James VI was a Scottish monarch at the head of nation that had endured numerous assaults by the Yorkist regime. Yet the impending death of Elizabeth I invited competition for the English crown and necessitated the revision of long-held suspicions and prejudices. Focusing on Shakespeare's most trenchant response to the Stuart accession, Macbeth, this talk will consider the use of Yorkism as a basis of an Anglo-Scottish conception of statehood.
