Intorno al monologo del Portiere: fonti, contesti e livelli comunicativi del “Macbeth" realizzato da Shakespeare

Macbeth is, at the same time, a very well-known and compact tragedy, one of the most concise and essential in the Shakespearean canon, and an elusive work, in that it is crossed by multiple references and allusions, which connect the diegetic world and contemporary reality, establishing highly complex interferences and interrelationships – a dramaturgical expansion of the play which goes so far as to incorporate a second level, centering around political references that were immediately recognizable to its contemporary viewers. These are: the emblematic character of Banquo, a mythical ancestor of the Stuarts who embodies the confident, wait-and-see attitude of reformed religion, as opposed to the bloodthirsty free will of Macbeth; the rise to the throne of England (1603) of James I Stuart, formely King of Scotland under the name of James VI; the Gunpowder Plot (November 1605), organized by a group of Catholics, which came within a hair’s breadth of wiping the Upper and Lower Chamber, the clergy and the royal family from the face of the earth; and finally, the renewed spirit of the monarchy, which, by uniting the kingdoms of England and Scotland in the hands one and the same ruler, created a supranational entity that began to call itself Britain.