SOURCE: “Macbeth's War on Time,” in English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 16, No. 2, Spring, 1986, pp. 319-42.

In the following essay, Foster offers an account of Macbeth in the context of Jacobean politics and history.

James I, in his preface to the Basilikon Doron (1603), notes that men must “be very warie in all their secretest actions, and whatsoeuer middesses they vse for attaining to their most wished ends.” This is especially true, he says, in the affairs of kings:

for Kings being publike persons, by reason of their office and authority, are as it were set (as it was said of old) vpon a publike stage, in the sight of all the people; where all the beholders eyes are attentiuely bent to looke and pry in the least circumstance of their secretest drifts: Which should make Kings the more careful not to harbour the secretest thought in their minde … assuring...