Macbeth

>Let not light see my black and deep desires
>Come, you spirits/That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/Of direst cruelty!
>Who could refrain,/That had a heart to love, and in that heart/Courage to make's love known?
>O, full of scorpions is my mind!
Fucking based play to quote honestly

Yeah. Bros before hos

>Don't kill the king or the universe will wreck you.
Well that sure worked well as a piece of propaganda.

If you want to see that message, absolutely it is there, but there is also a message that deposition of a monarch is possible if one has the desire. Macbeth's real downfall was greed, it absolutely was possible to cement his political position in the play but he fucked over his closest allies. He thought he had supernatural providence and as such was invincible until he realised he wasn't. And both times a King's deposed, the build up is supernatural but the actual actions are purely rational (whether it be Macbeth killing the King or the forest marching etc).

In conclusion Shakespeare fucked shit up.

PORTER
'Faith sir, we were carousing till the second cock. And drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.

MACDUFF
What three things does drink especially provoke?

PORTER
Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes. It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery. It makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.

MACDUFF
I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.

So based

...

>unsex me

I study it in sixth form

Shakespeare wrote for the new King James I who was Catholic, succeeding the previous protestant monarchs which created political turmoil within the nobility surrounding the tension between faiths (culminating in the gunpowder treason plot). Macbeth's fate serves as a reminder to the nobility about the dangers of power and ambition (as does The Tempest).
Shakespeare's message is a humanitarian one.

Likewise the theme of the witches was likely incorporated to appease King James I who was obsessed with the supernatural (even writing a book called 'demonology').

James I was not catholic. Your school was shit and so are you

It's complicated (probably moreso than you believe) so it's understandable. While James I is properly thought of as Anglican, he was working against the Presbyterian Church of Scotland (Kirk) and saw the Catholics (at times) as natural allies. So he was infinitely more lenient (at times) to Catholics than some of his antidisestablishmentarian predecessors. It's really quite common for people to get confused on this or misremember especially when looked at in only a cursory manner. And also James II being RC convert.

And none of those things makes him a catholic.

Criminal ambition which scorns duty and betrays natural loyalty will destroy itself.

The English hate nothing so much as they hate a traitor, and Macbeth committed the highest and most unnatural kind of treason.

The Kirk lot quite famously considered the Anglicans as Catholics.

Wasn't he a Calvinist
He just saw the Catholic church as deserving respect and some toleration, and he'd likely have been very lenient were it not for the Gunpowder Plot, which funnily enough occurred because Catholics were disappointed with James so far, expecting a lot more toleration

This. People saying Shakespeare wrote for the elite, to justify despotism, or to condition foreign subjects literally fell for the ruling classes meme.

More than anything his tragedies and histories show what societies heap on the world when they are no longer aware of their own collective folly. Then he, like the classical tragedians, plays out the course of these errors until the deceit can no longer be hidden and the cast is in ribbons.

Shakespeare was very much the people's poet, and for this reason elites have always looked to poison his image and his message.

and of course the classic
>Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
but ye i really didn't like macbeth besides the illest quotes east of the mississippi

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

>drooling scot idiot gives Earth its first existential thoughts

I 've heard he was a Lutheran too. It's not something I have profound knowledge of, but I believe he wanted a unified protestantism in Europe and that's where the claims of him being Lutheran and Calvinist come from, but where he went against the Kirk and most protesrantism was the structure of the clergy: he wanted Anglican style bishops which is p much a slightly modified Catholic system, whereas they all wanted the localised autonomous pastor thing in Scotland.

The benefits of building walls.

If Macbeth had built a wall he could have kept out Macduff and his forest!!