![]() ![]() ![]() There’s evidence of a defensive earthwork which was likely surmounted by a wooden stockade, but no traces of buildings. Shakespeare seems to have taken Holinshed’s “castle of Dunsinane” as referring to a stone castle with rooms and walls, but nothing like that has been found at Dunsinane Hill. But the Fates hurried the man onwards, for he was convinced that he was unconquerable until Birnam Wood had been brought there, so that death was not threatening him, since the soothsayers had predicted that he was not going to be killed by a man born of woman.ĭunsinane Hill near Collace in Perthshire is a strong defensive position, rising 250 metres from the surrounding plain, and it is the site of an ancient British hill fort, so it would not be surprising for Macbeth to have camped here when retreating from Malcolm’s invading army. But some of his friends urged him either to make peace with Malcolm on acceptable conditions, or to take the royal treasury and beat a retreat to the Hebrides, where he could hire mercenaries more reliable than the men who were draining away from him every day. For he thought it would be a disgrace to quit the throne without having fought a battle. Soon he encamped at Dunsany, having made up his mind to await his enemy there. Holinshed’s Chronicles were based on Hector Boece’s Historia Gentis Scotorum (1527), which says more or less the same (XII.25, in Dana F. Shakespeare’s main source for the play was Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587), which says (spelling modernized):īut after that Macbeth perceived his enemies’ power to increase, by such aid as came to them forth of England with his adversary Malcolm, he recoiled back into Fife, there purposing to abide in camp fortified, at the castle of Dunsinane, and to fight with his enemies, if they meant to pursue him howbeit some of his friends advised him, that it should be best for him, either to make some agreement with Malcolm, or else to flee with all speed into the Isles, and to take his treasure with him, to the end he might wage sundry great princes of the realm to take his part, & retain strangers, in whom he might better trust than in his own subjects, which stole daily from him: but he had such confidence in his prophesies, that he believed he should never be vanquished, till Birnam wood were brought to Dunsinane nor yet to be slain with any man, that should be or was born of any woman. TL DR: Shakespeare’s Macbeth is based on real events in the history of Scotland, as filtered and embellished though chronicle and tradition, and so the answer, unsatisfactory though it may be, is that Macbeth went to Dunsinane because that’s what it said in Shakespeare’s historical sources, whereas the prophecy is legendary and so not something that the historical Macbeth would have needed to take into account. ![]()
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