Grade 9 Essay plan for an essay on The Macbeths' relationship, created for use with the EDUQAS specification but could be used for any GCSE exam board.
Includes essay overview, detailed and complex analysis and paragraph plans accompanied by key quotations to support argument. High complexity o...
‣ Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s relationship is a complex portrait of love, illustrating layers of utter devotion
alongside overwhelming resentment
‣ the couple begins the play unnaturally strong within their marriage
⤷ early warning of their imminent and inevitable fall from grace
‣ By the end of the play they are so isolated from one another that macbeth doesn't even mourn his wife’s
death, emblematic of the stark volte face of their relationship
‣ Through their relationship shakespeare dissects power within relationships
⤷ Suggests that their compatibility: Macbeth’s malleability and insecurity and LM’s manipulative
tendencies, serve as the couple’s hamartia
Focussed analysis Supporting quotes
Point 1 - intense connection and unusual power balance 1.5 LM (M) ‘my dearest
‣ Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s relationship is a complex portrait of love, partner of greatness’
illustrating layers of utter devotion alongside overwhelming resentment 1.5 LM ‘your face, my
⤷ Fundamental equality within the relationship thane, is as a book’
- They complement each other's weaknesses 1.5 LM ‘leave all the rest to
‣ Their compatibility lies within macbeth’s malleability and Lady Macbeth’s me’
artful manipulation 1.7 LM/M ‘If we should
⤷ They share a thirst for power and so spur each other on to the fail? We fail?’
point of no return (regicide) 1.7 M ‘bring forth men
⤷ are each other’s hamartia and their relationship is integral to each children only’
characters break down and the relationship’s breakdown
‣ Shakespeare observes on the way that relationships intertwine with
ambition and power and the dangers of such fundamental equality within a
relationship (constant back and forth, straying further and further from
morality)
Point 2 - Lady Macbeth's exploitation of Macbeth’s insecurity to fulfil her own 1.5 LM ‘Yet I do fear thy
ambition - artful manipulator nature/ it is too full
‣ LM the Artful manipulator - she has exercises her power through Macbeth o’th’milk of human
⤷ Without him she becomes powerless kindness’
⤷ Because her power is dependent on Macbeth’s malleability and 1.7 LM ‘was the hope
capacity for heartless violence, without him she becomes powerless drunk wherein you dress’d
‣ Emasculation as a means of control yourself? Hath it slept
⤷ Deep understanding of her husband’s fears and insecurities allows since?’
her to steer his actions to suit her ambition 1.7 LM ‘when you durst do
- Her ability to criticise her husband in A1 S5 demonstrates it, then you were a man’
the closeness and the depth of the understanding of each 2.2 M/LM ‘look on’t again,
other that they have I dare not. / Infirm of
‣ Cajoles him using his insecurity as a driving force purpose!’
2.2 LM ‘my hands are of
your colour, but I shame to
wear a heart so white’
Point 3 - Separation of the characters 3.2 LM ‘nought’s had, all’s
‣ A3 S2 is the pivotal scene in their relationship spent where our desire is
⤷ We see a shift in their communication with lady Macbeth still got without content’
preoccupied by the murder of Duncan and Macbeth already moving 3.2 M ‘be innocent of the
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