Correspondence to:

The article aims to reconstruct the perspective of bodily pathology underpinning Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In the play, Scotland’s body politic is frequently depicted as a macro-system suffering from a complexional imbalance of digestive origins. More specifically, Scotland comes over as a huge stomach strangled by a carcinogenic foreign body in need of being ‘‘raze[d] out’’. Since traditional purgative drugs such as ‘‘rhubarb’ ’ and ‘‘cynne’ ’ turn out to be totally inefficient to cure the body of Scotland, the resolution to adopt a drastic medical measure becomes more than urgent. The conclusion of the play coincides with the most terrible form of political surgery: Shakespeare’s reiterated use of verbs such as ‘‘pluck’ ’ and ‘‘purge’’, commonly used in Renaissance herbals and handbooks, suggests that Macbeth’s physical body is suffering from a kind of ‘‘blockage’’, for which herbal treatments are no longer sufficient. Nothing less than a surgical operation is needed to ‘‘purge’ ’ the corrupt entrails of the State dominated by Macbeth’s tyranny