Context

The three areas where James most obviously appears are treason, witchcraft and the way that Shakespeare helps support James's claim to the throne.

Treason: James had recently survived the gunpowder plot, which was an attempt to assassinate him. As a result, he wanted a play that would persuade people not to commit treason by showing the terrible effects of it. Shakespeare's play does this very successfully.

Witchcraft: James was obsessed by witches - he even wrote a book about them. Alongside writing the famous book he also personally tried and condemned a woman called Agnes Sampson, who he accused of making his wife seasick by calling forth a storm. Agnes was burnt at the stake. When writing about witchcraft, however, it's important to remember that although some members of the audience might have believed in them, most wouldn't. However, you don't have to believe in Jedis to watch Star Wars, and Macbeth, like Star Wars is a fiction. But the characters in the play are called Witches, which means we have to assume they're magical. Shakespeare did this to appeal to James's passion for the subject.

James's claim to the throne: One of the key plot-holes in the play is the fact that the witches say that Banquo's children will become kings, though, at the end of the play, Malcolm is crowned the rightful king. The reason for this is simple: James was (allegedly) related to Banquo, and so, when Shakespeare has the witches prophecise that Banquo's descendants will end up on the throne, he was referring to James, not Fleance. There's a lovely moment in Act 4 when a line of children come out of a cauldron and the last one is carrying a looking glass that would have, presumably, been held up to James's face during early productions. It's a lovely moment of early post-modernism from the Bard.

King James had quite a complicated upbringing. Before he turned one-year-old his father was killed. His mother then married the man who killed him. She was then exiled by her brother, as he thought that women shouldn't be on the throne.

James's mum, who was called Mary Queen of Scots, ran away to England where she was arrested by Elizabeth I. Twenty years later, his mother was beheaded, and James was, finally, an orphan. In reality, he hadn't seen much of his mother throughout his life though, because she'd been languishing in an English jail.

The fact that he had such a turbulent relationship with women - his mother deserting him and then being killed by Elizabeth, while the uncle who raised him passionately believed that women shouldn't have power - goes some way towards explaining the misogyny which often hangs around this play. Macbeth is, after all, about a seemingly good man who is pressured into doing something terrible by four women.

Most tellingly, however, is the relationship between Macduff and James. Macduff's "superpower" - the thing that sets him apart from the other characters, and makes him able to king Macbeth - is the fact that he was not "of woman born." I can't help but think that someone like James (who was snatched from his own mother before he'd had his first birthday) would have related to Macduff's position. It's also telling to look at Macduff's own description of his birth - "I was, from my mother's womb untimely ripped" - since, although James wasn't taken from the womb itself, he was certainly "ripped" in an "untimely" fashion from the woman who gave birth to him.

In short: Shakespeare made sure that James and his hero had something crucial thing in common!

Jacobean England was a very patriarchal society, which means that men held all the social, economic and political positions of power. However, although they weren't the norm, dominant, aggressive and ambitious women like Lady Macbeth wouldn't have been unknown to the Jacobean audience.

To appreciate why, it's worth reflecting on the fact that Queen Elizabeth died just a few years prior to Macbeth being written - and she'd been on the throne for 45 years! (Which was a long time when you consider that the average life expectancy back then was only 35.) And prior to Elizabeth, her sister Mary had been on the throne. So when Macbeth was written England had just experienced 50 years of female rule. So, while this doesn't change the fact that it was still a patriarchal society, it does mean that people would have certainly recognised powerful women.

Also, Queen Elizabeth was a pretty tough cookie. She was a protestant and had no qualms about killing Catholics if they threatened her rule. At one point she ordered the deaths of 450 Catholic noblemen after they arranged a revolt; another time she killed 150 Catholic priests and 60 of their followers in one fell swoop. She also beheaded the Duke of Norfolk (who was the second most powerful person in the country, after her) and stuck his head on London Bridge; and she killed Mary Queen of Scots, who was her own cousin and King James's mother!

And, despite all this, it was her sister Mary who history remembers as the "Bloody" one (she's famously called "Bloody" Mary, btw) as she was as fond of killing Protestants as Elizabeth was of killing Catholics. Mary liked to burn them though, so she often erected pyres in town centres so that the people could watch their Protestant martyrs go up in flames before their very eyes.

So, while this doesn't change the fact that women in Jacobean times were MEANT to be peaceful and gentle and do what they were told and be dutiful owned by their husbands, it also means that people in Jacobean times would have recognised an aggressive, powerful, murderous woman like Lady Macbeth.

And finally, it's worth remembering that all the Catholic and Protestant killing came about as a result of The Reformation, which was started when Henry VIII decided he wanted to marry the most famous of his six wives...

IMPORTANT NOTE: I haven't found anything about this connection anywhere online, so I might be missing something, but here goes...

Anne Boleyn is most famous as the second of Henry VIIIs six wives. The couple fell in love while Henry was married to Catherine of Aragon, and in order to marry her Henry had to create an entirely new church to replace Catholicism. This was a MASSIVE move that led to almost a century of violence and turmoil within England as Protestants and Catholics fought it out, while being supported by various different kings and queens.

The marriage didn't work out, however, and eventually Anne Boleyn was charged with treason and beheaded. Before she was killed, Henry charged her with witchcraft on the grounds that he claimed she had used magic to seduce him. The charges were dropped before she was killed, but they are recorded.

So: here we have a woman who was thought to have used witchcraft to manipulate a man into doing something that ended up bringing a long period of civil unrest on an entire kingdom.

It's not a perfect fit, but that does sound a little bit like Lady Macbeth...