Macbeth on Horseback

Summary

Since the authenticity of Simon Forman’s Bocke of Plaies was finally established in 1947, its famous record of the author’s visit to a performance of Macbeth in 1611 has been the subject of careful scrutiny by both textual and theatrical historians. In the same year that Professor Dover Wilson and Dr R. W. Hunt published their refutation of Tannenbaum’s attack on the manuscript, J. M. Nosworthy attempted to reconstruct elements of a longer version of the play than that which has come down to us by collating Forman’s account with the ‘Argument’ to Davenant’s adapted text of 1674, arguing that where these agreed with Shakespeare’s source we might well suppose that portions of Holinshed used by Shakespeare had been preserved by Forman and Davenant though lost to us in the process of transmission. Though Nosworthy subsequently discovered a source for Davenant’s ‘Argument’ other than Macbeth, he saw no reason to retreat from his original position that careful analysis of Forman’s account, used in conjunction with Holinshed, might supply us with words, phrases and even entire passages that have subsequently disappeared from Shakespeare’s play. More recently, Dennis Bartholomeusz, approaching Forman’s notes with an eye to the stage business they imply, has discussed the four major spectacles with which they present us and the way in which these may have been produced, making no mention, however, of the occasional discrepancies between the action narrated by Forman and Holinshed and the dramatised version by Shakespeare.