Macol

Macol enters the final struggle against Macbett as Duncan’s returning heir, but the story overturns that public identity: he is Banco’s biological son, adopted by Duncan, and his claim to power grows out of a tangle of inheritance, revenge, and political opportunism. He defeats Macbett beneath a stage image of a marching forest, then turns the victory into a new threat, declaring that his country will suffer more under him than under the tyrant he has killed.

Identity and Return

Macol’s return is announced by Lady Duncan, who says that he has come back from Carthage and mustered a large, powerful army. She presents him as the force gathering against Macbett: the whole country, she says, is against the reigning king, who has run out of friends. The crowd’s cries for Macol and against Macbett give that warning a public voice. Macol arrives to fanfares, and his entrance marks the shift from a ruler’s isolated confidence to an organized challenge.

His connection to the preceding regime is more complicated than the first announcement suggests. Lady Duncan later reveals that Duncan adopted Macol, while Banco was his biological father. Duncan had wanted an heir; Macol was treated as the son of Duncan and Lady Duncan, although the apparent family story concealed a different birth. Macol had also been sent to Carthage University by Duncan. His return therefore brings back not simply an opponent but the heir Duncan deliberately raised and the son Banco had fathered.

Parentage and the Claim to a Name

Lady Duncan explains that Macol’s biological mother was a gazelle whom a witch transformed into a woman. After giving birth, she changed back into a gazelle. Lady Duncan says she secretly left court before the birth so that no one would know she was not pregnant; everyone consequently took Macol for her child and Duncan’s. The strange genealogy punctures the court’s accepted account of succession, revealing that the supposed royal son was adopted and that his birth rested on a concealed, supernatural history.

The revelation makes Macol’s claim to lineage unstable rather than straightforward. He says he will resume his father’s name and found a dynasty lasting for centuries. Lady Duncan counters that Duncan cared for him and educated him, and insists that he must carry on Duncan’s family name. Macol answers that he will avenge both his natural and adoptive fathers, while also saying that he will not give up his name. The exchange leaves the terms of his identity unresolved: he invokes biological descent, acknowledges a debt to his adoptive father, and treats revenge as a way to claim both inheritances. His dynastic ambition is already in tension with the competing obligations Lady Duncan places before him.

Conflict with Macbett

Macol confronts Macbett with a denunciation that casts the ruler as a murderer and moral monster. Their quarrel is not only about possession of the throne. Macol says that they have old scores to settle and draws his sword, making the contest personal as well as political. His declared intention to avenge both fathers gives that confrontation a family dimension, though his announced revenge does not distinguish between biological and adoptive bonds.

Macbett answers with the prophecy that no man of woman born can harm him, and adds that he can be defeated only when the forest marches against him. The stage action makes the prediction visible: men and women approach carrying placards with trees drawn on them. Macbett turns toward this symbolic forest, and Macol stabs him in the back. Macbett falls; Macol orders that his body be taken away. The killing thus appears to fulfill the prophecy through theatrical image rather than a literal advancing woodland. Macol’s victory depends on the moment when Macbett’s confidence in the prophecy meets its staged, public enactment.

Accession and the New Tyranny

The first response to Macbett’s death is acclamation. Shouts hail Macol as the beloved sovereign and declare the tyrant dead. Macol then addresses the country as a rescuer: he describes it as having sunk beneath a yoke, with new wounds added each day, and claims to have trodden upon the tyrant’s head. Macbett’s head is displayed on a pike as this announcement continues, turning the defeated ruler’s body into evidence for Macol’s claim to have ended oppression.

That liberating language does not last. When people keep speaking, Macol threatens to set his soldiers and dogs on them. A forest of guillotines appears upstage, recalling the play’s opening image of such instruments. He then declares that, now the tyrant is dead, the country will have more vices and suffer in more ways than before under his succession. The crowd’s murmurs shift to discontent, amazement, and despair; by the end of the speech Macol is left alone. The reversal makes his victory a transfer of power, not a deliverance from its abuses. His announcement openly rejects the expectation that the new ruler will repair the country and instead promises a harsher continuation of its suffering.

Narrative Role

Macol’s arc compresses the play’s succession crisis into a sequence of reversals: the returning heir is revealed as an adopted child, the revenge against a tyrant produces a new sovereign, and the crowd’s celebration collapses into dread. His parentage complicates the idea that political legitimacy can be secured by blood alone, while his determination to avenge both fathers turns family history into a justification for violence. The tree placards make the fulfillment of Macbett’s prophecy both unmistakable and theatrical; the guillotines that follow connect Macol’s rule to the coercion he had ostensibly displaced. The ending leaves his promise of a lasting dynasty beside the image of a ruler isolated amid public dismay, with no sign that the cycle of tyranny has been broken.