As ever in Shakespeare plays, there are a complex web of sources for Macbeth, which are constantly being examined and argued about by scholars.
The basic historical plot and many individual details come from the "Chronicles" of Raphael Holinshed, though Shakespeare fuses two events (Donwald's murder of King Duff and Macbeth's usurpation of the throne) which are seventy years apart together to make up the plotline of his play.
James IV of Scotland, who had recently been crowned James I of England (which is why Macbeth is a Jacobean and not an Elizabethan play - James, not Elizabeth, is the reigning monarch) is clearly also a huge influence on the play, and perhaps even its first audience.
The final, apparently unfulfilled prophecy of the witches, that Banquo's children will become kings, points to James himself, the current king, and supposed historically to be a descendant of the historical Banquo. Thus, we might suggest, James himself is almost a character within the play (much as Elizabeth I is thought to be referenced in one of Oberon's speeches in A Midsummer Night's Dream as the "imperial votaress").
Yet in a more general sense, James I is perhaps the play's biggest influence, as its dark world of witches, strangled babies and ravens owes much to James' obsession with all things occult and dark (he even wrote a book about witchcraft himself, titled Daemonologie).
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