Lady Macbeth

Content warning: This section of the guide discusses sexual violence.

Ava Reid wrote Lady Macbeth as a reimagining of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Macbeth was first performed around 1606 but has been frequently restaged since, remaining one of his most popular tragedies. Reid is one of many modern authors to draw inspiration from this play; other examples include the play Dunsinane by David Greig and the novel Lady Macbeth by Susan Fraser King.

Reid draws on the major plot points of Shakespeare’s play, chiefly Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s scheme to murder King Duncan (Duncane in her novel) so that Macbeth can become king, inspired by the prophecies of three witches. She also uses structure and format to highlight her book’s connection to Macbeth. Early modern plays typically used a formal five-act structure, which Reid mimics by naming her different sections “Acts” and numbering each of the five. This also supports the pacing of the book, which uses the traditional plot beats of a five-act story. Likewise, most printed publications of early modern plays included a list of characters at the start, titled “dramatis personae” (reflecting the period’s educational and cultural focus on Latin and Greek). Reid also provides this, to dual purpose: It emphasizes her book’s connection to Shakespeare’s play but also clarifies her characters’ complex names, roles, and relationships. This list includes many of the same characters as Macbeth, placing Reid’s book within this well-known framework before the narrative even begins. However, Reid offers her own versions of names such as Banquo (Banquho), signposting that her book will rework the original text.

Macbeth is a product of early modern concerns and ideas rather than an accurate depiction of a real time and place. Reid takes the play’s interests and directs them through her own modern lens, drawing more on Shakespeare than on historical medieval Scotland. Her exploration of The Truth of Myth and Magic is an example. Reid’s portrayal of a culture that takes witchcraft seriously and is afraid of the phenomenon reflects early modern Britain rather than medieval Scotland. In Lady Macbeth, Duncane is obsessed with witches: He has been cursed by one and has written a treatise on witchcraft. This mirrors the real figure of James VI of Scotland and I of England, who had recently gained the English crown when Shakespeare wrote Macbeth and was patron of Shakespeare’s theater company. James I believed that he had been targeted by witches, and he had been personally involved in pursuing witch trials; like Reid’s Scottish king, he wrote a tract, Daemonologie, which explored dark and demonic magic, including witchcraft. However, where Shakespeare’s play about dangerous Scottish witches meddling in politics reflected James’s interests, Reid explores male narratives about witchcraft by referencing this powerful figure and his cultural impact.

In line with Macbeth, Reid portrays her male characters as fierce warriors amid a moment of political and military jostling. However, her portrayal of medieval Scotland as uniformly brutish and unsophisticated breaks away from Shakespeare’s play and its debt to its powerful Scottish patron. In Shakespeare’s text, characters such as Banquo are honorable and virtuous, Lady Macbeth is treated with respect and even sympathy by the men (and women) around her, and Macbeth himself has a complex, philosophical inner life that includes self-doubt and guilt. By contrast, Lady Macbeth centers Roscille’s belief that Scottish men are fundamentally violent, depicting a world in which sexual violence and blood rites, including sacrifice, are formalized and prevalent. This portrayal influences even the novel’s treatment of its setting, as Roscille observes that the Scottish land is inadequate to support cattle. Ideas like these are not based in history but channel English colonial prejudices about Scottish and Irish culture as backward and violent. In emphasizing Roscille’s culture shock and creating extreme circumstances for the thematic exploration of Agency in a Violent World, Reid centers these ideas. Her Macbeth, though clever, is a brutal antagonist whose inner life is not explored, as Reid shifts the focus onto Roscille. 

Roscille herself is also markedly different from Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is a middle-aged, intelligent figure with status and influence; she is ruthless and ambitious, pushing her husband into regicide in their relationship of equals. Roscille is young, frightened, and often passive. She is coerced into committing acts of violence and is also subjected to them. Reid connects the two portrayals using Shakespeare’s famous imagery of bloodstained hands, reflecting both characters’ guilt over their actions. However, where Shakespeare’s character is doomed by her proactive decisions, Roscille’s arc is a story of good triumphing over evil. She finds a way to free herself from coercion and live according to her own values, though still within her society’s gendered structures: She uses the magic of her beautiful eyes and marries a handsome prince who is less violent than all the other men.

Reid also shifts the witches’ role. Rather than appearing to Macbeth at their own will, he seeks them out and seemingly controls them. They are chained and doing laundry underground. This creates suspense and contributes to the novel’s elements of horror, but it also highlights that Reid, informed by modern discourse, engages with gender as a societal construct in a more explicit and critical way than Shakespeare. She portrays a world in which women are confined to archetypal roles and are passive players while men exercise agency. She parallels the witches with Roscille, foreshadowing their connection and depicting them as disempowered compared to their Shakespearian counterparts, creating a base from which they can attain redemption and a level of personal freedom. These adaptations support Reid’s exploration of The Origins of Individual Identity and Humanity, particularly regarding the novel’s female characters.