooks, Joseph Campana, and Grace Tiffany discuss the roles of children, heirs, and sovereignty in Macbeth, they focus on the children who exist or sons who will exist as represented by the apparitions shown by the witches, but these are the sons of others.1 They do not address Macbeth’s own childlessness as a possible contributing factor for his decision to murder Duncan.  In addition, many film adaptations of the play gloss over the backstory implied by Lady Macbeth’s lines quoted above, but the 2015 adaptation, directed by Justin Kurzel and starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, takes a different approach and addresses this detail directly.2 In doing so the film draws out the absent heir in Macbeth’s home and links it to Macbeth’s usurpation of power. As Linda Hutcheon says, “an adaptation is an announced and extensive transposition of a particular work or works. This ‘transcoding’ can involve … a change of frame and therefore context: telling the same story from a different point of view, … [which] can create a manifestly different interpretation” (8). Additionally, adaptations of older literary texts, like those of Shakespeare, often seek to fill in gaps that are left in the storyline, provide answers for questions that remain open to speculation, or complicate seemingly flat characters or straightforward situations. As Russell Jackson suggests, “...the writer of a Shakespeare screenplay … is more likely to be constructing than deconstructing” (7). In the context of Shakespeare’s works and the amount of cultural weight they carry for audiences, adapters must also be aware of the critical and cultural values associated with a text when transforming it for the screen. As Imelda Whelehan says, “In the case of the Shakespeare film, interpretation, awareness of academic critical debates and imaginative filmic translation of stagey scenes is essential...” (7).

Kurzel’s adaptation brings the academic and imaginative together by shaping Shakespeare’s tragedy into a story that focuses on power’s connection to patriarchal succession and thus underscores the historical concern for legitimate heirs for early modern English audiences. Ultimately, the adaptation suggests that Macbeth’s motivation for murdering Duncan is not only a move to usurp power but an avenue for producing a legitimate heir in the wake of the loss of a previous and seemingly only child.3

In order to establish the link between power and patriarchal succession in Kurzel’s 2015 adaptation and in Shakespeare’s script, I will show that Macbeth is concerned with his lack of an heir and that he sees the murder of Duncan as a means of providing an opportunity to both seize power and produce a legitimate heir of his own.

The Haunting of Macbeth: The Lost Son

Kurzel’s adaptation, Macbeth (2015), opens with an overhead shot of a small child apparently sleeping soundly. He is wrapped in white, his head is covered, as with a shawl, and his hands are folded on his chest (see Figure 1). The shot cuts from the child to a small crowd of people, cloaked in black, and as the action progresses it becomes obvious that this is the funeral of the Macbeths’ child. Lady Macbeth places red berries on the baby’s chest, and Macbeth lays oyster shells over his eyes and releases a handful of Scottish soil onto his chest. The film cuts to medium-long shots of Banquo and his son Fleance among the crowd of mourners several times during this sequence of events.  The juxtaposition between the two families emphasizes the fact that Banquo has a living son, while Macbeth is burying his. This establishing scene, rather than presenting the physical setting of the story (while it suggests it through the Scottish countryside in the background), establishes the theme of the Macbeths’ loss of an heir.

After the funeral pyre is set ablaze as the mourners watch, the scene cuts to an another establishing shot of the Scottish countryside and a subsequent extreme long shot that reveals three figures shrouded in black. Those who are familiar with Shakespeare’s Macbeth cannot help but assume that these are the Witches. The shot moves closer, and it becomes evident that there are four individuals rather than three; a young girl, mostly hidden from view in the previous shot, stands in front of a second woman. One of the other two women holds a baby. Because of the proximity in action between the child’s funeral and the appearance of the woman holding a child, the implication is clear: these women are now the caretakers of the Macbeth’s dead child. Through this visual connection, Kurzel associates the Witches with Macbeth’s lack of an heir even before the Witches prophesy his future kingship.

Kurzel continues to emphasize Macbeth’s loss of an heir in the battle preparations and the battle itself which occupy the next major section of the film.4 The screenplay indicates that some time has passed since the burial of Macbeth's son because he “looks years older now” (Louiso, et al. 2). The reinforcements for Macbeth’s army “are little more than boys, 14-16 years old. Virgins to war, they’re terrified…” (2). Such a young army suggests the destiny of Macbeth’s son had he lived. As the older and younger soldiers prepare together for battle, Macbeth binds a sword to a teenage boy’s hand, as a father would for his son. The next time Macbeth and the Boy are together, Macbeth smears dirt down the Boy’s face to match the war paint the adults already wear. A few shots later, Macbeth is again with the Boy. This time he has his hand on the side of the boy’s face, in a moment of father-like encouragement, before he walks away, and the Boy follows him with his brilliantly clear blue eyes (see Figure 2). Kurzel makes the connection between Macbeth and the Boy obvious and through their interactions together it is clear that this young teenager has replaced the son Macbeth lost, if only in Macbeth’s own mind.

After the preparations for battle are complete, Macbeth’s army charges Macdonwald’s army and their Norwegian mercenaries. The fighting is vicious, but Kurzel doesn’t let the audience forget the Boy amid the chaos. At one point, the audience sees the young man wandering, lost, as the battle rages around him. Later, Macbeth grabs the Boy and pulls him to his feet, barely saving him from attack. This is when Macbeth catches a glimpse of the four witches viewing the battle from just outside the combat zone, while the fighting proceeds in slow-motion behind him. Once again, Kuzel makes a connection between the witches and one of Macbeth’s “children.” The two times the Boy is shown, a long shot of the Witches comes immediately before or after it. As the slow-motion battle continues, the audience witnesses the Boy screaming,6 and a few shots later, an enemy soldier slashes his throat. The scene cuts immediately to the Witches and back to Macbeth looking at them, with the battle raging behind him. It is only at this moment that the fighting comes to life in real time, complete with diegetic sounds. Macbeth, released from the spell he has been under, kills an enemy soldier. Once the battle is over, Kurzel connects Macbeth, the Boy, and Macbeth’s dead son again. The screenplay reads: “Macbeth stands over [the dead Boy]. Alone. A flicker of grief flits over his battle-worn face. The boy an eerie echo of his own son” (Louiso, et al. 10).

After the Witches share their predictions with both Macbeth and Banquo, Kurzel makes another connection between the Boy and Macbeth’s dead child when he portrays Macbeth once again standing over the dead Boy, who is lying on top of a large pile of corpses. The screenplay reads, “Macbeth kneels down by the Boy’s side, fixed by the sight. …. Then gently places [oyster shells] over the boy’s eyes. Just as he did for his son” (Louiso, et al. 15). Despite Macbeth’s victory in battle, he is haunted by the loss of this Boy and the Boy’s symbolic relationship to the son he has lost. He has acted as a father to the Boy and has lost another “son.”

Kurzel continues to stress Macbeth’s lack of an heir by surrounding him with the children of others, especially up until the death of Duncan. When Macbeth and his soldiers return to Inverness after the battle and his subsequent promotion, the audience sees Banquo dismount and catch his son Fleance up in his arms while Macbeth turns slowly away, the only thing in his arms is his sword, as he moves to his own home. At the feast presented in honor of Duncan, a group of children sing for him. Duncan has his son Malcolm by his side, and Fleance sits on Banquo’s knee as they all listen to the choir. The close-up shots of Macbeth show him alone; ironically Lady Macbeth stands toward the back of the group of children, singing with them, as if this group of happy children is symbolic of what she should have, but doesn’t.

In contrast to Shakespeare’s script which begins with the witches, thus emphasizing their role in the action of the play, Kurzel begins his Macbeth by emphasizing Macbeth’s loss of literal and figurative children. It is significant that it is only after these losses that Macbeth encounters the Witches and their prophecy that he will be king: in Kurzel’s adaptation, the ambition to be king is linked closely with the loss of his child. Shakespeare’s script implies what Kurzel stresses on screen, that Macbeth desires an heir and his decision to force the witches’ prophecy to fruition is not only an act of personal ambition but an act that he hopes will cure his childlessness.7

Key to the argument that Macbeth’s desire to seize power is linked to his interest in producing an heir is the textual evidence (both print and visual) of Macbeth’s desire for a child. It is significant that Macbeth did not have any living children. In her chapter “Milking Babe and Bloody Man,” Kahn explains the implications of Macbeth’s childlessness:

Fatherhood is based not on deeds of blood but on the mystery of procreation: the harmony of male and female powers, in step with the steady rhythms of the natural order. …. The men in the play are fruitful: Duncan, Banquo, Macduff, and Siward all have sons, for and through whom they act to perpetuate the natural social order. But the childless Macbeth’s only “firstlings” are murders. The confusion of sexual identity pervading the play is offset by this contrast between the sterility of bloody deeds and the fruition of fatherhood. (175)

Shakespeare places Macbeth in opposition to his peers, and despite his valorous and bloody deeds through victory in battle, he is an outsider because, “Sexually and socially, in Shakespeare’s world, fatherhood validates a man’s identity” (Kahn 183). Barry and Foyster say that this pressure “was particularly acute at the higher end of the social spectrum, where dynastic pressure meant that a couple’s procreative success came under particularly close scrutiny by their kin” (161). Macbeth’s status as a thane and his kinship with the king puts him at the higher end of the social spectrum, and his childlessness becomes even more significant after the witches proclaim Banquo’s prophecy saying, “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none” (1.3.70) thus making him “[l]esser than Macbeth and greater” (1.3.67). Because Macbeth does not, at this moment, have any children, Banquo will ultimately surpass him not only in manhood, but in power through his descendants. Macbeth’s lack of children restrains him from true greatness now and in the future.

It is thus unsurprising that Macbeth fixates on the idea of heirs. Almost the first comment he makes to Banquo after the witches vanish is “Your children shall be kings” (1.3.89). Several lines later, after he receives Cawdor’s title and sees that two of the three witches’ predictions have come true (1.3.125-126), his immediate comment to Banquo is again, “Do you not hope your children / shall be kings?” (1.3.28-29). The significance of this preoccupation is not obvious until later in the play when Lady Macbeth reveals, “I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me” (1.7.62-63). The Macbeths know what it is to have loved and lost a child, making their current childlessness even more compelling. On this aspect of the Macbeths’ marriage, Leggatt says, “Since Lady Macbeth has breastfed, she must have had at least one child (the number does not matter), as her historical equivalent did from a previous marriage” (195). He then posits several questions: “Did the Macbeths have children, who died? Daughters, whom they discount? Did Lady Macbeth have children only by another man? …. Is Macbeth impotent, or potent but sterile? Or was Lady Macbeth’s body damaged in childbirth?” (195). Kurzel’s film leaves behind the ambiguity presented by Shakespeare's script and answers definitively that the Macbeths have had a child together and leaves open the possibility for more in the future.

Macbeth’s focus on Banquo’s heirs combines with his word choices to further suggest his hope for future offspring. When he says to himself that, “Two truths are told / as happy prologues to the swelling act / Of the imperial theme” (1.3.140-142), the image is of two things coming together, like two parents at conception, to be followed by the “the swelling act” of pregnancy. Becoming king would be a symbolic act of conception, pregnancy, and birth. The letter Macbeth sends his wife also implies that becoming king could lead to the birth of future literal children. Macbeth uses the word “greatness” two times in his letter telling her about the witches’ prophecy. In explanation for his letter, he writes, “This have I thought good to deliver /  thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou / mightn’t not lose the dues of rejoicing by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee” (1.5.10-13). The word “greatness” means both importance or honor as well as pregnancy. In other words, Macbeth will be her partner in importance and in procreation. In the second instance, by referring to “the greatness [that] is promised thee,” he suggests that Lady Macbeth is promised greatness through her role as queen as well as through becoming “great” with child. The double entendre of “deliver” also suggests Macbeth’s interest in Lady Macbeth’s pregnancy.8 Thus, Macbeth’s word choice prior to Duncan’s murder hints at his continued desire and a new hopefulness for an heir.

One more scene shows Macbeth’s desire for a child and his belief in the possibility of this taking place after Duncan’s murder. After Lady Macbeth reaffirms Macbeth’s conviction to kill Duncan, he says to her, “Bring forth men-children only, / For thy undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males” (1.7.83-85). Macbeth clearly sees children, specifically male heirs, in their future as they rule Scotland together.9

In arguing that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth want children, I do not intend to ignore the most obvious reason for killing Duncan—the murder is a way to gain power by “the nearest way” (1.5.18)—but the additional reading that his desire for power is inextricably linked to his lack of and therefore future hope for an heir contributes to the significance of their crime. Until this point, I have argued that Macbeth is not only interested in becoming king, but that he also sees kingship as an opportunity for him and his wife to have an heir and that Kurzel’s adaptation privileges this interpretation. Having established his desire for an heir, their plans for Duncan’s murder double as a means of addressing their childlessness, at least in Macbeth’s eyes.

“Hope Springs Eternal” or “Death is Life and Life is Death”: Fertility Tropes in Macbeth

Throughout the scenes leading up to Duncan’s murder both Shakespeare’s script and Kurzel’s adaptation present several fertility tropes that suggest an ironic inversion of methods used to heal being used instead for murder, but they also suggest a hope in Macbeth that the death of Duncan will not only give him the kingship but will also lead to the birth of a future heir. The most obvious way to produce children is through sex. While Shakespeare doesn’t present an act of sex on stage, he does insert familiar fertility imagery in his script. For example, the Macbeths’ home, Inverness, is itself portrayed as a place of fertility. Duncan and Banquo describes it this way:

DUNCAN:      This castle hath a pleasant seat. The air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
BANQUO:      This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle.
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate.     
(1.6.1-12)

Based upon this description, the air is suitable for procreation, and the “guest of summer” (summer being a symbol of life and vitality) makes her nests there. Banquo implies that Inverness is a place of holiness, and therefore purity, because the martlet who lives there is “temple-haunting.” If birds have found this to be a place conducive to breeding, a place for “procreant cradle[s],” it is therefore significant that the Macbeths have remained childless after their son’s death, but it also implies the potential for future heirs to be conceived and born there.

The Inverness portrayed in Kurzel’s film is a small village made of separate buildings rather than a castle, and there are no references in the environment suggesting that the Macbeths’ home in particular is conducive for producing children, but the village itself is home to many children who sing, play, and fight in various locations throughout the village. Unlike Shakespeare, Kurzel includes an actual sex scene in the village chapel after Lady Macbeth allays Macbeth’s concerns about the murder. Lady Macbeth says her famous lines,

I have given suck, and know
How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn
As you have done to this.
(1.7.62-67) 

Macbeth then questions, “If we should fail—” (1.7.68), and she responds, “We fail? / But screw your courage to the sticking place / And we’ll not fail” (1.7.69-71). The couple begins to make love, while Lady Macbeth describes their plan to frame Duncan’s guards. While this may be viewed as a moment of sadism on the part of the Macbeths, I suggest that this could also be read as a moment reflecting the religious and sexual descriptions given by Banquo and Duncan to describe Inverness in Shakespeare’s script. If Macbeth sees Duncan’s murder as a way to open the possibilities for an heir as well as a kingship, sexual intercourse would be a necessary component of the plan.10

In addition to cultivating an active sex life, the use of herbal remedies for illnesses including infertility has been a practice throughout history. The fact that herbs are involved in the management of fertility ironically connects to Lady Macbeth’s use of plants (in its fermented form) when she intoxicates Duncan’s guards before the murder. Another common practice, specifically of the religiously minded, for curing infertility is prayer. Shakespeare inverts the application of this convention in the case of the Macbeths though. Lady Macbeth does not pray for a child but prays, “Come you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here” (1.5.47-48). She is using the mode of prayer and its associations with curing fertility and pleading to be un-womaned and have man-like courage. She also wants resolution of action without the worry of conscience when she says, “Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse, / That no compunctious visitings of nature / Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between / Th’ effect and it” (1.5.51-54). So far, Shakespeare uses herbal remedies and prayer in an ironic way; something that should be used to create life is instead used to create death, and a potential mother disavows all claims to womanhood.

Kurzel’s adaptation reinterprets these ironic elements in Shakespeare’s script to suggest the Macbeths’ hope for new life after death. When Lady Macbeth says the prayer quoted above, she is in their small village chapel. Upon entering the chapel, she appears nun-like, with neatly braided hair, wearing all black. As she prays the words quoted above, the screenplay directs her to look “up to a large cross above the altar” and “from the cross to the tableau engraved into the walls” which are of “[f]earsome devils clutching human babies, stealing them away” (Louiso, et al 18-19). In the completed film, these engravings are turned into tapestries (see Figure 3), but the connection between her prayers regarding the murder of Duncan are connected to the death of children, and by association, specifically the death of her child.

In addition to her prayers in the chapel, Kurzel further connects the chapel, children, and Duncan’s murder. After Duncan’s arrival at Inverness, Lady Macbeth prays again at the altar in the chapel and “then starts to soak a cloth in a dark liquid—preparing a MIXTURE of some kind. She grinds herbs into it with a pestle and mortar as the sound of CHILDREN SINGING bleeds in” (Louiso, et al. 23). In this scene, Lady Macbeth is combining prayer and herbal remedies reminiscent of fertility cures (but ironically used later as sedatives for Duncan’s guards) with the voices of children, as yet only heard but not seen. These children represent the hope of children to come, and the connection is even stronger when Lady Macbeth is shown “amongst them, leading the song. Maternal in her pride” (Louiso, et al. 23). Later when she and Macbeth have sex, Macbeth has pushed her up against the same altar she retrieved the herbs from. When brought together, the herbs, the prayer, the children’s voices, the tapestry, and the sexual encounter between the Macbeths, they suggest that this is a procreative as well as murderous moment.

One other solution for an infertile couple is to use a surrogate and acknowledge the subsequent child as a legal heir. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth exploit this method of using someone else’s body to achieve their own ends if we understand the murder of Duncan additionally as a symbolic rape. But, in order for Duncan to be used as a surrogate, he must be feminized. As king, he is a symbol of Scotland, and because Scotland is referred to as a woman and mother, by default, even though his is a male king, he must embody those associations. Malcolm genders Scotland as female when talking of “her wounds” (4.3.51, emphasis added). Macduff references Scotland’s “truest issue of thy throne” (4.3.124) suggesting that Malcolm is Scotland’s son. Ross continues the concept of Scotland as mother when lamenting, “[Scotland] cannot / Be called our mother, but our grave” (4.3.190-191), and finally Macbeth refers to Scotland as a woman when he asks the doctor if he is able to cure “her disease” (5.3.63). Duncan’s role as king of Scotland implies his figurative femininity.

Duncan is feminized in other ways as well. He combines father and mother into one, when he says to Macbeth, “I have begun to plant thee [masculine role of planting the seed] and will labor [feminine role after conception] to make thee full of growing” (1.4.32-33).11 After merging genders, he is further feminized when he describes himself by saying, “My plenteous joys, / Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves / In drops of sorrow” (1.4.39-41). The double meaning of wantonness as unrestraint, but specifically womanly sexual unrestraint, when combined with the stereotypical female tears is telling in this instance. His femininity is also stressed with the amount of blood Duncan loses at death (“Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him” [5.1.41-42]). Paster says, “The male body, opened and bleeding, can assume the shameful attributes of the incontinent female body as both cause of and justification for its evident vulnerability and defeat. …. Man is naturally whole, closed, opaque, self-contained. To be otherwise is both shameful and feminizing” (92). Duncan’s exceedingly bloody death is another signifier of his femininity.

In addition to Duncan’s feminization, his murder itself implies an act of sexual violence. As Macbeth prepares to kill Duncan, he draws a dagger (a phallic symbol) and walks toward Duncan’s bed chamber. He compares his own journey to that of a wolf “Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, / With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, toward his design / Moves like a ghost” (2.1.66-69). The wolf is a predator, just as a rapist is, and the fact that the wolf’s “ravishing” movements are compared to Tarquin’s, the Roman rapist of Lucrece, and Macbeth’s is significant. After Duncan's murder, the blood covered daggers take on an added significance when considered in the light of a woman’s virginity being forcibly taken. In fact, when Macduff comes out from seeing Duncan’s body, he says, “Approach the chamber and destroy your sight / With a new Gorgon” (2.3.82-83). Leggatt points out that Macduff’s reference to the Gorgon carries associations of rape: Medusa was transformed to a Gorgon after Neptune raped her” (224).

Kurzel’s adaptation doesn’t recite these lines, but it makes an interesting interpretive choice that connects the murder to the hope for an heir. As Macbeth prepares for the murder, the Boy appears before him in the doorway, holding a dagger out to Macbeth. Macbeth says, “Is this [a] dagger, which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?” (2.1.44-45). The Boy does not answer but stares at Macbeth. Macbeth in turns says, “Come, let me clutch thee” (2.1.45). Interestingly, Macbeth looks in the Boy’s eyes, instead of the at the dagger as he says these lines. The focus on the Boy’s eyes suggests that in clutching the dagger, he is also grasping the Boy, and in fact he then reaches his hand up to touch the Boy’s face. This is when the Boy leads Macbeth to Duncan’s tent. In other words, by killing Duncan, he is also able to hold onto his “son,” and his “son” is what leads him to the place (mentally and physically) where he can murder Duncan.

Michael Fassbender’s performance during the murder scene in Kurzel’s adaptation, when combined with the film editing, further stresses the murder as an act of sexual violence. Macbeth approaches the sleeping Duncan, who is clothed in virginal white robes; he stands over him, covers his mouth and then thrusts the knife into Duncan’s body. Macbeth thrusts more and more feverishly as Duncan struggles against the violence. The way the murder is edited, each frame suggests a thrusting movement through Macbeth’s face and body language; after the first thrusts, the audience never actually sees the knife going into Duncan’s body, suggesting that the movement is also sexual and not just murderous. In fact, the screenplay describes the thrusting as “[b]uilding into a frenzy” (Louiso, et al. 33). The scene is cut so that it continually shifts between shots of Lady Macbeth in prayer in the chapel (now associated with sexuality), stallions straining at their ropes in the midst of a wild storm (symbols of violence and virility), and Macbeth’s murder of Duncan (a symbolic rape). After Duncan dies, the audience sees Macbeth sit calmly beside the body, exhausted, until he slowly lies down beside Duncan, as one might do with a lover after a moment of passion.

Through the use of fertility tropes leading up to and including Duncan’s murder and Macbeth’s desire for an heir in the context of having lost one child, it becomes clear that there is a connection between Macbeth’s usurpation of the crown and his lineal hopes for the future. But where does that leave the tragic hero after the blood is literally on his hands?

Be Careful What You Wish For or “The Surrogate and Revenge of the Offspring”

Duncan’s murder is a means to secure a kingship and provide an opportunity for a future legitimate heir. In fact, when Lennox describes the night of the murder, the words he uses reflect the act of labor. He says, “Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of / death, / And prophesying, with accents terrible, / Of dire combustion and confused events / New hatched to th’ woeful time” (2.3.63-67). The night has been full of crying and screaming, like a woman who is in labor, and tumult is hatched, evoking the imagery of a bird escaping its egg. What has been symbolically born is a new king, and, if this birth has taken place, then there will be time for Macbeth to create a legacy through the possibility of literal births to come. Further proof of delivery is the blood-covered body of the “mother,” Duncan. Macbeth is also covered in Duncan’s blood after the murder is complete, and he asks, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red” (2.2.78-81). Lady Macbeth acts as midwife in this situation and tells Macbeth, “Go get some water / And wash this filthy witness from your hand” (2.2.60-61) and later says, “A little water clears us of this deed. / How easy is it, then!” (2.2.86-87). It seems as though the Macbeths have achieved their ends, but according to Leggatt, “the result of the consummation [at Duncan’s death] in not a new-born babe, naked or bloody, but a dead old man” (197). No new heir is born to the couple at this moment; what is born is Macbeth’s new identity as king.

At this point Macbeth believes that he has become the “true” heir of Scotland because of the Witches’ prophecy, and he considers Malcolm and the other thanes as threats to both himself and any future children he might have. Macbeth realizes Malcolm’s threat to his kingship even before Duncan is murdered, saying he “is a step / On which [he] must fall down or else overlap, / For in [his] way it lies” (1.4.55-57). Macbeth knows that he will either have to kill Malcolm or get rid of him in some other way. Fate seems to be working with him, and apparently affirms his right to the kingship when Malcolm and Donalbain flee after the murder and are subsequently assumed to be involved in their own father’s death. Ross says to Macduff, explaining they “Are stol’n away and fled, which puts upon them / Suspicion of the deed” (2.4.37-38). Once the "rightful” heir is born, all others must be put out of the way. Kurzel on the other hand, portrays Macbeth’s and Malcolm’s relationship ambivalently. Malcolm comes into his father’s tent and sees Macbeth sitting on the floor by his bed, holding the daggers. Macbeth says to him, “there, the murderers, / steeped in the colors of their trade” (2.3.133-134), but is he speaking of the daggers rather than the guards as in Shakespeare’s script? A few lines later, Macbeth touches Malcolm’s face with one of the daggers. It is unclear whether Macbeth is threatening Malcolm or warning him. Regardless, Malcolm leaves the tent, mounts a horse, and rides away from Inverness, and a threat is apparently removed.

But there are more dangers to Macbeth and his possible future children beyond Duncan’s biological children; Duncan’s figurative children, the other thanes, are also threats. Macbeth has already acknowledged this father/son relationship between the king and his thanes when he describes their duties to Duncan as “children and servants” (1.4.28). Banquo, now a thane of Macbeth, reminds the audience that he is a threat to Macbeth when he says, “Yet it was said / It should not stand in thy posterity, / But that myself should be the root and father / Of many kings” (3.1.3-6). Macbeth is well aware of Banquo’s prophecy and reveals his fears about Banquo himself and that “in his royalty of nature / Reigns that which would be feared” (3.1.54-55). But it is not only Banquo’s personal qualities that are threats, it is Banquo’s descendants. He remembers the Weïrd Sisters’ prophecy and says,

They hailed him father to a line of kings.
Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
And put a barren scepter in my grip,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding. If ’t be so,
For Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind;
For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered,
Put rancors in the vessel of my peace
Only for them, and mine eternal jewel
Given to the common enemy of man
To make them kings, the seeds of Banquo kings.
(3.1.65-75)

Macbeth determines that both Banquo and his son Fleance must be killed, and they are exiled (one through death, and one through fear) because of their threat to the “true” heir. Macbeth’s focus on both the father and the son demonstrates a concern for both his immediate and his future rule. Despite the doubt he expresses in these lines about the possibility of having children of his own (“If ’t be so”), he knows that if he is able to remove Fleance from the scenario, then Banquo’s heirs will no longer be problematic if he is able to have children. Kurzel highlights this realization. Macbeth places the point of his dagger on Lady Macbeth’s uterus as he says the above lines (see Figure 4).  A few lines later, he manually initiates sex with her. The script reads, “Forcefully she pushes his hand away. He stares at her in surprise. Then, she takes his head in her hands and kisses him hard. Willing him to come back to her” (Louiso, et al. 50). Combining his words and the actions between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, it appears that Macbeth is confirming he has committed Duncan’s murder not only for his own power and position but also for his future children’s, and at this point he is starting to question the efficacy of the plan. Just as manual sex will not produce children, so too a usurpation of power will not produce a stable kingship.

Macduff, the Thane of Fife, is another “child” who is a threat to the true heir. Macbeth fears Macduff’s loyalty when he asks Lady Macbeth, “How say’st thou that Macduff denies his person / At our great bidding?” (3.4.159-160). He even goes so far as admitting that he has a spy stationed in Macduff’s household (3.4.163-64). Later Macbeth’s fears are confirmed when Macduff flees to England, where Malcolm is staying, in order to request help. A Lord reports to Lennox that “this report / Hath so exasperate the King that he / Prepares for some attempt of war” (3.6.41-43). His fears are increased further by the witches who declare, “Beware Macduff / Beware the Thane of Fife!” (4.1.81-82). In order to preempt this threat Macbeth declares the complete destruction of Macduff and his family; he will “Seize upon Fife, give to th’ edge o’ th’ sword / His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls / That trace him in his line” (4.1.172-174). Rather than sending murderers after Macduff’s family as he has done for Banquo and Fleance, in Kurzel’s adaptation, Macbeth has the family captured and tied to stakes outside of Dunsinane. Macbeth, himself, lights their pyres. Macduff’s children will not be threats, and his wife will not be left alive to be able to provide any more heirs to threaten Macbeth’s future posterity.

Violence begets violence, or as Macbeth says, “blood will have blood” (3.4.151). The rift between Macbeth, the usurping heir to the throne, and the biological heir of Duncan ends in civil war. Scottish rebels join forces with the exiled Malcolm and Macduff, who are joined by Malcolm’s uncle Siward commanding the English forces engaged to help them.12 In Act 5, Scene 2 these forces merge at Birnam Wood. The significance of this rendezvous point cannot be understated.13 All along, seeking to secure power for himself and his offspring, Macbeth has had an antagonistic relationship with his enemies’ family trees, like Duncan and Banquo.14 Now his own thanes, his “adopted children” have turned against him to form a rebel army that Lennox describes consists of “many unrough youths that even now / Protest their first of manhood” (5.2.11-12). The army is literally made up of children. But according to the witches, Macbeth shouldn’t fear defeat “until / Great Birnam Woods to high Dunsinane Hill / Shall come against him” (4.1.5-7). Malcolm, as the legitimate heir, will bring with him his family tree in the guise of his young warriors and loyal thanes, who carry symbolic branches of their own lineages and legal heirs to defeat Macbeth.

Macbeth’s own desire for power and heirs of his own leads him to this final moment. Macbeth, as he prepares for his last defense, says, “This push / Will cheer me ever or disseat me now” (5.3.24-25). This battle is an act of labor, and he wonders whether he will be killed in childbirth with his final push or whether his efforts will be rewarded with life and future possibilities. Previously, the witches declared, “Beware Macduff! / Beware the Thane of Fife!” (4.1.81-82) and “Laugh to scorn / The power of man, for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth” (4.1.90-92). When fighting Macduff, Macbeth seems to have the advantage until Macduff reveals that he was not born of woman because he was delivered by Cesarean section. Macbeth’s hope dies, and he is defeated. Macbeth believes both declarations by the witches go hand-in-hand, but by interpreting the witches’ statements another way, the child that was never born who defeats him is his own imagined future heir. By using Duncan’s murder as a means for securing his own kingship and hoping for a future lineage, rather than taking the position when it came to him and accepting what was to come in the due course of time, he destroyed himself. The “unborn heir” defeats him.

“The King is Dead. Long Live [?]!”

Ninety-four years. That was the length of time that England lived with uncertainty regarding who would be the next heir. Two wives, two daughters, and twenty-eight years after inheriting the throne, Henry VIII’s third wife bore him a son. The line of succession looked to be securely in male hands. Unfortunately, this time of lineal assurance was short lived, and Edward I died at the age of fifteen, only five years after being crowned king. What followed was a politically and religiously complicated period in England’s history as the two remaining female heirs both claimed legitimacy. Mary hoped she would conceive and bear a child to carry on the legacy of her rule and her religion in England. But while she had several “phantom” pregnancies, she never bore a child to full term and died five years after taking the throne, just as her half-brother had done. Elizabeth was the last Tudor standing and was crowned Elizabeth I in 1558. She ruled for the next 45 years, remained single, and used her singleness to her own and her country’s political advantage, but that didn't change the fact that being unmarried created a major concern regarding who would rule after her. She died single and childless and asked that her cousin’s child, the King of Scotland, be crowned king of England after her death. James I was crowned and brought with him his nine-year-old heir apparent Henry Frederick, his six-year-old daughter Elizabeth, and his second son, two-year-old Charles. It took 94 years for the country to gain a sense of relative stability regarding patriarchal succession for the English throne.

Shakespeare’s script, written sometime during the years 1605 and 1606, takes the historical tale of medieval regicide in Scotland and puts it in front of an audience that had not only experienced two assassination attempts on their new king in the first year of his reign and the Gun Powder Plot in 1605, but an audience that was also recovering from almost a hundred years of uncertainty regarding who would be the next king of England. A little over four hundred years later, Kurzel’s interpretation of the play focuses on Macbeth’s desire for an heir and, therefore, helps to emphasize a previously overlooked reading of the play in which Macbeth is motivated not only by the lust for power, but also the desire for a male heir.