Benjamin Hudson is Professor of History and Medieval Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. His books include Viking Pirates and Christian Princes: Dynasty, Religion, and Empire in the North Atlantic (OUP, 2005) and The Picts.
Viking Pirates and Christian Princes: Dynasty, Religion, and Empire in the North Atlantic (OUP, 2005).

• Note on Methodology


• List of Abbreviations


• Acknowledgments


• Preface


• Introduction: A Man and a Legend


• Chapter 1: Macbeth: Place and Past


• Chapter 2: Macbeth Emerges


• Chapter 3: King of All the Scots


• Chapter 4: Fame and Defamation


• Chapter 5: Not the Beginning of the Legend


• Chapter 6: Weird Sisters and the Prior of Loch Leven


• Chapter 7: Macbeth and Renaissance Scotland


• Chapter 8: The Scot in Tudor England


• Chapter 9: Macbeth before Shakespeare


• Conclusion


• Appendix 1: Children of Macbeth


• Appendix 2: Andrew of Wyntoun's Macbeth Episode: A Translation


• Notes


• Index

Macbeth before Shakespeare is a history of the medieval King Macbeth and his legend that was the basis for William Shakespeare's Tragedie of Macbeth. It traces the life of the real man and his important innovations, while showing how different legends were created in subsequent eras.