At the time of King James I's reign, there was a great fear of witches and witchcraft throughout England and Scotland. And during his reign, William Shakespeare wrote the play Macbeth, which is the renamed King's Men's token of gratitude to James. Macbeth is interesting because it is “based on a story from Scottish history particularly suited to a monarch whose lineage dates back to Banquo” (Greenblatt 815). The play also drew on James' fears of murder, ultimately leading to Macbeth's fear of Banquo and having him killed so he wouldn't have to worry about his possibility of becoming a traitor. James was also afraid that witchcraft was behind every attempt on his life because he "suspected the hand of the devil in every plot against an anointed king" (816). James had a strong belief in the supernatural and witchcraft and had written a book on witchcraft and believed that the reason for various things that happened in his life was the fault of witches and lived in fear of the occult which would ultimately bring everything to an end. Before exploring the occult, supernatural, and other disturbing things that happened to Macbeth, it is best to look at the history of witchcraft at the time and how people dealt with the threat of witchcraft. In the 1840s, Wilhelm Gottlieb Soldan believed that witchcraft was actually something invented by monks and was actually a non-existent crime, while German mythologist Jacob Grimm saw witches as “wise women persecuted by the church” (Gaskill 1070). . Soldan's view is also shared by Daniel Fischlin, who “argues that witchcraft in the reign of James was a political threat constructed to be punished so that the king's absolute monarchy a...... means of paper ......e.g. " Modern Philology 1.1 (1903): 31-47. Web. March 13, 2014. Shakespeare, William, Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Andrew Gurr. "Macbeth." Introduction. The Norton Shakespeare Based on the Oxford edition. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2008. Print.Shakespeare, William, Stephen Greenblatt, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus and Andrew Macbeth. 2nd edition New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2008. Print.Stein, Arnold -84. Web. March 14, 2014. Yonglin, Yang. “How to Speak to the Supernatural in Shakespeare".. 2014.