“Banquo’s Progeny: Hereditary Monarchy, the Stuart Lineage and Macbeth”

Malcolm Smuts
Professor of History
University of Massachusetts

Thursday, December 1, 2005
3:30 pm
McKeldin Library, Room

This paper argues for a connection between Macbeth and a pattern of early Jacobean political argument and imagery, stressing the importance of the hereditary right in determining the transmission of royal authority. On one level these arguments stemmed from English anxieties over the risks of a succession crisis at the death of Elizabeth and from James's worries that someone might dispute his claims as Elizabeth's nearest heir. But the emphasis on hereditary right led to an emphasis on royal lineages and the processes of marriage and procreation through which those lineages were sustained. This theme, in turn, became linked to analogies between kingdoms and families that drew close parallels between the King's political authority and his role as a husband and father. Sermons placed particular emphasis on the biblical trope of kings as "nursing fathers", who combined masculine authority with gentler feminine qualities. I attempt to show that Macbeth responds to these prominent themes in the political culture of the period in which it was written on multiple levels.

About the speaker

Dr. Smuts’ research has focused on the political culture of England from the late Elizabethan period to the Civil War, with particular emphasis on the monarchy and royal court. Much of it has a strongly interdisciplinary character and attempts to integrate analyses of literature, the visual arts, material culture and ritual with more traditional forms of political history. His next major project will be a study of cultural and intellectual responses to the problem of religious war, especially in the early decades of the seventeenth century.

Selected publications include:

  • Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (University of Pennsylvania Press 1987; paperback reissue 1999)
  • Culture and Power in England 1585-1685 (Palsgrave, 1999)
  • editor of The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political History (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
  • editor of “The Whole Royal and Magnificent Entertainment of King James into London” in Gary Taylor, general editor, The Complete Works of Thomas Middleton (Oxford, forthcoming)
  • “Early Stuart Political Thought” in Barry Coward, ed., A Companion to Stuart History (Blackwells, 2002)
  • “The Making of Rex Pacificus: James VI and I and the Concept of Peace in an Age of Religious War” in Daniel Fischolin, Mark Fortier and Kevin Sharpe, eds., Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I (Wayne State, 2002)
  • “Material Culture, Metropolitan Influences and Moral Authority in Early Modern England” in Curtis Perry, ed., Material Culture and Cultural Materialisms in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Brepols, 2001)
  • “Art and the Material Culture of Majesty in Early Stuart England” in The Stuart Court and Europe
  • “The Court and its Neighbourhood: Royal Policy and Urban Growth in the Early Stuart West End”, Journal of British Studies 30 (1991)

For additional information, please contact Dr. Karen Nelson, at knelson[at]umd.edu. Or, call the Center for Renaissance & Baroque Studies at 301-405-6830.

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Last updated June 13, 2007