William Davenant's operatic Macbeth 1664

Contents

1. Introduction
2. An operatic Macbeth
3. References

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Sir William Davenant’s 1664 adaptation of Macbeth transformed Shakespeare's dark tragedy into a lavish, music-filled Restoration spectacle. He heavily altered the text, expanded the role of the singing witches, cut several minor characters, and featured movable scenery, making it a major theatrical hit. (Poltrack 2018)

1. Introduction

During July 2026 the present writer encountered at the local library an elderly woman seeking to obtain a digital copy of operatic script presented in London during 1664 and published eight years later. She was having some difficulty in achieving that. Apparently the lady had viewed a copy some decades previously at the library of the Australian National University, Canberra, but realising that that copy had subsequently been destroyed in a flood, she was now seeking to access the copy in the National Library of Australia. It appeared that she may have been unaware of the 1961 Yale University Press publication by Christopher Spencer which compared the Davenant published script and a manuscript version in the Yale University collection with Shakespeare's original, noting some significant changes. It was these changes which were of particular interest to her. As a result, the present writer sought to assist the inquiring through the research process presented herein.

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2. An operatic Macbeth

On 5 November 1664 English playwright, poet and actor William Davenant / D'Avenant (born Oxford, 3 March 1606 - died London, 7 April 1668), godson and possible illegitimate son of William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), premiered at the Duke's Theatre, London, an operatic adaptation of the latter's Macbeth. Davenant's script was printed in 1674. As to the original production, the following was noted in 1708, confirming Davenant's role in its creation (Downes 1927):

On 12 December 1660 Davenant and his company, which operated out of Lincoln's Inn Fields, had been tasked with preparing nine Shakespeare plays for performance, including Macbeth, which, apart from the 5 November 1664 performance, was eventually presented at least seven times before his death in 1668. For example, on 5 November 1664 Samuel Pepys noted the following in his Diary:

With my wife to the Duke's house to a play, Macbeth, a pretty good play, but admirably acted.

On 28 December 1666:

To the Duke's house, and there saw Macbeth most excellently acted, and most excellently played for variety.

And on 7 January 1667:

[T]o the Duke’s house, and saw “Macbeth,” which, though I saw it lately, yet appears a most excellent play in all respects, but especially in divertissement, though it be a deep tragedy; which is a strange perfection in a tragedy, it being most proper here, and suitable.

Also, on 19 April 1667:

Here we saw "Macbeth", which though I have seen it often, yet it is one of the best plays for a stage, and variety of dancing and musique, that ever I saw.

As Yale College Arts noted in regards to a staged reading of Davenant's Macbeth on 3 April 2017:

Sir William Davenant adapted Shakespeare’s play for a Restoration audience. His alterations included edits to Shakespeare’s language for ease of comprehension, a greatly expanded role for Lady Macduff, a clearer stance on regicide (this was an important point to clarify after the English Civil War!), several new songs and dances, and even a “flying machine” for the witches.

The Yale University manuscript of Davenant's script in the Beinecke Library is dated at circa 1664. Eight printed texts were subsequently issued between 1674 and 1710. For those interested in the fine detail of differences between Shakespeare's original text and the Davenant variants, Spencer is the recommended text, though it is very dense.

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3. References

Davenant, William, Macbeth : A tragedy / With all the alterations, amendments, additions, and new songs (by Sir William Davenant) as it is now acted at the Duke's Theatre, 2nd edition, P. Chetwin, London, 1674, 62p. National Library of Australia, Rare Book: RB MISC 839.

Dyson Peter, Changes in Dramatic Perspective: From Shakespeare's Macbeth to Davenant's, Shakespeare Quarterly, 30(3), Summer 1979, 402-407.

McKluskie, Kathleen E., William Shakespeare's Macbeth, chapter 7, Liverpool University Press, 2007, 110-123.

Pepys, Samuel, Diary, ..... 

Poltrack, Emma, Leading ladies, missing characters, and singing witches: Three differences between Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' and William Davenant's adaptation, Folger Shakespeare Library, 7 August 2018.

Román, Blanca López, Sir William D'Avenant's So-Called Improvements of Macbeth (1674), Dialnet, University of Granada, Spain, 1990, 13p.

Samuel Pepys on Shakespeare in the theatre, 1660-9, Shakespeare, The Critical Heritage, Volume 1 1623-92, 30-2.

Spencer, Christopher, Davenant's [William Shakespeare] Macbeth from the Yale manuscript : an edition with a discussion of the relation of Davenant's text to Shakespeare's, Yale Studies in English, volume 146, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1961, 226p. National Library of Australia S 820.8 YAL. Digital copy available at Internet Archive.

Hazelton Spencer, Shakespeare Improved: The Restoration Versions in Quarto and on the Stage, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York, 1927.

Summers, Montagu (editor), John Downes: Roscius Anglicanus, Fortune Press, London, 1927.

Watkins, Stephen, Heroic Shakespeare and Lincoln's Inn Fields, in Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Claude Fretz and Richard Schoch (editors), Performing Restoration Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press, 2023, chapter 2, pp.38-60. Abstract: 

This chapter situates William Davenant’s adaptation of Macbeth (1664) within the broader context of his own play-making career. It traces the connections and discrepancies between Macbeth and the heroic operas and plays Davenant himself wrote and produced during the 1650s and 1660s, and which he theorised in A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie (1653). Employing literary and performance modes of analysis, it demonstrates how the dramaturgical alterations he made to the play align it with a distinctive Davenantian mode: just like The Siege of Rhodes – recognised by John Dryden as the first extant heroic play in English – Macbeth centres on two opposing married couples; it meditates on how best to reconcile uxorious love with public duty and personal honour; and it puts creative energy into music and spectacle to produce powerful theatrical effects. Previous scholarship has condemned Davenant as a feeble-minded adapter, who rewrote Shakespeare to eliminate the perceived infelicities that would likely offend a discerning Restoration audience: antiquated diction, cumbersome syntax, psychological inconsistency. This chapter instead contends that we have failed to meet Davenant’s text on its own terms, as an example of the heroic genre that dominated the stage during the opening decade of the Restoration.

Wikipedia, William Davenant, Wikipedia, accessed 22 July 2026.

-----, William Shakespeare, Wikipedia, accessed 22 July 2026.

William Davenant's Macbeth (1674) - A staged reading, Yale College Arts, 2 April 2017.

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Last updated: 22 July 2026

Michael Organ, Australia