It's hard to take Macbeth seriously as a history... what with the witches and all. His source is a piece of propaganda that makes Richard III look like a documentary.
As a drama, the fact that the Macbeths appear to have zero children is very important. Fathers and sons are recurring themes -- Duncan's rebuff of Macbeth as the next King, Macduff and his son, Siward and Young Siward, etc.
The absence of a descendant for Macbeth is evocative, especially given Lady Macbeth's line that she has "given suck". It doesn't get a lot of attention past that one, but it appears that within the context of the play, they had a child who died young.
These are facts about the play that inform an actor and director making character choices. They're free to ignore them and focus on other things. (Honestly, it's not clear that Shakespeare really thought that through, either.)
I tend to agree. It's not a meaningless question but definitely not one that the actor playing Lady Macbeth needs to answer for herself.
As for "having multiple children leads to downward mobility" -- I'm not saying it's wrong, but I'd like to see some actual data on that. I thought the pattern was more "first son inherits, second son goes into the Army or Navy, third et al go into the clergy." And a clerical life was not bad at all, until 1850 or so.
For multiple daughters: well, if they don't all have great dowries, then they don't get high born husbands. They still get married.
> I thought the pattern was more "first son inherits, second son goes into the Army or Navy, third et al go into the clergy." And a clerical life was not bad at all, until 1850 or so.
At the time of the historical Macbeth the pattern would have perhaps been similar, but would not have involved the Navy. Especially not for a king of Scotland.
In Scotland at the time, there wasn't primogeniture at all. You got to be king by general acclimation -- you were king when everybody said you were king.
The previous king might nominate a successor, and it might be his son -- any son. And if the thanes didn't like it, they'd fight about it. ("Thane" was an Anglo-Saxon context that's not really appropriate to Scotland at the time, but they had something kinda parallel.)
Shakespeare hints at that, in an important scene were Mac expects to be named the heir. Shakespeare's audience would have understood that, because it had been roughly the same in England under the Saxons. (That was more than a half-millennium ago, but the history was well understood by the educated, using the same sources Shakespeare did.)
There was a problem with offspring in general. Shakespeare actually discussed that one, too, in King Lear. Properties could be divided, but not indefinitely, and it often caused fighting. It's what led to the clan system, which really evolved after the Norman invasion but hints of it lay earlier.
Thanks! Sounds a bit like the election of the German king in the Holy Roman Empire by the Great Electors. (It was customary for the king to semi-automatically become emperor.)
The problem was spare had to be good at fighting case heir kicked the bucket. Then you had to figure out how to keep spare from killing heir. Standard technique was to encourage them to go conquer someplace else. This was also an important driver of the crusades, which had the bonus of sending that heavily armed relative far away.
If you are a minor noble, you might send your younger sons to serve in the church. But if you have the resources of a king, you are more likely to find your extra sons some minor fiefdom to rule.
> As for "having multiple children leads to downward mobility" -- I'm not saying it's wrong, but I'd like to see some actual data on that. I thought the pattern was more "first son inherits, second son goes into the Army or Navy, third et al go into the clergy." And a clerical life was not bad at all, until 1850 or so.
Sure, perhaps "not bad", but surely a step or three down from being lord of the manor (or duke of something bigger)? And as soon as you have more than two kids, there are more of these socially-downwards-mobile ones than of those that get to stay in the caste they were born into.
So yes, seems perfectly plausible that for the majority of those children, their parents having multiple children does lead to downward mobility.
As a drama, the fact that the Macbeths appear to have zero children is very important. Fathers and sons are recurring themes -- Duncan's rebuff of Macbeth as the next King, Macduff and his son, Siward and Young Siward, etc.
The absence of a descendant for Macbeth is evocative, especially given Lady Macbeth's line that she has "given suck". It doesn't get a lot of attention past that one, but it appears that within the context of the play, they had a child who died young.
These are facts about the play that inform an actor and director making character choices. They're free to ignore them and focus on other things. (Honestly, it's not clear that Shakespeare really thought that through, either.)