MacBeth: uno Speculum tyranni? Monarchia e tirannide in Inghilterra, una riflessione dal confronto tra i protagonisti del XII secolo e Shakespeare

Characteristics of royalty were at the centre of the political debate during the years of Macbeth’s creation and exhibition. In the tractate The True law of free monarchies, King James I sustained that monarchy was hereditary and, as a natural part of the divine plan for humanity, its legitimacy could be not discussed. The discussion about the characteristics of royalty had a long story and in England a political speculation about royalty and tyranny arose during the XII century and continued during the first years of the Plantagenet dynasty (1154-1216). From king Henry II’s era to John Lackland’s fall, thinkers and writers drafted the definition of the right kingship and its counterpart: tyranny. The emblems of tyranny were avidity, hate for the nobility and freedom, and disregard for the common and consuetudinary laws. In 1216, the revolt of the barons led to the Magna Charta and turned these speculations in law. Following the twelfth-century description of tyranny, the article compares the aspects of Macbeth’s tyranny with the ones identified by the twelfth-century intellectuals in order to show a longterm process that accompanied this idea from the Plantagenet era to the Shakespeare composition and proposes a contextualization of the opera in the first years of James I regency.