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Macbeth takes place at roughly the same time as Hamlet, but while Hamlet was a legendary figure, Macbeth was historical. (Also, though the original legend for Hamlet was from the twelfth century, Hamlet has a very Renaissance feel to it; Macbeth has a mood to match its times.) Shakespeare’s source for Macbeth (and for many of his other plays) was Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland by Raphael Holinshed. The historical Duncan was killed in 1040, so Macbeth is set over 500 years prior to Shakespeare’s time. Again, Shakespeare alters time and characters for dramatic effect, here even more substantially than in Julius Caesar. (For example, Duncan and his sons are much older in the play than they were historically, little time passes in the play although the historical events took over fifteen years to unfold, and the murder itself is taken from a different bit of Scottish history which doesn’t involve Macbeth at all (Macbeth did kill Duncan, but in battle).
