With his sculptured beard and white ruff, his thatched cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon and his Globe theatre in London, few characters from history appear as quintessentially English as William Shakespeare. Yet, as the bard’s 400th anniversary is commemorated this year and our television screens and wirelesses are packed full of his poetry and plays, it’s worth remembering that Shakespeare also had a strong connection to the North of Scotland – and one that businesses are slowly beginning to use to their advantage.
Shakespeare’s primary link to the area is through Macbeth – or “the Scottish play” as thespians would have it, for fear of bringing bad luck to their production. The bard wrote the play at some point between 1603 and 1606 and it’s been a cornerstone of the Standard Grade English curriculum ever since.
So let’s start with a quick recap. You remember the story, right? Macbeth was a nobleman who met three witches on a “blasted heath”. They told him that he would be “Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and King hereafter” and so, egged on by his scheming wife Lady Macbeth, he murdered King Duncan in his sleep and was eventually vanquished by Duncan’s sons when “Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane”.
And Shakespeare’s play was 100% historically accurate, right? Wrong. The play was written to curry favour with King James VI of Scotland, who had recently become King James I of England and whose Stuart dynasty the bard wanted to praise. It worked – Shakespeare’s theatre company became known as “the King’s Men” and was popular with the monarch, who was obsessed with the occult, including witchcraft, perhaps inspiring some of the play’s best-known scenes.
In real life, Macbeth was the “Mormaer” or ruler of the province of Moray, a reluctant part of Alba, the kingdom that formed the heart of present-day Scotland, and was married to his cousin Gillecomgain’s widow, Gruoch, herself of royal heritage. He did kill Duncan to become king in 1040, nearly one thousand years ago, but the monarch was slaughtered in open battle and not in his bedchamber.
Macbeth was eventually ousted by Malcolm, Duncan’s son, but, during his 17-year reign, Macbeth had felt secure enough in his hold over his kingdom to make a pilgrimage to Rome. The few details of his life that have survived over the past millennium give a tantalising glimpse into the life of man whose reputation has been sullied by Shakespeare.
Leading the charge to clear Macbeth’s name and uncover the real king behind the theatrical character has been Cameron Taylor, a tourism and heritage consultant. Now living back on his native Orkney, Mr Taylor had moved to Forres ten years ago and began carrying out research into the history of new local patch.
“One of the most interesting historical and cultural figures was Macbeth because of the link with Forres,” he explains. “Forres is one of the first locations mentioned in Shakespeare’s play, but whenever I mentioned that to people in the town, I got blank looks. People were unaware that there was an association between Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Forres and they were unaware that Macbeth was a real person.”
With funding from Highlands & Islands Enterprise, Mr Taylor and his colleagues set about researching the facts behind the fiction. “The thing we would have most benefited from at the time was a good accessible book about the real Macbeth and something that explored the landscapes in which the story took place,” he remembers. “So in the absence of such a book, my colleague, Alistair Murray, and I decided to write one.”
The resulting tome, On the Trail of the Real Macbeth, was published in 2008 by Edinburgh-based Luath Press, and was later followed by a DVD, The Real Macbeth: A Documentary. The project was given a new lease of life last year with the release of Justin Kurzel’s film version of Macbeth, which starred Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.
By that stage, Mr Taylor was working as operations manager at Moray Speyside Tourism, which operates under the auspices of Moray Chamber of Commerce, and he was able to use the real Macbeth as part of the area’s tourism strategy, which was drawn up in the wake of the closure of RAF Kinloss and its conversion into army barracks and which aims to double the number of people employed in Moray’s tourism economy.
Together with national tourism agency VisitScotland, a Macbeth trail map was produced to guide visitors through the landscapes throughout the country that are connected with the tale. From Macbeth’s purported birthplace in Dingwall to Macbeth’s Hillock near Auldearn and onward to Sueno’s Stone at Forres and the Peel of Lumphanan, tourists are spoiled for choice.
“Once we were aware that the new movie of Macbeth was being shot on Skye with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, we knew from the calibre of the actors that it was going to be a really stunning piece,” says Jenni Steele, film and creative industries manager at VisitScotland.
“We took three strands into our Macbeth activities: we looked at the film locations on Skye; we looked at the locations that are featured in Shakespeare’s play, such as Glamis Castle, Scone Palace, Cawdor Castle, and Birnam Wood; and we also looked at locations associated with the history of the real Macbeth. That opened up a whole new avenue for people who didn’t know about the real Macbeth – we could approach film fans, literature fans and history fans.
“It also gave us a reason to work in different regions in Scotland too, to share the benefits of the film. Forty per cent of people who come to the UK visit because they’ve seen the destinations on film or television. Even if a percentage of those come to Scotland, there’s a huge audience out there that we can tap into who are really inspired by seeing scenes of Scotland in films or on the TV.
“The scenery in the production of Macbeth was stunning – that’s a great inspiration. We recognise that a film or television programme on its own is unlikely to make people book but it’s one of many factors that stimulate the feelings and emotions behind a booking to come to Scotland.”
Esme Saville, marketing and digital manager at Moray Speyside Tourism and Mr Taylor’s former colleague, points to the success of the last year’s costume trail. “The film’s distributor, Studio Canal, approached us to see if we wanted to exhibit some of the costumes from the film and several businesses got involved in that, including Johnstons of Elgin,” she explains. “That was a good opportunity for Moray as a whole, not just the businesses.”
Other companies have also started to make use of the Macbeth connection. Seb Jones, managing director at Forres-based Speyside Craft Brewery, made a special Lady Macbeth beer for the nearby Findhorn Arts Festival.
Back in 2014, the arts festival itself staged a “remixed” version of Macbeth at Brodie Castle and during this year’s extravaganza – which runs on 21-26 September – Taylor will be acting as a tour guide on a vintage tour bus of the area as festivalgoers head off in search of the real Macbeth.
While progress has been made, Taylor thinks more could be done to make the most of the connections with the king. “I think the potential for this character is huge,” he says.
“The concern now is that there’s almost a mood of ‘Been there, done that, the movie has gone so let’s move onto the next thing’. Whereas my view is very strongly that Macbeth remains a cultural asset and we ought to continue – regionally, not just Moray – to celebrate the life of someone whose character was somewhat blackened by Shakespeare and use that as a way of raising the profile of the region, not just from a tourism standpoint but by highlighting that this is a creative place and one that played a part in Scotland’s development as a nation – and it happened up here, not in what is now the capital of Scotland. Power has shifted from the north to the Central Belt.
“But I would hate to see Macbeth turned into a cartoon, Disney-fied version because that’s the risk – people would just see it being all about the witches in a jokey take on Shakespeare. I think we need to use the historical character of Macbeth to make the link with the landscape of Moray today, which still produces food and drink. It’s about authenticity and provenance.”
When it comes to Shakespeare and the North of Scotland, Macbeth isn’t the only game in town either. The tour guides at Dunnottar Castle near Stonehaven still tell visitors that the site was used as one of the locations for Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 film version of Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson.
While the North of Scotland may lie far away from the Globe or from Stratford, the long reach of the bard’s quill certainly appears to present an opportunity for businesses to make the most of their Shakespearean connections. Exit, pursued by a bear.