The Duncan-macbeth-Malcolm drama is important, in any case, as a typical manifestation of the times. A student of history who inclined to the romantic is liable to picture those figures of the past as man of heroic stature and nobility, grappling with great affairs and shaping the destiny of the world. Wiser to blow away the mist of time and recognize that men and women are the same in every age, and judge their behaviour as we would judge it if it were here and now.

And on that basis the Homeric figures of the past might often remind us of a group of Mafiosi. Power and the hunger of power are also the same in every age, and in the words of lord Acton, they tend to corrupt. The plots and counter-plots, the shrewd political marriages, the pitched battles, the seizure of territories, fall into some kind of perspective if we transfer the whole scene to New York, with rival families conniving, making alliances, assassinating, taking over rackets and territories, clawing their way up the ladder to power or property or attaching themselvesto the likeliest candidate for leadership.

The main difference is one of scale, since the old kings openly dominated the whole society and not just their underground layer of it. But in both areas, in both ages, most ordinary people go on living their private and social lives and making the best of it, without being constantly aware of being in thrall.