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Mastering Macbeth
An ebook for GCSE English students
By Jacob Williams, MA (Oxon)
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Introduction
This book contains worked examples of Grade 9 analysis of the play Macbeth. If you
are studying this play for GCSE or iGCSE English Literature for any exam board,
including AQA, Edexcel/Pearson, Cambridge/CIE, Eduqas/WJEC, or OCR, you can
model the paragraph structure and style, and use the ideas behind them in your own
essays. Even if you are studying another play, you can get useful ideas about the kind
of analysis examiners look for.
Obviously, it will not help you if you try to simply copy information or rote-learn
paragraphs from this book!

Notes
In this document, the name of the play is italicised as “Macbeth” but the name of the
character is just “Macbeth”.
I have given the references each time I use a quote, e.g. Act II, Scene I, Line 55 would
be (2:1:55), except when quotes follow immediately after each other. However, you
don’t have to do this in the exam. This is just so you can check them.
Make sure you refer to the text as a play, i.e. talk about the “audience” instead of
“readers”.

Important information about Macbeth

The character Macbeth is based on a real person of the same name who was King of
Scotland from 1040 to 1057, and really did rebel against the previous king, Duncan I.
Banquo was a mythical lord from whom James VI of Scotland, who became James I of
England in 1603, claimed to be descended.

The real life Macbeth did not murder Duncan in secret, however; Duncan was killed
in battle. He was also not known as a tyrant but as a reasonably good king.
Shakespeare based the story, including the (real) character of Macbeth and the
(mythical) Banquo, on a book called Hollinshed’s Chronicles. This book was not
accurate (Banquo probably didn’t exist), and Shakespeare then changed the
characters further: in the Chronicles Banquo actually helped Macbeth kill Duncan, for
example.

He probably did this in order to please James I. The Gunpowder Plot, when Guy
Fawkes had tried to kill James I, had just happened in 1605, one year before Macbeth
was performed in 1606. Shakespeare’s purpose may have been to emphasise the evil
of rebelling against kings. Remember this context, especially when we talk about the
Kingship theme.
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Important further historical context

Kingship/monarchy
People in Jacobean times (meaning the reign of King James I of England, 1603-1625)
believed Kings were appointed by God, an idea known as the Divine Right of Kings.
The King of England today is still the head of the Church of England and the
coronation includes a religious service. In Jacobean times, this was taken very
seriously.

Because the King was chosen by God, anyone who opposed the King could be viewed
as violating God’s will, making regicide (killing a King) the ultimate evil. In 1605, the
Gunpowder Plot tried to kill James I, and the perpetrators were brutally executed by
hanging, drawing, and quartering.

James I was the first King to unite England and Scotland (he was James VI of
Scotland). England and Scotland had often been at war in previous centuries so
people were interested in how the two countries could be united, hence the interest
in the ‘Scottish play’ Macbeth.
Religion
The vast majority of people in England and Scotland were Christian, meaning they
believed in God and that going to Heaven required faith in Jesus as the Son of God,
whose sacrifice through crucifixion earned forgiveness for humanity’s ‘Original Sin’,
where Adam, the first man, disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit in the
Garden of Eden (this story is referenced in Macbeth).

Most people were Protestant, meaning they ‘protested’ against the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church is run by the Pope and teaches that you must belong to the
Church and do good deeds to go to Heaven. Protestants argued that ordinary
Christians can run churches without the Pope by following the Bible alone, and that
going to Heaven is the result only of faith (good deeds will naturally follow). As a
result, they also published the Bible in English instead of Latin so ordinary people
could read it. Henry VIII made England officially Protestant in the 1530s when he
created the Church of England. Some people were Catholics and they were heavily
discriminated against, which is partly why Guy Fawkes had tried to kill King James.
Protestants believed Catholics wanted to overthrow the King and that they were loyal
to the Pope instead of to England.
Witchcraft
People in Jacobean England were terrified of witches, similar to how people now are
terrified of COVID-19 or terrorism. People believed witches were men or (usually)
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women who worked for the Devil and had magical powers, such as cursing people to
make them ill or causing animals to die. Witches were believed to have animals
known as Familiars who followed them around and helped them. James I encouraged
panic about witchcraft by publishing a public, Daemonologie, in 1597, where he
argued witches were a major threat and explained how to find and punish them. The
use of witches in Macbeth would have been viewed as terrifying and suggesting that
evil powers could be the reason people rebelled against the King.
Gender (men and women)
People in Jacobean times believed men and women were very different and had
different roles in society. Men were supposed to be strong and brave and do most of
the work outside the home, and to be prepared to fight if necessary. Women were
supposed to focus on raising children. People were not supposed to have
relationships outside of marriage, and men had more rights than women in law, since
the law defined the man as the head of the household and responsible for his wife
and children. Women were supposed to obey their fathers before marriage and
afterwards their husbands. Many marriages were arranged by families for business or
political reasons, though marrying for love was becoming more widespread.
Feminists refer to this system as ‘patriarchy’, meaning rule by men. Lady Macbeth
violates society’s deepest beliefs about women when she says she would be willing to
kill her own children

Important general analysis of Macbeth

This section contains important ideas that correct common mistakes and could be
relevant to all questions.

1 )The witches are not imaginary. Nearly all experts think the witches are supposed to
be real.

The witches are presented in Macbeth as real, shown by the fact that Banquo, who is
not delusional like Macbeth, can also see them. Banquo notices that they “look not
like the inhabitants of’ the earth” (1:2:42), but follows up with “and yet are on’t”. He
is surprised that they are on Earth and thinks they do not belong here, but accepts
that they are here nonetheless. This shows that the witches are uncanny but not
unreal. James I had written books about witches and believed they were a serious
threat to society; Shakespeare was not trying to undermine this belief by presenting
them as imaginary. Moreover, it is very important that the witches are real: since the
play is about sin and corruption (see the Themes), it fits better that the origins of
Macbeth’s evil ideas lie in a real Satanic force rather than in his own mind. It was a
common idea in Shakespeare’s time that witches would suggest evil things to people,
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who then had the choice as to whether to act on them. Thus, Macbeth is still to
blame even if the witches are real.

2) The Porter scene (beginning of Act 2 Scene 3) is not just comic relief

The porter’s lines are supposed to be funny, but they also have a dark significance. He
compares himself to a “porter of hell gate” (2:3:1), opening the door to sinners.
These include a “farmer who hanged himself on the expectation of plenty”—guilty of
despair—an “equivocator” who “committed treason”, and a tailor who tried to
defraud people with fashion, who is guilty of pride. This is significant because
Macbeth is already guilty of treason and later becomes a proud tyrant who also
despairs of all hope of peace. The porter is hinting at this for the audience, and
foreshadowing that Macbeth does not repent or apologise and therefore will end up
at “hell gate”.

Additionally, the knocking follows from the knocking first heard by the Macbeths in
the previous scene—“I hear a knocking” (2:2:76), says Lady Macbeth, after berating
her husband’s weakness after the murder. The constant repetition in the Porter’s
lines, such as “knock, knock, never at quiet!” (2:3:13), suggests that the knocking is
not just physical. Linking to the visions that Macbeth had in the previous scene, and
has later, it could also be an internal knocking, a drumming in his head, reminding
him of his guilt and ensuring he will “never [be] at quiet”.

Scene-by-scene breakdown

Act 1:

Act 1 describes the events in the build up to the murder of Duncan

Scene 1
Introduces the witches; they are to meet with Macbeth; “fair is foul, and foul is fair”
establishes the theme of deception.

Scene 2
Sergeant reports on Macbeth’s courage in a battle against traitors including
Macdonwald, allied with the King of Norway; Duncan decides to make Macbeth
Thane of Cawdor as the old Thane is going to be executed for working with the
enemy.

Scene 3
Macbeth and Banquo meet the witches. “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” --
echoes the witches’ own words.
Ross and Angus announce Macbeth’s new title; he begins to believe the witches and
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his ‘proleptic imagination’ (seeing the future) is established: “nothing is, but what is
not”

Scene 4
Macbeth greets Duncan but Malcolm is proclaimed his heir. Macbeth is angry and
vows to “o’erleap” Malcolm.

Scene 5
Lady Macbeth reads Macbeth’s letter: she thinks he is “too full o’th’milk of human
kindness” to do what is necessary and kill Duncan.
She learns Duncan is arriving soon and invokes “spirits” to “unsex me here”
Macbeth arrives and they discuss murder (but he doesn’t promise to do it)

Scene 6
Lady Macbeth greets Duncan with excessive praise; he ironically comments on how
beautiful the castle is.

Scene 7
Soliloquy: “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly”
Macbeth doubts that he should kill Duncan.

Lady Macbeth persuades him by questioning his manhood; mentions dashing out
brains of children. They plan the murder in detail (getting the guards drunk and
framing them)

Act 2: Murder and immediate consequences

Scene 1
Banquo and Fleance walk at night: “The moon is down: I have not heard the clock”
Banquo has been dreaming of killing Duncan (possibly implied).
Macbeth arrives; he asks Banquo not to speak of the prophecies
Soliloquy: “Is this a dagger…” -- Macbeth hallucinates as he prepares to kill Duncan.

Scene 2
Macbeth returns to their chamber having done the deed
Hallucination: he hears a voice saying “Macbeth doth murder sleep”
He is deeply shaken and paranoid; Lady Macbeth tries to comfort him: “A little water
clears us of this deed”
But: “This my hand will rather / the multitudinous seas incarnadine / Making the
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green one red” -- ironically, later, she will be the one overwhelmed by guilt and
unable to “sweeten” her hand.

Scene 3
Porter scene foreshadows Macbeth’s decline.
Macduff and others arrive and discover the murder; Macbeth has killed the guards
(covering up).
Malcolm and Donalbain flee as they will be suspected of the murder.

Scene 4
Ross and an Old Man discuss spiritual portents (pathetic fallacies) indicating nature
has been disrupted by the murder.
Macduff seems suspicious of Macbeth; will not attend the coronation
“Adieu / Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!” -- motif of clothing indicating
status appears, which will recur several times throughout the play.

Act 3: Macbeth reaches a point of no return in his murderous character, growing in

determination; Lady Macbeth begins to lose determination.

Scene 1
Banquo suspects Macbeth of killing Duncan
Macbeth plans the banquet; he seems distant to Lady Macbeth
Expresses paranoia; soliloquy: “To be thus is nothing”, “upon my head they placed a
fruitless crown”. He feels he has nothing as the throne is not safe will Banquo and
Fleance live.
He speaks to murderers and makes plans to kill Banquo and Fleance.

Scene 2
Lady M is distressed: “Our desire is got without content”
Macbeth is paranoid; she tries to comfort him; he does not specifically reveal the
plan to murder Banquo

Scene 3
Murder of Banquo; Fleance escapes

Scene 4
Banquet scene
Macbeth learns Fleance escaped
He hallucinates Banquo’s ghost (twice); Lady Macbeth berates his lack of manhood
again
He resolves to go to the witches again: “I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should
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I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” Point of no return -- he

cannot go back to being good.

Scene 5
Hecate (Goddess of witchcraft) plots with the witches.
Probably not by Shakespeare; often removed

Scene 6
Lords suspect Macbeth of killing Duncan and Banquo and discuss Malcolm’s plan to
overthrow him; we learn Macduff has refused Macbeth’s summons.

Act 4
Macbeth’s actions begin to rebound against him, as he predicted in 1:7: “that we but
teach / Bloody instructions which, being taught, return / To plague the inventor”

Scene 1
Witches develop a new charm (“double, double, toil and trouble”)
Macbeth demands answers from the witches.
They give him the three prophecies: Beware Macduff; no man of woman born can
harm him; he shall not fall till Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane
They show him Banquo’s descendents as Kings
Macbeth is now fully determined: “the very firstlings of my heart shall be / the
firstlings of my hand”
He resolves to massacre Maduff’s family after learning he Macduff has fled to
England where Malcolm is.

Sene 2
Lady Macduff and her son discuss treachery; they feel betrayed by Macduff for
leaving them
Then they are murdered on Macbeth’s orders.

Scene 3
Macduff goes to Malcolm in England, where the King is portrayed as a saint.
Malcolm pretends to be a terrible person to test Macduff’s loyalty: Macduff is
horrified, meaning he passes the test
They plan to attack Macbeth with Siward and English troops
Ross tells Macduff of his family’s murders; he is devastated and determined to get
revenge

Act 5
Macbeth’s downfall
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Scene 1
Sleepwalking Scene
Lady Macbeth speaks in prose, with no rhythm (as she is not awake/mentally sound)
“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”. She is overwhelmed by
guilt.

Scene 2
Many Lords leave Macbeth and join Malcolm’s army
They discuss Macbeth’s hopelessness: his title is “like a giant’s robe / Upon a dwarfish
thief”

Scene 3
Macbeth is overconfident due to the witches’ new prophecies
He feels depressed but is determined
Asks the Doctor to heal Lady Macbeth: “minister to a mind diseased”; he can’t.
Motif of medicine is continued (English soldiers are like a disease).

Scene 4
Malcolm’s army decide to cut down trees from Birnam Wood to disguise their
numbers (one prophecy is ironically fulfilled but not as Macbeth imagined it)

Scene 5
Macbeth learns of his wife’s death: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy -- he has
lost everything and feels life has no value.
Learns that the wood is “moving” towards Dunsinane, fulfilling the second prophecy.
He realises he is happy to die

Scene 6
Malcolm’s army (very briefly) discuss their plans

Scene 7
Final battle
Macbeth kills Young Siward (Siward’s son)
Macduff arrives; reveals he was “from his mother’s womb / untimely ripped” so he
fulfils the third prophecy.
Macbeth would rather die than surrender; Macduff kills him
Siward is not too sad since his son died honourably
Malcolm is proclaimed King and announces he will be a fair ruler and make up for
what Macbeth did.
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Themes in Macbeth
Deception and the supernatural
Macbeth is about the undermining of the natural order. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”,
as the witches announce in the very first scene (1:1:11): in other words, what
appears good is actually vile, and vice versa. This re-echoes throughout the play:
Duncan comments on the “pleasant seat” of Macbeth’s castle (1:6:1), his place of
imminent death; Malcolm later pretends to be consumed by lust and greed in order
to test Macduff’s honesty in Act IV Scene 3; above all, the kingship that seemed so
fair to Macbeth is soon revealed to be foul, a “fruitless crown” (3:1:64) that brings
only pain and anxiety. The audience understand that the world of Macbeth is
deceptive and nothing can be as it appears, since the wheels of fate are cast in
motion by the witches’ first prophecy.
Macbeth is deceived by the witches, but as a willing participant. With the ominous
phrase “I conjure you, by that which you profess” put into his mouth (4:1:50) when
he approaches them for the second time, Macbeth is almost seen to be
invoking—conjuring—the witches’ evil magic. It is by listening to their prophecies
that he is tempted to evil, suggesting he is responsible for his own actions despite the
supernatural influence. In this sense, he is a tragic hero: it is his own error that leads
to his downfall, even if the witches prompt it.
Sin and corruption
Context: Macbeth is about human evil. Shakespeare, and just about all of his
audience, were Christian, believing that evil is rebellion against God (sin). Repentance
is when a sinner admits what they have done and asks for forgiveness; redemption is
the state of being forgiven by God.
Macbeth’s evil stems from common motives. His “vaulting ambition” (1:7:27) is
personified as a galloping horse which “o’erleaps itself” and collapses, showing that
he knows it is destructive. The audience can emphasise with his desire for power and
glory, making the play more intensely tragic since we can imagine ourselves acting
the same way in his situation. Thus we can almost in Macbeth act out our fantasies,
imagining what it would be like not to be constrained by law or morality.
Macbeth refuses to repent for what he has done, although it brings his entire life into
ruins.
Kingship
Shakespeare loves to explore the nature of Kingship; many of his other plays are
about this theme. Macbeth attains the “barren sceptre” (3:1:61) but Banquo’s
“royalty of nature” (3:1:49) is the reason he ultimately deserves to rule. Shakespeare
seems to be suggesting that true Kingship is a moral ideal. Banquo, “lesser than
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Macbeth, and greater” (1:3:65)—lesser in ambition, greater in character and

legacy—could thus, as James I’s alleged ancestor, vindicate the idea of his Divine right
to rule. This interpretation is strengthened by the dramatic moment when Macbeth
confronts the witches for the second time, and their final vision is a line of eight
Kings, in Banquo’s line, the “last with a glass [mirror] in his hand” (4:1:107), which
may have been held up to the real King’s face when the actor entered the stage. If
correct, this must have been an intense and moving moment for the audience, with
their real world being brought into the action of the play in such an intimate manner.

This message is reinforced in Act 4 Scene 3: Macduff is prepared to desert Malcolm,

by lineage the rightful heir, if the does not live up to his standards of goodness, yet
this is presented as a good thing, a “child of integrity” (4:3:115) which demonstrates
his noble character. Shakespeare appears to be suggesting that the true basis of
monarchy is virtue, and perhaps that rulership must be, in the first instance, rulership
over one’s own unruly passions, represented by the wild animal Macbeth equates to
his ambition.
Masculinity and femininity
Lady Macbeth has an ambiguous relationship to femininity. Although she calls on
spirits to “unsex” her when steeling herself for murder, her notorious willingness to
dash out the brain of the “babe that milks me” (1:7:55) had she promised to do so
could be seen as reinforcing the idea that motherhood is her ultimate love and
desire, since this is what she reaches for when seeking a pathetic image to
demonstrate her resolve. The image of murdering one’s own child in this way is
shocking and vivid; when she speaks of how she would have “pluck’d [her] nipple
from his boneless gums”, the audience cannot help but imagine this gruesome, raw
sight.
Destiny and free will
The relationship between the witches’ knowledge and Macbeth’s free will is similar
to a religious view of our relationship to God’s knowledge. They know in advance that
Macbeth “shall be king hereafter” (1:3:52), but since this is only through his free
choice to commit murder, fate and free will are shown to be compatible, similar to
the Christian idea that God knows our choices before we make them, and yet they
are still free. After all, if Macbeth were married to a different woman, he may never
have been convinced to ignore his doubts.
Knowledge and ignorance
Macbeth, as a tragic hero, descends deeper into ignorance the more her pursues
knowledge. When he demands from the witches that he “will be satisfied” (4:1:102),
he is delighted on learning of their equivocal prophecies, proclaiming “who can
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impress the forest, bid the tree unfix his earth-bound root?” (4:1:93) This rhetorical
question shows how far his intellect is warped by his ambition; he cannot see the
danger because his pride will not allow it. The dramatic irony is not lost on the
audience, who know the witches’ intention to deceive him, and through detachment
have more cause to suspect their honesty than ignorant Macbeth.

Characters in Macbeth
Macbeth
Ambition
Macbeth’s “vaulting ambition” is his fundamental flaw, and leads to the destruction
of both himself and everything he loves. Part of the tragedy is that Macbeth himself
knows his ambition will destroy him. As it “o’erleaps itself / And falls on the other”
(1:7:26), Macbeth uses the metaphor of a horse, personifying his lust for power to a
crazed stallion leaping a hurdle too high and collapsing. This shows us that he himself
knows it is destructive, that trying to jump beyond his station will lead to his
downfall, but he does not listen to his doubts. The audience can sympathise, knowing
that his doom is the result of a flaw we all might share.

Shortly after this, Banquo comments that there is “husbandry in heaven / Their
candles are all out.” (2:1:5) On one level, he means that the heavens are prudently
managed (husbanded) since they are not wasting resources on starlight, but it could
also continue Macbeth’s equine metaphor. In Heaven, all creatures are in good order
under God’s direct domain, but on Earth, man has given in to galloping desires;
Macbeth’s bestial nature has overcome his humanity.
Macbeth is even compared by Malcolm to the Devil. “Angels are bright still, though
the brightest fell” (4:3:22): here, Macbeth is compared to Lucifer, the angel who “fell”
in Christian theology through envying God’s power and seeking to supplant him. The
analogy also reinforces Malcolm’s initial mistrust of Macduff, since even the ultimate
force of evil appeared bright, like an angel. It may be hyperbole on Malcolm’s part,
but there is a clear parallel: it was pride, and unwillingness to accept one’s status,
that led Macbeth, like Satan, to rebel against the natural order, and descend into
greater and greater sin.
Macbeth is fundamentally unable to cope with the power that he craved. Having
anticipated that his crime would “return / To plague th’ inventor” (1:7:10), he later
finds himself “cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d” (3:4:23) by fears of potential rivals, in
contrast to the expansive freedom power is supposed to bring. The harsh alliteration
and consonance reinforce the feeling of harsh constraint he is describing. This is a
consequence of the witches’ prophecy but also of his own paranoia, which itself
accelerates his downfall; it is the seed of his tyranny, which in turn provokes
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rebellion. Macbeth’s cruelty is a result of his own awareness that he is wearing

“borrowed robes”, a point which traditional productions visually reinforced by having
the actor playing Macbeth dressed literally in outsized clothes, to match his outsized
and underserved rank and drive home the message to the audience.
Inner torment
Macbeth is a victim of his own crime. As he descends further into cruelty and sin, he
loses his character until he has “almost forgot the taste of fears” (5:5:9) and “supped
full with horrors”. Both these descriptions compare his degeneration to satiation
from food and drink. Macbeth, a dinner who has overindulged in horror, finds his
palate can no longer appreciate fear. This helps us to see that his appetite—for
power—has undone him, turning him into a desensitized shadow of his former self.
When we think back to his earlier prediction of collapse if only that desire were
spurred on, we can appreciate Shakespeare’s idea that the animal part of our nature
must be restrained for our own good.
Despite, this Macbeth’s suffering is not debilitating. Indeed, he becomes more
decisive as the play goes on. Whereas on first hearing the witches’ prophecy, he
found “that function / Is smother’d in surmise” (1:3:151), or in other words that
action is crippled by endless doubts and speculation, by the end, he comments that
“bear-like I must fight the course” (5:7:1). He throws himself, like a bear, into the heat
of battle even when he begins to doubt his “charmed life” after learning of the march
of Birnam Wood.
This contrasts sharply with Lady Macbeth’s complete mental collapse. Macbeth, of
course, is spurred on by the witches’ ambiguous prophecies, but it may also relate to
the way they comprehended the crime before committing it. Macbeth knew full well
what he was doing, while Lady Macbeth almost trivialised Duncan’s murder—“a little
water clears us of this deed (2:2:77)”—suggesting that she never consciously
appreciated how grave an act it was. As she saw it, cleaning the evidence would
absolve them of all judgement by others, but she never reckoned with the power of
her own self-reproach. Perhaps Macbeth, who always knew that “justice /
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice / To our own lips” (1:7:12),
becomes less dysfunctional because he knows he is embracing evil, while his wife
lives in denial. The audience can appreciate the tragedy of Macbeth’s descent into
cruelty and Lady Macbeth’s into madness all the more by understanding how their
own different natures produce this.
Violence
Even before his downfall, Macbeth was a violent man, capable of great courage, but
also great brutality in battle. Early on, when facing the traitor Macdonwald, his sword
“smoked with bloody execution” (1:2:20). This vivid image makes us imagine his
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sword physically burning with Macbeth’s passion, giving off black smoke as it wreaks
righteous vengeance. It also foreshadows the violence of the “great tyranny” (4:3:32)
into which Macbeth’s rule descends. The proleptic irony allows the audience to
understand part of why Macbeth becomes whom he does: his motives have changed,
but much of his character remains the same.
Courage
Macbeth, despite his hesitations and inner torment, cannot be accused of cowardice.
While at the beginning he is Duncan’s courageous defender, by Act 5 his nihilism—his
frank acceptance of despair and loss of meaning—has become his armour. He
declares at the end of Scene 5, when he realises that Birnam Wood really is coming to
Dunsinane: “Ring the alarum bell! Blow wind, come wrack / At least we’ll die with
harness on our back” (5:4:50-1). The heroic couplet (a pair of rhyming lines in iambic
pentameter) lend his defiance a kind of heroic dignity: he knows there is no “flying
hence” but is determined to fight to the bitter end, although he knows his death is
certain, simply to preserve a sense of dignity. Heroic couplets are associated with
closure and completeness, and lend a finality to his Macbeth’s resolution. Having
waded through so much blood, he perhaps feels the only fitting end is through
destruction at the hands of those has wronged. His determination to face his death
manfully allows the audience to continue to emphasise with Macbeth despite all his
crimes, for he cannot be accuse of shirking their consequences, and in that sense
even brings about a kind of justice.
Lady Macbeth
Femininity
Lady Macbeth has a strange understanding of gender. She equates femininity with
mercy, gentleness, and hesitation; and contrasts it with the decisive, brave, and cruel
masculinity she desires for both herself and Macbeth. She uses Macbeth’s own
insecurities about his masculinity to convince him to follow through with their
murderous plan, telling him “when you durst do it, then you were a man” (1:7:53),
suggesting that moral compunctions undermine one’s manhood. Macbeth is won to
her conception, as he shows when he announces, “Bring forth men-children only; /
For thy undaunted mettle should compose / nothing but males” (1:7:73). He seems
to have accepted that true manhood is to be cruel and uncompromising, letting
neither law nor morality constrain one from pursuing what “thou esteem’st the
ornament of life” (1:7:42), pursuing one’s passions without limits.
It is implied in the play that part of Lady Macbeth’s psychic make-up may be the
result of her having lost a child. To “know / How tender ‘tis to love the babe that
milks” (1:7:55), she must have at some point been a mother; the personal languages
she uses suggests she is not speaking in generalities. Presumably, since there is no
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sign of the Macbeths having offspring, her child died, a common tragedy in that time.
With this is mind, we can understand why her willingness to have “dash’d the brains
out” (1:7:59) has such a powerful effect on Macbeth, for it is their own son or
daughter to which she is referring. This also reinforces the traditional perception of
lady Macbeth as an “anti-mother”, a negation of everything a mother is or should be,
willing to murder her own progeny in the pursuit of pure power, and has a shocking
cruelty for any audience to imagine.
Yet, in another sense, Lady Macbeth’s manipulation of her husband is stereotypically
feminine in a traditional and negative sense. There is an erotic undertone to this
scene, in which husband and wife have what must be an intimate and passionate
discussion, and some performances have portrayed physical seduction as part of her
persuasive repertoire. Shakespeare’s stage directions leave this open to
interpretation, but lines like “From this time / Such I account thy love” (1:7:41) could
possibly be seen as sexual manipulation. She is portrayed as powerful yet wicked in
this scene, and Macbeth’s equal yet clearly a malign influence, leaving us unclear
what, if anything, Shakespeare is saying about relations between the sexes.
Madness
Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness seems to be the result of her divided soul:
neither pure ambition nor repentance can entirely win out. She realises quickly how
futile their crime was: “’Tis safer to be that which we destroy / Than by destruction
dwell in doubtful joy” (3:2:8). This shows that she would almost rather be destroyed
like Duncan than have to live in constant fear, but there is also a suggestion of guilt.
The consonance of the “d” sound, and the rhyme of “destroy” and “joy” creates a
negative contrast, suggesting it is the knowledge of the destruction that is spoiling
her joy. In asking Macbeth to “sleek o’er [his] rugged looks” (3:2:27) , there is also
perhaps a deep irony, in that whereas he is gradually transcending guilt, she is
beginning to unravel through the attempt to constantly sleek it over, playing the
“humble host” (3:4:4) and covering for Macbeth’s behaviour during the banquet
despite her own impending mental collapse.
The next time we see Lady Macbeth, her madness is manifesting itself in sleep
walking, in which she desperately tries to scrub clean her hands of Duncan’s
(imagined) blood. The blood represents the stain she feels on her soul. “Who would
have thought the old man / to have had so much blood in him” (5:1:29) clearly is not
a comment on the physical quantities of Duncan’s vital fluid, but refers to all the
death, trauma, and cruelty, and above all spiritual torment, that the murder has given
rise to.
The inability of “all the perfumes of Arabia” (5:1:36) to cleanse her hands is
foreshadowed by Macbeth’s spectacular description in Act 2: “No, this my hand will
rather / the multitudinous seas incarnadine / making the green one red” (2:2:73), a
 16

horrifying image in which so gory is his blood-stained hand that all the world’s
oceans, rather than cleaning it, are turned themselves to blood like in the plagues of
Egypt. Even the word “incarnadine” makes us feel the almost physical horror of the
image: the Latin origins of the term, which Shakespeare was the first to use in this
way, suggest the meaning of “to make into flesh”. Crucially, though, now it is Lady
Macbeth, who once thought a little water “clears us of this deed” (2:2:65), who sees
that she will never be clean of sin. It was, perhaps, her attempt to suppress guilt by
equating it only with the judgement of others that has led to her decline.
Death
Lady Macbeth loses all dignity in death. In the sleepwalking scene, her lines are,
unusually, in prose rather than verse with no regular rhythm such as the usual iambic
pentameter of the play. This reflects the disordered and irregular nature of her mind,
which conjures images from her past in no particular order, as in, “then ‘tis time to
do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, / fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who /
know it…” (5:1:18-20) Here, the first line contains 12 or 13 syllables, and the second
14, in no discernible pattern of emphasis. The lack of rhythm is unique in all of
Shakespeare’s plays for a major character’s final lines, and shows the total disgrace in
which, shortly after, she is revealed by Malcolm to have died by her “self and violent
hands” (5:9:37). Suicide, a rebellion against God’s plan, was seen as the one of the
greatest sins in Shakespeare’s time, and Lady Macbeth’s undignified final appearance
would seem appropriate to the audience given what she is revealed to have done.

Duncan
Duncan, the virtuous king who has “borne his faculties so meek” (1:7:17), is also
something of a fool, who never realises that fair can actually be foul. He comments,
when reflecting on the Thane of Cawdor’s betrayal, that “There’s no art / to find the
mind’s construction in the face” (1:4:14), meaning that he is shocked at Cawdor’s
disloyalty since his face never showed signs of it. At this exact moment, in a bitter
twist of dramatic irony, enters the soon-to-be equally treasonous new Thane of
Cawdor, Macbeth. Despite his experience, it never occurs to the saintly king, through
all Macbeth’s flattering speeches, to doubt his sincerity. The audience can see the
supplanting of this innocent, naïve but good-hearted King by the cold realist
Macbeth, who keeps “a servant fee’d” (3:5:154) in all of their houses, as the great
change for Scotland that it is.

Despite this, he represents moral order in the play. His death unleashes torment,
chaos, and even abnormalities in the natural world, for the next morning Ross
observes that “darkness does the face of the earth entomb” (2:4:9) long after the sun
should have risen, suggesting that this may result from “the day’s shame”. This
natural symbolism was a common way to represent evil and it shows the magnitude
 17

of Macbeth’s crime, indicated even more directly when he then comments that
Duncan’s horses have “turn’d wild” and even tried to eat each other. If animals rebel
against their natural behaviours, it shows us how deeply Macbeth has violated
natural law; it is as if the whole universe has been turned upside down. This
symbolism would have been very clear to viewers, since Christian theology held that
the Fall—Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden—had been responsible for the creation of
natural evil. Shakespeare could even be comparing the world after Macbeth’s crime
to the fallen world believed to have resulted from this first rebellion.

Malcolm
Malcom combines his father’s virtue with Macbeth’s canniness, and he completes the
cycle of Scotland’s suffering and recovery. When Macduff comes to support his
rebellion in England in Act 4 Scene 1, Malcolm tests him extensively by pretending to
be even worse than Macbeth, claiming that were he to take the throne, “black
Macbeth / Will seem as pure as snow” (4:3:52-3), in order to banish the “black
scruples” (4:3:116) he holds about human nature after witnessing Macbeth’s
betrayal. If, as Duncan observed, there is no art to discern a man’s heart from his
face, it may be possible from his actions: Macduff’s refusal to serve Malcolm if his
rule will be unjust demonstrates the pureness of his motives. We can see here that
Malcolm has learned from Duncan and no longer combines personal virtue with a
naïve assumption that it is shared by others.

There is a possible theological interpretation of Malcolm’s exile and return to power.

Macbeth’s sin, like Adam, unleashes horror in the natural world, and causes the
righteous of humanity to be exiled from the Edenic land of Duncan’s Scotland.
Malcolm, unlike the blissful Duncan, thus possesses knowledge of good and evil, as
shown when he tests Macduff, asking that his jealousies “not be your dishonours”
(4:3:29) since they are merely a precaution, the necessary safeguard he must make
with his knowledge. The suffering endured by Macbeth, and also by Scotland, to
whose “wounds” “each new day a gash is added” (4:3:39), in an image similar to that
of the suffering Christ during his torture, thus constitute a kind of redeeming sacrifice
allowing the humanity to attain grace again, but this time only through its own bitter
efforts. Shakespeare suggests that in our fallen world, goodness can only be attained
through effort and sacrifice, perhaps bloody sacrifice.

Macduff
Macduff, a foil to Macbeth, represents a healthier vision of manhood. When he
learns of his family’s massacre by Macbeth in Act 4, he is told by Malcolm to “dispute
it like a man”—in modern parlance, to “man up”, and turn his anger into aggression.
Macduff replies, “I shall do so, / But I must also feel it as a man” (4:3:220-1), for he
 18

understands that there is no contradiction between manly courage and emotional

sensitivity. Indeed, it is this exact sensitivity that Lady Macbeth so fervently
renounced in the name of manhood when she described killing her own child, and it
is revealed to be the thing keeping the violence latent in masculinity from becoming
unchecked and ultimately self-destructive.

Murders
The murders of Macduff’s family are also hugely important to Macbeth himself. He
suspects Macduff already for not attending the banquet in Scene 4 of Act 3, and
announces that “I am in blood / stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more /
Returning were as tedious as go o’er” (3:4:135). By this, Macbeth shows that he feels
he has reached a point of no return in his moral development. “Blood will have
blood” (3:4:122), violence begets violence, and the blood he has spilled already
cannot be returned. Yet it is after meeting the witches again that Macbeth resolves to
kill Macduff, by which time it is already too late, the latter having fled to England. At
this point, Macbeth conclusively abandons his old hesitant persona, who had been
“smother’d in surmise” (1:3:141) at the very thought of regicide, and charges his
amorality with decisiveness. “From this moment”, he declares, “The very firstlings of
my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand” (4:1:145-6), and immediately
announces his attention to slaughter Macduff’s family. Thus, combining Macbeth’s
wickedness with his new-found decisiveness, the decision represents the moment his
character decisively changes; the audience can, with the horrifying witches having
just left the scene, perceive the full horror of what Macbeth has now become.
The murders are horrifying for another reason: up to this point, Macbeth’s murders
have had a practical purpose: eliminating Banquo and Fleance was necessary to
ensure that the prophecy that Banquo’s line would rule cannot come true. Macbeth
has also been told to “beware Macduff, / Beware the Thane of Fife” (4:1:69-70), but
on the basis of the second apparition’s words that “none of woman born / Shall harm
Macbeth” (4:1:78), he feels invulnerable. He resolves to kill Macduff’s family, who
pose no obvious threat at all, simply “to crown my thoughts with acts” (4:1:147), as a
kind of cathartic purging of his hesitancy, to test and demonstrate his new resolve.
 19

The perversity of his motive is highlighted by the use of the word “crown”, which
compares his ascent to self-confidence to his earlier ascent to Kingship, so that the
audience can perceive the way Macbeth is committing these crimes simply to resolve
his own internal conflict, which he equates in importance to assuming the throne in
the first place. There is a kind of deep narcissism in murdering simply for peace of
mind.
Macduff, when he finally kills Macbeth, demonstrates the problem of “equivocation”
referred to throughout the play. Since he was “from his mother’s womb / Untimely
ripp’d” (5:8:15) he fulfils the precise verbal conditions of the witches’ prophecy,
though not its natural meaning. Macbeth exclaims that the witches thus “palter with
us in a double sense” (5:8:20), finally understanding their deception. This scene
illustrates that the ambiguity between “fair” and “foul” that drives the play finally
comes to a resolution through ambiguity itself, with Macbeth getting his just
punishment for allowing himself to trust the witches. The condemnation of
equivocation may relate to the Gunpowder Plot which had just been foiled when
Macbeth was written, since many of the conspirators, unwilling to lie openly, used a
similar tactic when questioned, which was widely condemned by English society.
Country and family
Despite his heroic qualities, Macduff also has at least one vice of the hero: he seems
to put his mission before his family. Lady Macduff, abandoned with her children in
their castle after Macduff’s flight, comments that “When our actions do not, / Our
fears do make us traitors” (4:2:3), suggesting that Macduff’s fleeing Scotland has
made him a traitor to his family. She then repeatedly tells their son that he is “dead”:
not literally, perhaps, but dead to his family as a husband and father for having
betrayed them by leaving them in such danger. The pathos is enhanced by this being
uttered to a young child about his own father. In the next scene, Macduff, on learning
of their deaths from Ross, realised that “They were all struck for thee!” (4:3:225). He
is doubly responsible: both for failing to protect them, but also for heightening
Macbeth’s suspicions by fleeing in the first place, another sense in which “our fears
do make us traitors”. “Sinful Macduff” (4:3:224), however, is able to repent for his
mistake through his grief, redeeming him in the eyes of the audience.

Ross
Act 4 Scene 3 could also be read as a meditation on patriotism. Scotland is
personified seven times in the two-hundred and forty lines: it “bleeds”, “weeps”,
suffers “wounds”, and possesses “vices”. The most extended metaphor is in Ross’s
description of Scotland’s state under Macbeth: “Almost afraid to know itself! It
cannot / Be call’d our mother, but our grave…”. This inverts the common image of a
nation as a “motherland”, with its connotations of safety, security, and home, and
 20

replaces it with an image of death, moving from the source of life to its ending. Ross
is suggesting that that a country can only “know itself”, and indeed be itself, in its
natural state of motherhood, if it is governed justly. Kingship is thus seen as a trust,
and a trust owed to Scotland as a person, rather than to abstract concepts of good
government.
Ross is also important because he represents how quickly the Scottish lords’ loyalties
change during the events of the play. Though a minor character, he has more lines
than many major ones, and his main role is to deliver important news to major
characters. At the start of the play, he delivers Macbeth the news that he has been
made Thane of Cawdor, describing how “every one did bear / They praises in his
kingdom’s great defence” . He attends Macbeth’s coronation in Act 2, but by Act 4 he
has joined Malcom’s rebellion, exclaiming how under Macbeth, “nothing, / But who
knows nothing, is once seen to smile” (4:3:166), meaning that his tyranny is so great
that only total ignorance can protect one, before informing Macduff of his family’s
murder. The speed of his change in outlook over these two Acts represents the
general movement of opinion of the Scottish nobility, who rapidly turn against
Macbeth’s tyranny.

Banquo
It is Banquo’s “royalty of nature” (3:1:54) that Macbeth most fears. Throughout the
play, Banquo is a foil to Macbeth. He is not entrapped by the witches, which
highlights Macbeth’s freedom to ignore their temptation if he wanted. Macbeth even
states that by Banquo, his “Genius is rebuked”, meaning that he feels undermined by
him. This is not because of Banquo’s ambition but because of his virtue. The audience
can understand from Macbeth’s terror when Banquo’s ghost appears in the banquet
scene that he pricks Macbeth’s conscience. Banquo therefore reveals Macbeth’s
character through the contrast between his royal nature and Macbeth’s “barren
sceptre”.
Banquo also understands the witches’ true nature. After their encounter, he
anticipates exactly their intent, telling Macbeth that they “win us with honest trifles,
to betray’s / In a deepest consequence” (1:3:125). He grasps that, to make foul seem
fair, they will tell their hearers small truths to build their trust, and then lead them to
great betrayal. Macbeth realises this too late, understanding the “equivocation of the
fiend / that lies like truth” (5:5:42) only at the end of the play, when Birnam Wood
has already ‘come to Dunsinane’. Banquo, due to his goodness of heart and ability to
resist temptation, is not taken in by their equivocation, and understands that, as foul
can seem fair, so lies can seem true when they appeal to one’s ego.
On the other hand, Banquo does not do much to challenge Macbeth’s assumption of
power after his murder of Duncan. Although, having seen the witches, he naturally
 21

fears “thou play’dst most foully for ‘t” (3:1:3), he pledges his allegiance quickly. It is
also arguable that he was himself severely tempted by thoughts of killing Duncan as
Macbeth’s accomplice. He comments on the “cured thoughts that nature / Gives way
to in repose!” in Act 2 when unable to speak; this could mean that he has been kept
up at night contemplating the idea. It is not clear that this would reduce the esteem
in which audiences hold Banquo, however, since his role is to show that we can resist
temptation, not that we should never experience it.

During the banquet scene (Act 3 Scene 4), Banquo’s ghost undermines both
Macbeth’s kingship and his manhood. Macbeth observes that “with twenty mortal
murders on their crowns”, ghosts “push us from our stools” (3:4:80). The use of the
word “crowns” is significant, suggesting that Banquo’s death and apparent
resurrection have made him worthy of Scotland’s crown, in contrast to the usurper
Macbeth, while pushing a king from his stool, or throne, is a metaphor for
supplanting him. When he is gone, Macbeth is “a man again” (3:4:108), whereas his
wife had condemned him for being “unmann’d in folly?” (3:4:74), suggesting he still
equates masculinity with power.

Fleance
Fleance speaks little, but his lines are of great consequence. When he first enters the
stage, in Act 2 Scene 1, he is “bearing a torch before him” (opening of Act 2 Scene1)
according to the stage directions. This suggests that Fleance, the prophesied heir,
bears a light by which Scotland can find its way, and will bear the torch passed on
down the generations. The audience could easily interpret this very physical, visual
symbol of Fleance’s role, knowing his role in the witches’ prophecy that drives the
play, making the future almost tangible.

Fleance almost seems to be prophetic himself in this scene, when he announces,

“The moon is down” (2:1:2). The moon, a symbol of equilibrium and balance,
reflecting the sun’s light to leave the night not in total darkness, falls below the
horizon to indicate the end of the natural order that Macbeth is about to overturn.
Fleance, by predicting this dark time, betokens an almost supernatural role as the
fated, yet innocent and unintended, future King.
Fleance, even without acting, is also the cause of Macbeth’s descent into darkness.
Macbeth’s long soliloquy in Act 1 Scene 3, in which he almost seems to talk himself
into murdering Banquo, contains the observation that, “For them [Banquo’s children]
have I fill’d my mind, / For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered” (3:1:65). It is
interesting here that Macbeth sees his guilt at Duncan’s killing, which has “fill’d” (with
horror) his mind, as a reason not to turn back but to press forward by killing Banquo
and Fleance. Because he has done such a terrible deed, Macbeth reasons, the power
 22

better had have been worth it, and not destined to pass to Fleance, who impudently
stands in his way of claiming for payment for the harm he has done his conscience.
This same cycle continues in Macbeth’s psyche until he is “in blood / Stepp’d in so
far” (3:4:134) that he could not turn back even if he wanted to. It is Fleance who
inadvertently, just by existing, drives this aspect of Macbeth’s tragic personality.
Witches
The witches represent a primordial force of evil but their role in the play is
ambiguous. Although their prophecies come true, they may be self-fulfilling. If they
had not placed the ideas in Macbeth’s mind, he may never have descended into his
evil. Macbeth and Banquo in the first scene both seem unsure about the veracity of
the what the witches promise: Banquo questions whether they “have eaten on the
insane root / That takes the reason prisoner?” (1:3:84) This mirrors the questions the
audience are asking at this point; Banquo is expressing our own doubts These doubts
are never resolved, since even at the end, it may be that Macbeth’s downfall is still
the result of natural causes: his despair of learning of the manner of Macduff’s birth
may be the very reason he falls in battle.
The weirdness of the “weird sisters” is highlighted by the different meter in which
their lines are written. The other characters use iambic pentameter, lines of five
(penta-) pairs of syllables in which an unstressed syllable precedes a stressed one (a
unit known as an iamb), a steady rhythm that reflects a heartbeat, as in: “So foul and
fair a day I have not seen” (1:3:38). The witches, however, usually speak in trochaic
tetrameter, as in “double, double, toil and trouble” (4:1:10), in which a line
comprises four sets of syllables with the stressed one coming first. This highlights
their uncanny nature, since their speech negates the vital rhythm of nature
represented by the steady, iambic heartbeat of the rest of the play

Doctor
The doctor, as a voice of reason, is supposed to unmask the physical causes of Lady
Macbeth’s sickness, but Shakespeare has him tell us plainly that there is no cure for
guilt. Macbeth asks him to “pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow / raze out the
written troubles of the brain” (5:3:46), but he replies bluntly that one suffering in
such a way “must minister to himself”. The word “minister” can also of course mean
to attend to one’s spiritual needs. He is suggesting that the lady needs a priest rather
than a physician, and indeed he states this more directly to Lady Macbeth’s servant:
“more needs she the divine than the physician.” (5:1:35) The only way to healing for
the Macbeths is repentance, but it is a step they refuse to take. Despite this, we can
almost admire Macbeth’s stubborn refusal: in fighting to the very end, wading
through his sea of troubles, he at least preserves a kind of personal integrity,
 23

rebuking any demand to compromise despite the suffering he knows it must bring.

Significant passages
“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor…”

Lady Macbeth, 1:5:2-17, immediately after reading Macbeth’s letter describing the
prophecy
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;
The enjambment between line 1 and 2 accentuates the feeling of quick succession
that Lady Macbeth hopes will be manifest in her husbands ascent from Glamis to
Cawdor to the Crown. The caesura before “yet” shows the switch from hope to fear,
from prophecy to Macbeth’s own hesitant nature.
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
The “milk” here prefigures Lady Macbeth’s own milking of the child she is prepared to
kill. The expression is now a cliché but this is its origin. Milk symbolises the giving of
life, and thus kindness, which Lady Macbeth equates to femininity.
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,
“wouldst” (I would, thou wouldst) has a meaning more like “want” than the modern
“would. Macbeth wants to be great but lacks the “illness” (evil intention) necessary
to achieve it.
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou'dst have, great Glamis
Macbeth wants to attain what can only be achieved through evil but without the evil.
He wills the end but not the means to the end.
That which cries 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it;
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone.' Hie thee hither,
Lady Macbeth expands on her earlier point here. She describes Macbeth’s divided
desires: part of him acknowledges that “thou must do” (the murder), but another
 24

part “dost fear to do” even if what he “wishest” (wants) “should be undone”, i.e.
would be unachieved.
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
The “spirits” are ambiguous: they could refer to Lady Macbeth’s own life force but
could also have a darker connotation, hinting at some kind of witchcraft.
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
To “chastise” can mean to induce fear, while “valour” denotes bravery, creating a
tension in this image that lends it force.
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crown'd withal.
Lady Macbeth means that she will strike fear into anything that impedes Macbeth
from achieving his glorious desires, though the impediments being internal, the irony
is that she will be chastising him. It is also unclear whether “fate and metaphysical
aid” are really what will have Macbeth crowned, or whether the meta-physical
(beyond the physical) force represented by the witches is merely tempting him.
Perhaps Lady Macbeth is even providing that aid herself, making her, as some critics
have argued, a “fourth witch”. We should note, however, that her tortured
conscience later is not what you would expect from a truly evil being.
This passage is continued, immediately after, when she is informed of Duncan’s
imminent arrival:

The raven himself is hoarse

The raven, a dark and ominous bird, symbolises death and evil power. She compares
the hoarse, exhausted messenger with the raven, evincing and foreshadowing
Duncan’s evil fate.
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
The reference to the spirits again suggests something of the supernatural, though it
could be rhetorical. The use of the word “crown” may also refer to the Macbeths’
 25

plan. “Unsex me” clearly indicates that Lady Macbeth equates femininity with
kindness, and kindness with weakness: she wants to be made male, or at least
androgynous, to gain the strength for murder.

On the other hand, her reliance on spirts suggests she can only gain this strength
from something external, rather than her own intrinsic evil.
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
The “access and passage” could refer to Lady Macbeth’s menstrual cycle, heightening
the above equation.
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
“Compunctious” means evoking guilt: it is to “nature” that she attributes her
conscience, her capacity for guilt—again reinforcing that she does indeed have this
capacity, where a witch or truly evil person would not.
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
“Gall” is bile, the substance found in vomit and faeces. She inverts the health and
life-giving nature of a woman’s milk by equating it with this foul substance in which
the body expels waste. Once again, the link between motherhood and mercy is
honoured in the breach. The alliterative “murdering ministers” is almost oxymoronic
in a religious context: we can imagine a kind of Satanic inversion of a priest who
brings damnation, which may be what she has in mind.
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
“Sightless substances” suggests the “murdering ministers” are invisible: perhaps
demons, ghosts, or other incorporeal beings. Lady Macbeth is not a witch, but maybe
she is somehow communicating with evil forces, and this is why she declines so
quickly. The notion of the “pact with the Devil”, which led to the debtor’s rapid
demise, was a common one in 17th century theatre.
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Evoking Hell is also powerful in a religious society. She asks the smoke from Hellfire to
conceal her actions from even the knife, in case it could somehow have second
thoughts or turn on her—this relates to the way Macbeth personified his imagined
 26

knife later. It was even believed that objects would testify to people’s sins on the Day
of Judgement.
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'
Again, she does not want Heaven (or God) to see what she is doing—this strengthens
the suggestion of some kind of deal with evil forces. Overall, this must have been a
truly shocking display of evil when first performed.

“If it were done when ‘tis done…”

(Macbeth, 1:7: 1-28)

Macbeth is agonising with himself and temporarily talks himself out of murdering
Duncan.
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Don’t be confused by “were”: this is the subjunctive (conditional) mood, in which
“were” expresses a hypothetical: If it (the murder) were done, Macbeth, hopes, it
would be well (good) if it were done quickly. In other words, if he’s going to do it, he
wants to get it over with.
These first few lines pile in hypotheticals in a rapid pace, the repetition reflecting
Macbeth’s frantic thoughts.

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
The colon in line 2 creates a caesura which lets us take stock before Macbeth
expands. What he hopes is that the murder could be so decisive it would stop all its
normal consequences from coming about. The semi-colon in line 4 further slows us,
leading the impactful line 5, in which the “be-all” and “end-all” feel almost like heavy
blows. (Shakespeare coined the phrase “the be-all and end-all”).

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
“But” leads to the second part of the conditional statement: if all the above things
happened, then he’d “jump the life to come”—in other words, he doesn’t care about
going to Hell so long as this life is good. This already shows us he may have a lack of
 27

concern for morality and his permanent fate. The full stop is a very heavy caesura
reflecting the very heavy thoughts he is fighting through.

We still have judgment here; that we but teach

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust;
These lines create a kind of even-ness and reciprocity. The repetition of “teach” and
“taught” makes it feel as though the teaching is returning to the teacher, just as
Macbeth describes. The even-handed justice he refers to is the psychic torment the
murderer feels. He is foreshadowing how, as he notes later, “blood will have blood”,
and is well aware of what may happen to him if he follows through with his plan.

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
The double trust—both subject and host—is reinforced by the double nature of the
first part of the conjunction (kinsman and his subject). It is as if Macbeth is trying to
“shut the door” on his ambition by bolting it with as many locks (trusts) as
possible—he needs all these reasons to convince himself.

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
Here, Macbeth expresses a more clearly moral reason not to murder Duncan. He is so
humble (“meek”) and virtuous that everyone will sympathise with him if he is killed.
His virtues are personified as angels, perhaps again relating to the Day of Judgement,
when angels might indeed condemn Macbeth, or possibly to Duncan’s legacy in this
life.
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Personifying pity as a new-born baby echoes Lady Macbeth’s earlier exposition on
motherhood. Her willingness to kill her child, as she is about to express, fits into the
extended metaphor: she wishes to kill her own pity.
 28

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
Cherubim are angels often depicted in the form of children. The air’s “sightless
couriers” describes how they might fly without physical means to inform everyone of
Macbeth’s crime. This continues the extended baby/mercy metaphor.

That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.
Finally, Macbeth describes his ambition as a horse, needing a spur to prick it and slow
it down, and prone to jumping so high it falls in a heap. He realises exactly what is
going to happen if he gives in to his bestial desire for power.
The final line is short, consisting of just three pairs of syllables (feet), breaking the
rhythm of iambic pentameter’s heartbeat—just as the vaulting horse breaks down in
its fall, and perhaps foreshadowing how Duncan’s heartbeat is about to stop forever.
“Is this a dagger which I see before me…”
Macbeth, 2:1:33-63. Macbeth hallucinates a dagger as he is about to kill Duncan.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
Macbeth speaks directly to the dagger (“thee” is used when “thou” is an object of a
sentence; “thou” is to “thee” as “I” is to “me”: thou clutchest me, I clutch thee).

He is unobserved and may as well speak to his own visions, for he is really speaking
to himself, perhaps to his own darker nature.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
On trying to clutch the dagger he finds only air, and wonders whether it is a “dagger
of the mind”—why is it not “sensible to feeling”? The “dagger of the mind”
foreshadows how Macbeth’s crime will stab his own heart and soul into torment and
ever greater evil.
 29

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.
The dagger in front of him appears as real as the actual dagger he has just drawn.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
The dagger marshals (points) him where to go. Macbeth’s subconscious is projecting
his fears already—he deeply fears having to kill Duncan—again foreshadowing his
later worse delusions.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld
Macbeth wonders if his eyes are deceiving him, or his other senses, and notes that
blood has appeared on the dagger, concluding that the symbolised “bloody business”
is the reason for his hallucination. It is tragic that he does not reflect further on what
his disturbed state of mind could mean.
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
The night appears to be dominated by evil. It is unclear if this is an objective
description—Ross and Macduff describe the storm that occurs that night later, and
note many signs of abnormality in nature—or just Macbeth’s tortured perception of
it. Hecate was the Greek goddess of witchcraft, a kind of chief witch, and Macbeth
notes witches among the signs of the nights evil—perhaps because of his own
previous experience.
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
 30

Tarquin “The Proud” was the legendary last King of Rome, killed for his tyranny in an
uprising: an apt analogy for Macbeth. This extended metaphor has Macbeth
comparing himself to Tarquin, as murder, personified, and “wither’d” because already
sickened by it, creeping towards his object like a ghost (because already dead inside?)
and alerted (“alrum’d”) by a wolf guarding him.
Even allowing for his flights of fancy, Macbeth could hardly be more aware of the evil
of his plan.
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
Macbeth fears even the stones could report on what he is about to do, such is his
paranoia (or perhaps he cannot distinguish personified stones from merely being
given away by his footsteps).
He then becomes concerned that he is wasting time: words give cold breath to the
“heat” of deeds, and kill them with indecision. At this point, on hearing the bell, he
forms his final resolution.

The heroic couplet at the end allows Macbeth to dramatically summarise his
thoughts for the audience, communicating imminent action, but he is then
interrupted—
A bell rings
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
Macbeth hears the bell and then resolves yet again. Noting the symbolism of a
funeral bell, his last heroic couplet comments on Duncan’s uncertain fate in the
hereafter. Many actors leave a long pause before “…or to hell” to suggest Macbeth
initially assumes Duncan will go to Heaven and then ads the proviso, perhaps
because he does not wish to second-guess God, or to add a tiny degree of justice to
his deeds: no one, not even Duncan, is so perfectly good he can be certain of Heaven.
“To be thus is nothing…”
Spoken by Macbeth (3:1:47-71) when contemplating killing Banquo.
 31

To be thus is nothing;
But to be safely thus.--Our fears in Banquo
The first line, in trochaic trimester (three pairs of syllables, starting with a stressed
one) feels frantic and truncated. The dash creates a long caesura as Macbeth pauses
before moving on to the reason we cannot feel “safely thus”.

Stick deep; and in his royalty of nature

“Stick deep” almost puts us in mind of the knife Macbeth soon hopes to see stuck
deep into Banquo.

Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;

Macbeth, ironically, fears above all Banquo’s royal nature, his character that makes
him deserve to rule.

And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety. There is none but he
Since Banquo has both courage and wisdom, he would dare to try to supplant
Macbeth for the sake of his prophesied royal offspring, and would have the wisdom
to do it successfully.

Whose being I do fear: and, under him,

My Genius is rebuked; as, it is said,
Mark Antony's was by Caesar. He chid the sisters
Mark Antony was once Caesar’s ally, but the two ended up fighting a civil war in
which Antony was defeated; this is exactly what Macbeth fears. His “Genius is
rebuked” because his plans will all come to nothing if Banquo seizes the throne for
his children.

When first they put the name of king upon me,

And bade them speak to him: then prophet-like
They hail'd him father to a line of kings:
Macbeth, perhaps trying to justify his intention, starts blaming Banquo, as if it was
only at his prompting that they predicted his children would be kings.
 32

Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,

And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
The “fruitless crown” and “barren sceptre” are described in language denoting
infertility—Macbeth’s children can presumably not succeed him—but also death and
emptiness more generally; they have not proved the “ornament o’life” he had hoped.

Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,

No son of mine succeeding. If 't be so,
“Unlineal” means that the hand that will take Macbeth’s crown is not from his line.
He fears both that Banquo might seize power for his children, but even if this
happens after Macbeth’s own death he is still horrified at the thought of Banquo’s
descendants ruling; he sees his family line as an extension of himself.

For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind;

For them the gracious Duncan have I murder'd;
Put rancours in the vessel of my peace
Here he is still aware of the gravity of his first crime, and still haunted by it, having
lost his peace.

Only for them; and mine eternal jewel

Given to the common enemy of man,
To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings!
“Mine eternal jewel” means Macbeth’s eternal life—he is has given up his place in
Heaven by committing such a terrible sin, so he feels it should at least be made
worthwhile by ensuring Banquo’s descendants, described, without justification, as
enemies to mankind, do not supplant his own line. The “seed” reminds us of the
“seeds of time” Banquo referred to when addressing the witches: Macbeth feels
Banquo himself planted the seed by demanding the witches speak to him.

Rather than so, come fate into the list.

And champion me to the utterance! Who's there!
Macbeth here wants to fight against fate, if fate will lead to Banquo’s line ruling. The
“list” is the jousting arena, to “champion” here is to fight against, and “utterance” has
the antiquated meaning of “very end”. So he asks fate to come into the arena and
fight him to the end. This is ironic, since he is now opposing the fate which previously
enraptured him so much that he was willing to murder for it; now he is murdering to
 33

prevent it. This seems to show that it is not really fate that drives Macbeth at all; it is
his own character.

We can also see in this passage how far Macbeth has already sunk; he has very little
guilt now about the prospect of killing his friend Banquo, and is not haunted the way
he was before killing Duncan. He knows that the first murder has already desensitised
him to killing. The tragedy lies in the way Macbeth is aware of this.
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…”
Spoken by Macbeth, 5:5:18-28, when learning of Lady Macbeth’s death.

This soliloquy is one of the most profound statements of nihilism (the belief that life
has no meaning) ever penned in the English language.

She should have died hereafter;

“Should” means something closer to “would” in Early Modern English, a usage that
hasn’t entirely disappeared but doesn’t feel natural. Macbeth means that if she
hadn’t died today, she would have died hereafter (afterwards), for we all die
eventually. Initially, this seems a mild response given how close they were, but we
soon realise how deeply Macbeth is shaken.

There would have been a time for such a word.

If not this time, there would have been a time to report her death.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Some actors interpret the first “to-morrow” as following directly from “word”—there
would have been a time “to-morrow” if not today. Macbeth then starts to ruminate
over the word “to-morrow”, repeating it until it almost becomes meaningless, his
attention caught by the repetitive nature of time in which nothing permanent ever
changes.

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

Time “creeps”—slowly, but determinedly and inevitably, at a constant pace, and

there is nothing we can do about it.

To the last syllable of recorded time,

“Syllable” could denote a dramatic sound, a blast on a trumpet, as the world comes
to an end on Judgement Day; it is layered with multiple meaning, for the last syllable
 34

of the word “syllable” may have been pronounced emphatically as “bell”, suggesting
a bell tolling the hour, or tolling a death, like the one which tolled for Duncan, and
summoned him to “Heaven, or to Hell”: the same has now knelled for Macbeth’s
wife. It could also connect to the end of the syllabic rhythm of iambic pentameter,
which, resembling a heartbeat ceasing, represents the end of life, and is also the end
of the play, a link Macbeth is about to make. Notice how the metaphors flow
seamlessly into one another in sequence.

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

From “to-morrow”, stretching out to eternity, to “yesterday”, we move backwards to

encompass all of time itself. Our yesterdays, our previous actions, just like the tragic
present, have only added up to more and more death, guiding us fools, who act as
though life has meaning, like a lantern guides a traveller.

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

The light that guides us is extinguished upon death; Lady Macbeth, now dead, no
longer carries a lantern to assuage her fear of the dark. The repetition of “out, out”
shows Macbeth exclaiming, almost addressing life itself as represented by a candle.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

A “walking gentleman”, who would walk on stage to play any minor part at short
notice, was the lowest grade of actor; life is less than this: it is his shadow. It has less
reality than even the most feeble imitation of reality performed by the meagerest
actor on the humblest stage. The “shadow”, cast by the “candle”, is presumably just
as brief in this double metaphor.

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

The “poor player” that is life “struts and frets”, with connotations of absurdity and
exaggeration, for his “hour”—his appointed time—and no more, before he is
forgotten. By equating life to theatre, Shakespeare operates on many levels: he
suggests life is as false and unreal as an act, for we only perform our roles, unaware
of their lack of any cosmic significance, but he also breaks down the “fourth wall”
between actor and audience. The actor playing Macbeth is almost speaking directly
to the audience, revealing that he knows it is just an act—and suggesting that all
death, and all life, are as meaningless as the pretence of grief he is making now. The
audience are suspended between saying Macbeth equate the events of his life with
 35

an act, and seeing an actor equate their own lives with performance too, making the
message all the more poignant and direct.

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

The narratives by which we give meaning to our life are actually constructed by
idiots; perhaps we are the idiots for treating them with such seriousness, or perhaps
life is so absurd that, if it is an act, it can only be an idiotic one. It is full of “sound and
fury”, dramatic and showy impressions of meaning, but no meaning itself.

Signifying nothing.

Finally, Macbeth’s entire philosophy is summed up in one word: there is nothing,

zero, nihilo, to redeem this wretched life. This is the state into which he has been
brought by the death of his “partner of greatness” (1:5:1—in his letter), the only
meaningful relationship left in his life that has not been reduced to “command, /
Nothing in love” (5:2:20), to power and violence alone. This is the state of utter,
existential despair in which he finally resolves to end his life in a sea of violence
(“Whiles I see lives, the gashes / Do better upon them” 5:8:2-3), retaining a kind of
dignity by refusing at least to shirk responsibility for the emptiness he has created.

The Exam
Whichever exam board you are doing, the questions will be similar. It is important to
realise English is not about memorising quotes and information. It is about learning a
series of skills including analysing language and structure, evaluating opinions, and
comparing writers’ attitudes and perspectives.

For example, suppose you were analysing the quote:

“Look the innocent flower but be th’ serpent under it”

Imagine you forgot all the words except “serpent” but remembered the main gist of
the quote. You could write:

Lady Macbeth calls on her husband to seem kind but really to be a devious “serpent”;
the Biblical imagery implicitly compares the treacherous Macbeth to the Devil.
It would be better if you remembered more than one word, but you can still write
what examiners call a “precise reference” even if you don’t!

This is much better than writing out the entire quote and then saying much about it
that is interesting.
 36

Revision is best done by practising questions rather than trying to memorise long lists
of quotes using flashcards. If you don’t yet know the play well enough, you can
practise questions open book until you do.

This method means that you will (1) learn how to write analysis and learn the quotes
at the same time, (2) learn the quotes more effectively because they actually have a
use and a meaning, and (3) focus on what is really important, which is analysis.
When you have written an answer, you need to think about the examiners’ criteria.
Here are some of the main ones:

Perceptiveness: This means that you ‘perceive’ things other students might not. You
notice interesting ideas and perspectives. For example, noticing that the motif of
disease keeps recurring throughout the play and might indicate a wider connection of
moral goodness to cleanliness and health could help you understand Shakespeare’s
perspective on morality at a deeper level.
Context: Context isn’t about memorising historical facts. This is not a history exam.
Examiners want you to write about how certain things in history, either in the time of
the actual Macbeth or the Jacobean era when Shakespeare was writing, impact the
play or the audience’s perception of it.

For instance, you could write about how the widespread fear of witches, combined
with expectations about femininity in Jacobean times, created a reaction of extreme
horror when Lady Macbeth seems to be herself calling on evil “spirits” to “unsex” her.
This is much better than listing information about James I’s book on witchcraft, and
so on.

Conceptualisation: This means you write about big ideas or ‘concepts’. You recognise
that characters are ‘constructs’; they are created and constructed by Shakespeare to
make a point about bigger topics. The real Macbeth was nothing like the one in the
play.

Hence, Shakespeare constructs, for example, the image of Lady Macbeth as a woman
who denies her own femininity and goes mad with guilt, as a warning to women not
to try to supplant the role of men.

Or, from another perspective, he constructs Lady Macbeth as a reminder that women
can be just as powerful and even violent as men, challenging society’s patriarchal
assumptions.
 37

It’s up to you what you think Shakespeare really meant and what he really thought
about gender or any other topic, but you need to engage with the topics, not just the
characters and stuff that happens in the play.
AQA
In AQA, the Macbeth question will be in Literature Paper 1. This is a 1 hour 45 minute
paper. You will answer one question on Macbeth and one on a 19th century novel in
the same paper.

The question will relate to an extract of 10-20 lines from the play that is given to you
in the paper. The question will ask for your opinion about a character or topic. The
paper will say to analyse it “starting with the extract”.

30 marks are available for your actual writing quality and 4 for spelling, punctuation,
and grammar.
The extract is to help weaker students get started. So a good structure to use is:

Paragraph 1: Focus on the extract

Paragraph 2: Link the extract to the rest of the play
Remaining paragraphs 4-6: focus on the rest of the play

Most of the marks come from writing about the rest of the play.

You don’t need to write an introduction or conclusion -- and you shouldn’t if you
struggle to write six good length (at least 3-4 sentences) paragraphs in the exam --
but you could write a brief, one-sentence thesis statement saying your main answer
to the question such as:

I agree that Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a violent character, as he is violent

when helping Duncan at the start of the play and even more violent in trying to
secure his own power later.
You can spend about 5 minutes planning your answer and the rest of the time should
be spent writing. If you revise will, you should already have a lot of ideas for points
you could make.

Your school may tell you to write using PEE, PEEL, PETAL, or some other formula. Any
of these can work. However, I’ve found it is important to include three things in any
paragraph:

What → What is your main point

 38

How → What techniques does Shakespeare use to express this point, and HOW do
they create an effect.

For example, don’t say that the use of iambic pentameter creates an orderly feeling.
Explain that the regular, repeated rhythm of an unstressed followed by a stressed
syllable brings to mind a heartbeat, which could represent the rhythm of life.

Why → Why does the writer want to create this effect?

For example, explain that Shakespeare might want to create this sense of life having a
rhythm so that interruptions like the witches and Lady Macbeth’s madness, which do
not have this rhythm, are more shocking and remind us that nature can be
threatened by evil forces.
You can view past papers at:

https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/gcse/english-literature-8702/assessment-re
sources?f.Resource+type%7C6=Question+papers&f.Component%7C7=Paper+1
Edexcel
In Edexcel, the Macbeth question will be in Literature Paper 1, which also has
questions on the post-1914 literature. This is also 1 hour 45 minutes.

There will be one question and 55 minutes to answer it. There will be an extract
followed by the question, split into two parts.

Part (a) is about the extract and part (b) is about the rest of the play.

You need to write an equal amount for both, around three paragraphs. When writing
about the extract, it is especially important to zoom into the effect of specific words
or techniques, but you will have to do some of this when writing about the rest of the
play. If teachers say you should not analyse language in part (b), this is unhelpful as it
is easily misunderstood. You will get better marks by understanding the underlying
skills the examiner is looking for rather than fretting about assessment objectives,
which by themselves are often hard to interpret.
You can view past papers at:

https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-gcses/english-literature
-2015.coursematerials.html#filterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Category%2FExam-ma
terials&filterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Document-Type%2FQuestion-paper&filterQ
uery=category:Pearson-UK:Unit%2FPaper-1
 39

Eduqas/WJEC
Please note Eduqas and WJEC are the same thing.
The Macbeth question will appear in Literature Paper 1, which also contains poetry
questions. This is a 2 hour paper.

There are 40 marks for the Shakespeare section and you should spend around 1 hour
in total.

You will be given an extract and a question split between two parts. Part 1 is about
the extract and has 15 marks; part 2 is about the rest of the play and has 25 marks, 5
of which are for spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

You should spend 20 minutes on part 1 and 40 minutes on part 2. Aim to write at
least two paragraphs in part 1 and at least four in part 2.

You can view past papers at:

https://www.eduqas.co.uk/qualifications/english-literature-gcse/#tab_pastpapers
OCR

The Macbeth question will be in Literature Paper 2, which also has questions on
poetry. This is a 2 hour paper.
There will be a choice of two 40 mark questions, one which relates to an extract AND
the rest of the play, and one which does not relate to an extract.

If you choose the extract based question, you should follow:

Paragraph 1: Focus on the extract

Paragraph 2: Link the extract to the rest of the play
Remaining paragraphs 4-6: focus on the rest of the play

If you choose the other question, you will write at least 6 paragraphs about the rest
of the play.

You can view past papers at:

https://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/gcse/english-literature-j352-from-2015/assess
ment/
 40

iGCSE (Edexcel/Pearson)

The Edexcel/Pearson (they are the same company) iGCSE is only marginally different
to the ordinary GCSE.

The Macbeth question will be in Literature Paper 2, which also has questions on
Modern Drama.

You will have a choice of two 30 mark questions, and NO extract. You will just analyse
the play as a whole.

You will have 45 minutes to answer and should aim to write six paragraphs.

You can view past papers at:

https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-international-gcses/inte
rnational-gcse-english-literature-2016.coursematerials.html#filterQuery=category:Pe
arson-UK:Category%2FExam-materials&filterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Document-
Type%2FQuestion-paper&filterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Unit%2FPaper-2

Further reading
First, you need to know the play Macbeth inside out.

I suggest watching a good performance with subtitles so you can read and watch the
play at the same time. Ian McKellen’s version here is very good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgEshHhnLqU&t=1s

You will also benefit from reading analysis from other people. SparkNotes, LitCharts,
and GradeSaver (all can be found via Google) are good for basic ideas.

An advanced student could read Harold Bloom’s book, Macbeth: A Dagger of the
Mind
(https://www.amazon.co.uk/Macbeth-Dagger-Mind-Shakespeares-Personalities-eboo
k/dp/B07GNRHB3B/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1679215810&sr=
8-1). This has some interesting and unusual perspectives.

Finally, the best way to understand what the examiners really want is to read the
Examiners’ Reports, where they explain in their own words what kind of answers they
 41

like and what they don’t like.

They can be found below.

AQA:
https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/gcse/english-literature-8702/assessment-re
sources?f.Resource+type%7C6=Examiner+reports&f.Component%7C7=Paper+1
Edexcel:
https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-gcses/english-literature
-2015.coursematerials.html#filterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Category%2FExam-ma
terials&filterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Document-Type%2FExaminer-report&filter
Query=category:Pearson-UK:Unit%2FPaper-1
Eduqas/WJEC do not publish these.
OCR:
https://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/gcse/english-literature-j352-from-2015/assess
ment/
Edexcel/Pearson iGCSE:
https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-international-gcses/inte
rnational-gcse-english-literature-2016.coursematerials.html#filterQuery=category:Pe
arson-UK:Category%2FExam-materials&filterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Document-
Type%2FExaminer-report&filterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Unit%2FPaper-2

Conclusion

I hope you have found this Ebook helpful.

I have many more free resources available in my Facebook group, Get a 9 in GCSE
English, which has over 3,000 members:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/geta9ingcseenglish

If you are looking for more personal advice or tuition, you and your parents can book
a free initial meeting with my Enrolment Tutor, Jack, at:

https://bit.ly/StudentStrategy
In this free meeting, Jack will do an informal assessment of your child’s needs and
make a recommendation on an appropriate kind of tuition or further guidance,
depending on what they need.
 42

We don’t offer a one-size-fits-all tutoring service so it is important that we speak to

each student and family individually to work out if we can help them, and if so, how.

I wish you the best of luck in your future studies!

Jacob Williams, MA (Oxon)