Rhubarb, Wren, Rhinoceros: The Nature of Macbeth’s Tortured World

Follow Seona Anderson down into the great Dunsinane wood and discover what lurks in the shadows of Macbeth’s natural world.

Macbeth is a play about power and its effects on the powerful and the powerless. The play is rich in imagery from across the natural world, including trees, plants, insects, mammals, reptiles, and birds.

This talk will explore the way that Shakespeare uses the natural and supernatural world in his study of tyranny: the species of witchcraft, the nature-based insults, and the imagery of health and sickness of individuals and countries.

Many of the species Shakespeare draws on are still familiar in our modern world, but our connection with the natural world is becoming more distant. This talk will also discuss some of the projects that aim to reconnect us with species and their importance to our world.

Seona Anderson is an archaeobotanist and ethnobotanist who has worked on many Scottish, UK, and European nature conservation and cultural heritage projects. She has been working on the natural history of Shakespeare for the past decade (www.natureshakespeare.org.uk).