When studying Macbeth at a higher level (such as A-Level or at university), you will most likely need to include critical interpretations in your essays. There’s a right and a wrong way to do this - so before learning the quotations below, make sure you understand the point of criticism and how t...
CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF
MACBETH
What is criticism?
When studying Macbeth at a higher level (such as A Level or at University), you will most likely need to
include critical interpretations in your essays. There’s a right and a wrong way to do this - so before
learning the quotations below, make sure you understand the point of criticism and how to apply it
properly in an essay.
Criticism in academic terms is the art of making judgements about a piece of literature or a work of
art. Critics are usually either writers themselves, or academics and professors whose job it is to write
essays and get those published in academic journals or reviews. A critic is a person who knows the story
well and is somewhat of an expert, having researched it for a long time and having read and responded
to the works of other critics before them. They might be a specialist in a very specific area of the whole
topic, and they might have very strong, even controversial opinions. With critical interpretations, you can
go much deeper into a text and what it really means. It might open up a new way of thinking about the
story, or provide a new perspective that you never thought of before.
For this reason, there is no point learning critics until you know the story inside out. Critical ideas are
the very last thing you should learn, otherwise you’ll have no idea how to use the quotations or respond
properly to them in your essays. Make sure you understand the full story, you’re confident in your own
analysis of quotations, you have a good background knowledge of context and genre, and generally
understand the themes, ideas and attitudes of the text. After that, you can make a start on critics!
How do I use a critical quotation?
If you’re writing an essay as a piece of coursework with a long deadline, you should take your time
reading academic essays and books on your text so that you feel very well informed about general
critical ideas and approaches. Personally, I always use JSTOR to read critical essays - it’s an online
database with thousands of great essays, all on very specific topics, and all published by professional
publications. You may also have access to an academic library, which is always a great place to go and
read essays.
If you’re writing an essay as an exam answer in timed conditions, you don’t need to be so thorough.
You can just learn key quotations, such as the ones given below. I would still encourage you to dip into
JSTOR essays and other academic books on your text though, because it’ll definitely enhance your
writing skills and your ability to talk about the ideas in a complex and thoughtful way. With my own
students aiming for As and A*s, I always force them to read tons of academic essays - poor things! It
does definitely work as a way to hugely improve, and it gets easier over time as you become used to
reading an academic essay style.
Either way, this is how to properly use a critical quotation:
• Make sure your quotation is short, precise, and expressing one clear idea that you understand
well.
• Form your own opinions on that idea - go through the list of quotations that you have and
write down your own thoughts and opinions on each one, giving evidence for why you agree
or disagree with that interpretation. I’ll do an example for you below so you can see the kind of
thing to aim for.
• Don’t always agree with the critic! This is so important. For a very top grade you should always
include at least one critical interpretation that you disagree with, because they are opinions
that should be debated. You have to be very well informed on the text before you can tackle
disagreeing with the quotation, because otherwise your ideas won’t be strong enough to
properly debate the critical interpretation. The very best essays always have a mixture of critical
quotations that are supporting the argument, and also contradicting it.
• Disagreeing doesn’t mean you have to be personal - you should always strive for a formal,
impersonal style in your essays. Don’t ever use the words ‘I’ or ‘We’ if you can help it; always
debate ideas as objectively as possible.
• Use your critics’ quotations or frameworks later on in the paragraph - this is a general rule
rather than an order, sometimes it can be elegant to put a critical interpretation earlier in the
paragraph, or even in the intro or conclusion. However, if you’re not 100% confident with essay
writing then don’t try this until your confidence improves because it is much harder to pull it off
well.
EXAMPLE PARAGRAPH
Though the supernatural in Macbeth may not be an overt force, its presence permeates the
action of the play as a whole; it colours every scene with a resounding, oppressive ‘darkness’
that becomes ultimately unbearable for Macbeth in the final act. Though we meet the
Witches in three scenes only, their statements establish the central themes of the tragedy.
In particular, their equivocal line “fair is foul and foul is fair” in the opening scene promotes
the concept of duplicity - the fricative alliteration underscores the slipperiness of the Witches’
adjectives, where they suggest that all ‘fair’ - just, beautiful and good - things will now be
inverted and become ‘foul’ - ugly, unfair and bad. Harold Goddard asserts that these beings
give “the impression of mighty and inscrutable forces behind human life”, and indeed when
we are later introduced to Hecate it becomes clear that there are much larger and darker
forces at work than these ‘black and midnight hags’ alone. Banquo is sensitive to these
“mighty and inscrutable forces” from the offset, observing that the Witches are “instruments
of darkness”, a metaphor which implies that the Witches are merely a conduit for evil, and
that evil itself is the all-pervasive supernatural force at work behind the action of the play.
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