Few people realize that there was a real king Macbeth, when most people hear the name Macbeth they think of Shakespeare's play, but what most people don't know is that the real King Macbeth was the exact opposite of how Shakespeare portrayed him in his play. Shakespeare's Macbeth was not the real Macbeth (R.L. Mackie 23). Macbeth was not a tyrant; he actually led his kingdom into seventeen prosperous years. How ever Macbeth actually did kill Duncan to claim the throne. The reasons why it happened are not clearly explained in the play and other parts are completely false. Most of the kingdom saw that as a good move on Macbeth's part. Macbeth's reign was so secure he actually went on a pilgrimage to Rome and left his castle vulnerable to attack. This was an astonishing accomplishment given the times. The slaying of King Duncan was not a secret as Shakespeare made it out to be. Kingship in eleventh century Scotland was not for the faint-hearted. Viking marauders still threatened from their base in the outer islands and Scottish politics was marked by internal strife punctuated by the all too frequent murder of Kings and their potential heirs (www.tartans.com). Shakespeare play was called "the Cursed Scottish Play" because a number of mishaps during production. Had the real king Macbeth been alive he would have probably cursed the play too because of its historical inaccuracies cast Macbeth as an evil plotter and his enemies as innocent pillars of society (J, 1999).
             The reason why Macbeth killed Duncan was largely due to an ancient practice called tanistry, under tanistry succession was not strictly hereditary. Nobleman chose kings from a large pool of candidate's kings, any whom had justifiable claim to the throne through ancestry or marriage. In theory tanistry should have worked, but what often happed was the strongest and m
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