Chris Pickles - Director
Adrian Lillie - Designer
Georgina King - Assistant Designer
Paul Knight - Composer
Philip d’Orléans - Fight Director

2005 cast

Jules Blundell - Witch
Dermot Canavan - Witch
David Chittenden - Banquo
Paul Dinnen - Lady Macbeth
Henry Everett - Macduff
Simon Goodall - Rosse
Howard Gossington - Witch
Nigel Lister - Malcolm
Ross Macdonald - Macbeth

2006 cast

Jules Blundell - Witch
Nicholas Chambers - Witch
David Chittenden - Banquo
Max Digby - Macbeth
Philip Dinsdale - Macduff
Howard Gossington - Witch
Jonathan O’Boyle - Lady Macbeth
Simon Tcherniak - Malcolm

still under construction...

About a year before the first performance of Macbeth, in August 1605, King James I was in Oxford paying his first official visit to the town. At St John’s College he was greeted by a Latin Device, a kind of pageant or miniature play, written by a former fellow of the college, Matthew Gwinn. At the beginning of the play three “Sibyls” (ancient prophetesses) address the character of Banquo “We three same Fates so chaunt to thee and thine…” And they continue directly to James…

…Hail, whom Scotland serves!
Whom England, hail!
Whom Ireland serves, all hail!

James, by all reports was pleased and fl attered. After all Banquo is his ancestor. James is in fact the latest of that long line of kings fathered by Banquo that Macbeth sees in the vision induced by the witches in Shakespeare’s play.

Tell me, if your Art
Can tell so much: Shall Banquo’s issue ever
Reign in this Kingdome?

Did Shakespeare see the entertainment? Probably he did. He had business in Stratford at that time and it was his custom to break his journey in Oxford and stay with the Davenants and their son William (his godson) at their winehouse called the Taverne in Cornmarket Street. As a sharer in the company now called The King’s Men, it was Shakespeare’s duty to write and produce plays that he knew would please the King, and it was well known that James was both terrifi ed and fascinated by witchcraft and demonology. What better than to cater to his tastes (James also liked his plays to be short) and at the same time fl atter and legitimise his ancestry, and by implication bolster his tenuous grip on the English throne? The resonance between Gwinn’s Tres Sibyllae and Shakespeare’s later play is manifest.

All haile Macbeth, haile to thee Thane of Glamis.
All haile Macbeth, haile to thee Thane of Cawdor.
All haile Macbeth, thou shalt be King hereafter.

And with that prophesy, Macbeth’s life, and that of his wife is changed forever. But Shakespeare is not simply writing an entertaining horror story of evil done by supernatural beings upon humans. He reaches into the human soul for the source of that evil. Do the witches plant the seed of ambition in Macbeth or do they simply water it? Is ambition itself evil? If the witches had not so prophesied, would the Macbeths lives have been different?

Thou would’st be great,
Art not without Ambition, but without
The illnesse should attend it. What thou would’st highly
That would’st thou holily…

Or is it his wife’s grim, steely determination that is the source of their undoing? Come you Spirits…unsex me here, | And fi ll me from the Crowne to Toe, top full | Of direst Crueltie… Despite her conjuration, Macbeth and his wife are subject not just to the outside forces of good and evil, but also to the inner struggle all humanity faces between our darker, baser drives and our instincts for what is right and worthy. We all struggle to fi nd the balance between our dreams and ambitions, our hopes and fears.

…would’st not play false,
And yet would’st wrongly winne.

Chris Pickles - Director