Macbeth Cultural Assumptions

Hey Everybody,
I am doing a speech on Macbeth and one of the criteria states "Question, challenge and evaluate cultural assumptions in the texts and their effects on meaning." It would be great if someone could explaing what cultural assumptions exactly mean and in addition some examples of this in Macbeth would be greatly appreciated.

Cultural assumptions are the predominant beliefs that people of a certain culture had and how that influenced their attitude toward others. What is not clear here, I think, is whether you are being asked about cultural assumptions of the people within the text (Macbeth) or cultural assumptions of the readers/viewers.

Shakespeare had cultural assumptions. He assumed Saxons were better than Celts and so did the audience. So Macbeth who was real has to be represented in a bad light for the consumption of the new royal audience whose forebears had seized the throne from Macbeth. Still a great play despite the prejudice on display.

Everyone makes cultural assumptions, but Shakespeare was perfectly able and willing to challenge the assumptions of his own culture, (Shylock's great speech in "Merchant of Venice" being, perhaps, the most obvious example.)

The "Saxons versus Celts" theme does not apply here, as all the protagonists in the play would be classed as Celts (if such a term were used in Shakespeare's day, which it wasn't, at least with its modern connotations.)

Certainly, Shakespeare's casting of Macbeth as the villain was influenced by the fact that King James traced his descent from the man who succeeded Macbeth. If there is a cultural assumption on display there, it is that ruling by right of descent is good whereas ruling by having killed your own king is not. The same theme can be seen in some of the history plays, particularly IIRC Henry IV. If you want a little sneer at Shakespeare, then you could accuse him of flattering the man in power. On the other hand, the peaceful succession of James to the throne of England must have been, to most Englishmen of the time, a much better option than a return to the dynastic wars of pre-Tudor times.

You don't know the historical background

I've a better than average knowledge of Shakespeare's historical background, and I'm not totally ignorant of Macbeth's. Feel free to enlighten me further.

James VI of Scotland & I of England had a clear hereditary claim to the English throne that was not seriously challenged, but Essex's abortive rebellion at the end of Elizabeth's reign and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 showed that rebellion or a dynastic war were still possibilities. Writing a play using a Scottish setting would have been topical early in James' reign, and, if it could show the king's ancestors in a good light it would do the playwright no harm. Writing a play to show that rebels and usurpers were bad people who came to bad ends was appropriate at the time and, as I have already said, Shakespeare wrote more than one on that theme.

Act 1, scene 4 -
"MACBETH
The service and the loyalty I owe,
In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part
Is to receive our duties; and our duties
Are to your throne and state children and servants,
Which do but what they should, by doing every thing
Safe toward your love and honour.
DUNCAN
Welcome hither:
I have begun to plant thee, and will labour
To make thee full of growing. "


Here, as neatly put as it could be, is the underlying relationship between ruled and ruler as assumed throughout feudal times. Not earlier, in England, at least - late Saxon poetry implies, I think, an assumed contract that service to the king is contingent on being rewarded for that service. The feudal theory was that everything rightly belonged to the king, including the service of his subjects. A good king (such as Duncan, in this case) would see his duty as enabling his subjects to flourish and prosper. [In earlier feudal times, the king's right to own everything was based nakedly on conquest, i.e. highway robbery on the grandest scale. By James' time, the right was claimed to derive from the king's position as God's representative in his realm. The fact that James had to argue this point shows that the assumption had weakened and was now openly debatable.]
Obviously, the gradual consolidation of Parliament's control over finance made the theory less and less tenable. During the reign of James' son, Charles I, the concept was utterly exploded, and replaced by the assumption that people own what they can get, and give to government only what they have agreed to give, whether in goods or service. (All approximate and over-simplified, of course.)