Macbeth

Key Resources:

• Essay Plans: These are really useful – the opening paragraph of an essay, and some quotes you could use in your response.
• Key Quotes with analysis: Some of the major quotes are analysed. Get comfortable with the analysis and then you can plug them into your essay question.
• Macbeth: What’s it all about? – start by reading this if you’re lost!
• How to Do Macbeth: A summary of what to do on exam day!
• The Context of Macbeth
• Key Quotes for Macbeth: An extended list of key quotes from the play
• Extract Questions for Macbeth: Loads of extracts with questions. Best read on a computer!

 

Possible questions and what to write about: 

• Deceit: Key quotes and ideas around the idea of deceit, which is a quite common exam question.
• Ambition: This is an extended essay that’s well worth half an hour. There are loads of quotes in it, it’s very accessible and is useful for much more than just ambition.
• Power: This is really very similar to ambition, and you’d do well to read that essay first. There are some notes here about power specifically though.
• Guilt: You should probably focus on Lady Macbeth and guilty feelings for this.
• Order and Disorder: Macbeth destroyed the natural order when he killed Duncan.
• The relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth: I think something like this might come up as last year was a theme and so a character would make sense.

Essays:

• Analysis of Act 1 Scene 5: An analysis of a key scene.
• Analysis of Act 1 Scene 7: An analysis of another key scene
• The Sudden Death of Lady Macbeth: Apparently she shifts from having no remorse to suicidal regret, all off-stage. Doesn’t that seem like a stretch?
• Macbeth and Oedipus: A summary of a possible connection between Macbeth and the Greek myth – great for questions about their relationship!
• Macbeth as a strong man
• The Dagger Speech
• Was Macbeth Ambitious?