Macbeth

Macbeth, a Scottish general, meets three witches who prophesy that he will become king. Urged on by Lady Macbeth, he murders King Duncan and takes the throne. To keep it he kills Banquo, whose descendants the witches said would reign, and later Macduff's family. Lady Macbeth is destroyed by guilt and dies; Macbeth is killed by Macduff, and Duncan's son Malcolm is restored.

The play was written around 1606, shortly after James VI of Scotland became James I of England. James believed in the divine right of kings, had survived the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and had written a book on witchcraft called Daemonologie. Banquo was held to be his ancestor, which is why the play cannot present him as guilty.

Macbeth begins as a celebrated soldier and ends isolated and despairing. What changes is not his ambition, which is present from the first scene, but his willingness to act on it. Track how his soliloquies shorten and harden.

Lady Macbeth is the driving force of the first half and almost absent from the second. Her power depends on her husband needing persuasion; once he acts alone she has no role, and the sleepwalking scene inverts everything she said in Act 1.

Banquo is the foil: he hears the same prophecy and does not act. Macduff represents loyalty to Scotland rather than to a person, and Malcolm's testing of him in Act 4 sets out the play's model of good kingship.

Ambition is the engine, but the play is more interested in conscience than in desire. Macbeth knows the act is wrong before he commits it, which is what makes him a tragic figure rather than a villain.

Kingship is measured throughout: Duncan's generosity, Macbeth's tyranny and Malcolm's catalogue of king-becoming graces give three points of comparison.

The supernatural raises the question the play never settles, of whether the witches cause events or merely reveal what Macbeth already wants.

Blood and darkness recur from the opening scene to the last. Track how blood moves from a mark of honour on the bleeding Captain to a stain that cannot be washed off.

The witches speak in trochaic tetrameter, a chanting rhythm quite unlike the blank verse of the court, which sets them outside the natural order.

Prose marks disorder: Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking is in prose, where all her earlier speech is in verse.

This text is examined in Paper 1, Section A. The question is worth 34 marks and an extract from the play is printed, and the question asks you to start with that extract and then write about the play as a whole. Allow about 55 minutes.

The marks are divided as AO1 12 marks, AO2 12 marks, AO3 6 marks, AO4 4 marks. AO1 rewards a clear argument supported by well-chosen references. AO2 rewards analysis of how the writer achieves an effect, which means writing about choices rather than about events. AO3 rewards context used to deepen a reading of the text.

Four of the marks are for AO4: vocabulary and sentence structures used to control meaning, and accurate spelling and punctuation. These are the cheapest marks on the paper and the easiest to lose by rushing the final paragraph.