Ducks and Macbeth

Hello everyone! I had another pretty average day.  I just did more studying so that I could prepare for Lauren to get here tomorrow! I'm super excited.  Tomorrow we're going to explore Edinburgh.  It's going to be a lot of fun.  But until then, it's back to the books (or notes actually for me).  (Sorry, this first part was so short, but my day wasn't really eventful.  The most exciting thing was feeding ducks stale cookies from my kitchen window with Katelin (1 perk to being on the first floor). Which, really was pretty fun.  I heard quacking outside my window a minute ago and it looks like the 1 duck we fed brought back 4 friends.  It seems we may have started a trend.)  

Well, since my day wasn't too exciting, I decided to choose another famous Scot to blog about.  Tonight, I'm going to tell you about a very famous Scot who everybody probably already knows: Macbeth.

Here's good old Macbeth...or one version of him anyway. I thought he looked pretty authentic.

Now, probably everybody had to read this Shakespeare play at some point in time in their school career.  I admittingly, didn't really enjoy it.  (I liked to hear the Scottish accents on the tape that my senior year English teacher made us listen to, but that was about it.)  So, why would I write about him?  Well, in case you didn't know, Macbeth was a real person.  His story is different from Shakespeare's version, but I'll tell you all about that.

First, let's talk about the play.  Just to refresh your memory, Macbeth is a tragedy (fun fact: a lot of actors think it's bad luck to say the play's name) that begins with three witches (the double, double, toil, and trouble witches) who are like "We're bored, let's play a trick on Macbeth."  So, they go and tell Macbeth that he's going to become King of Scotland.  Then, Macbeth becomes obsessed with becoming King all because one of the witch's prophecies came true. Once Lady Macbeth hears this prophecy, she immediately is like "well, let's kill the King then. And by the way Macbeth, you're not really a man unless you go along with this."  So, Macbeth kills the King and succeeds the throne.  Basically Macbeth goes crazy and starts killing anybody and everybody who could potentially take away his throne.  Since he's crazy, he goes back to the witches who give him some more prophecies that only leads Macbeth to killing more people. Finally, some of the people in Scotland think "wow, Macbeth is kind of going crazy.  Maybe he shouldn't be King" and start a battle which ends with the beheading of Macbeth.  The End.

Now, on to the real version.  The real Macbeth story is a lot tamer.  I actually kind of feel sorry for the real Macbeth, because he seemed like a pretty good guy.  (Not the crazy killer straight out of Criminal Minds that Shakespeare made him out to be.)  So, the real Macbeth was an Earl that lived around 1005 who defeated the King of Scotland in a battle.  Since he beat King Duncan in this battle, he became King.  (This is a very Scottish thing.  Back in the day, the Clans had battles all of the time.)  He ruled for 14 years and really just kept control and spread Christianity. Then, Macbeth was challenged to a battle and was killed thus ending his reign as King. (See, a lot more honorable and a lot more tame.)