20 April 1611: First performance of Macbeth (perhaps)

An eyewitness account records the date of the first public performance of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth at the Globe Theatre in London. In the last year of his life, astrologer and medical practitioner Simon Forman (1552-1611) recorded his impressions of four plays he saw at the Globe, three of which were by Shakespeare. He dates the Macbeth performance as 20 April 1611.

It is generally believed that Shakespeare first wrote Macbeth in 1606, although it cannot be precisely dated, and the play would have been performed at court and intermittently as part of his company’s active repertory before appearing on this date at The Globe.

Forman’s descriptions are the most detailed surviving accounts of plays in this period and provide an eyewitness account of Shakespeare’s plays as staged during Shakespeare’s lifetime, as observed by a highly literate member of the audience. Forman’s notes made their way into his book The Bocke of Plaies and Notes therof, and left us with a record of this performance.

The notes Foreman took reveal that the play he saw and the play we have today are quite different. Foreman’s version was longer, and some of the scenes were arranged differently. Shakespeare himself probably didn’t make these changes; most likely this was done after his death in 1616. The play was first published in 1623 in the ‘First Folio’ collection of Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. This is the only print version of the play that is preserved, and the copy upon which all editions of the play as we have it today are based.