Coda: Macbeth. ‘Alas, poor country’

Summary

The Coda asks whether Scotland’s undeniable imaginative presence in Macbeth disproves the book’s thesis of erasure. It argues that editors read into Shakespeare’s sources the contrast between England’s political civility and Scotland’s dysfunctional barbarism that is one effect of this brilliant tragedy. Holinshed’s account of Edward the Confessor does not present a society less barbarous than that of Holinshed’s Macbeth, which derives Hector Boece’s elegant Livyan history. Shakespeare evacuates the political-theoretical content of his Scottish sources, substituting the figure of Scotland as a mother unable to nurture her children. Macbeth thus pathologises the Scottish double plight of jurisdictional subordination and alien status with respect to England. The Scottish failure of nationhood becomes a rooted sorrow that even English sovereignty cannot cure.