by Kerry Michael Wood

Created on: May 23, 2007   Last Updated: December 08, 2011

Shakespeare's "Macbeth" is the shortest of the Bard's tragedies, and experts have wondered whether portions of the play may have been lost. Macduff, the character who ends up slaying the tyrant, enters the play rather late in the action and seems underdeveloped. It is tempting to think that this heroic thane may have participated heroically in the battles that are raging at the play's outset.

* Geographical inconsistency

Information about the Scottish victory at Fife over King Sweno of Norway is at best confused. There is no doubt that the Norweyan forces, amply abetted by the traitorous Thane of Cawdor, were put to rout, but there is speculation as to which Scottish commander should have been credited with the victory. The play indicates that Macbeth was the conqueror, but an argument can be made that he could not have bested the merciless Macdonwald and his Irish kerns and gallowglasses and also been present almost immediately to oppose the aggression at Fife, so many miles away.

* Where was Macduff?

The bloody sergeant who reported the event to King Duncan described the victorious Scottish general as "Bellona's bridegroom." Some feel he may have been referring to Macduff and a textual error may have replaced that name with Macbeth. Support for this view lies in the text. After the battle, when Macbeth and Banquo are speaking to the Weird Sisters and later with Ross and Angus, Macbeth is unaware that the Thane of Cawdor had joined the forces of Norway to labor in his country's wrack. "The Thane of Cawdor lives,/ A prosperous gentleman." It is doubtful Macbeth would have had such complimentary words for a man whose forces he had just defeated. Where would Macduff, the Thane of Fife, have been while the enemy was invading his territory?

Such niggling questions in no way lessen the dramatic tensions and theatrical mastery of the play as a whole. The noble Macbeth and his equally powerful wife damn themselves, becoming fiends in pursuit of their royal ambition, and Scotland reeks - bathed, like the Macbeths' hands, in irremovable blood and gore. The action is relentless until the tyrant's head is severed by Macduff and placed upon the castle's battlements.

* Appearance versus reality

The most captivating aspect of the tragedy is the extensive interplay of appearance and reality - the difference between what seems to be and what actually is. Such ideas arise as early as line 4 of the opening scene when the Second Witch speaks of meeting "When the battle's lost

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