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King Duncan is a fictional character in Shakespeare's Macbeth. He is the father of two youthful sons ( Malcolm and Donalbain ), and the victim of a well-plotted regicide in a power grab by his trusted captain Macbeth .
He also analyzes the aftermath of King Duncan's murder and has the same reaction as De Quincey, "The breath seems to stop in one's throat whilst reading these lines; the vital principle is almost suspended..." [4]: 167 De Quincey concludes his essay with a note saying he agrees with Darley's interpretation. [2]: 356
Duncan – king of Scotland; Malcolm – Duncan's elder son; Donalbain – Duncan's younger son; Macbeth – a general in the army of King Duncan; originally Thane of Glamis, then Thane of Cawdor, and later king of Scotland; Lady Macbeth – Macbeth's wife, and later queen of Scotland; Banquo – Macbeth's friend and a general in the army of ...
The ancestry of King Duncan is not certain. In modern texts, he is the son of Crínán, hereditary lay abbot of Dunkeld, and Bethóc, daughter of King Malcolm II.However, in the late 17th century the historian Frederic Van Bossen, after collecting historical accounts throughout Europe, identified King Duncan as the first son of Abonarhl ap crinan (the grandson of Crinan) and princess Beatrice ...
The character is based on the historical king Malcolm III of Scotland, and is derived largely from the account in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of Britain. He is the elder son of King Duncan, the heir to the throne, and brother to Donalbain. [1] In the end, he regains the throne after mustering support to overthrow Macbeth.
One of Shakespeare's principal sources is the Holinshed (1587) [2] [full citation needed] account of King Duncan. Holinshed described the future King Macbeth of Scotland and his companion Banquo encountering "three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world" who hail the men with glowing prophecies and then vanish ...
Scholars arguing that Duncan attends the banquet state that Macbeth's lines to the Ghost could apply equally well to the slain king. "Thou canst not say I did it", for example, can mean that Macbeth is not the man who actually killed Banquo, or it can mean that Duncan, who was asleep when Macbeth killed him, cannot claim to have seen his killer.
These served as the basis for the account given in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), on whose narratives of King Duff and King Duncan Shakespeare in part based Macbeth. Historically, Duff was a 10th century King of Alba. In John of Fordun's work, the reign of Duff is portrayed as having suffered from pervasive witchcraft.