The Walking Forest Motif in Shakespeare’s Macbeth—Origins

The motif of the walking forest present in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, as well as in Holinshed’s and Boece’s chronicles, has a pedigree that can be traced back to ancient times. Not only is it literally a case of a walking forest, which in itself is indicative of myth, but it is also accompanied by a suggestion of military activity. An investigation of the traces of an ancient Celtic culture in the works of William Shakespeare reveals some interesting details that relate to the origins of the walking forest motif. For example, in his book Les Druides,1 the late French specialist in Celtic Studies Christian-J. Guyonvarc’h describes what he calls the ‘vegetal war’.2 He cites three occurrences of the vegetal motif within the corpora of Irish and Welsh texts, and he offers a continental example that appears in Livy’s History of Rome. Another instance of this motif, though not mentioned in Guyonvarc’h, appears in the Welsh Mabinogion. According to Pierre Le Roux,3 the fact that the motif can be found on the continent in Gaul and in Germany, as well as in Wales and Ireland, confirms that it belongs to a homogeneous Celtic culture. This possible Celtic origin of an element in Macbeth has not so far been noticed in any work done on Shakespeare’s sources.