Summary
Summary Macbeth class notes for English Lit GCSE
contains act summaries as well as sample essay's
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Context● Witch trials were still common in the 16th/17th Century
● The scene can only be set through the language
● Macbeth Remakes - 1971, Roman Polanski/2006, Geoffrey Wright/2010, Rupert Goold
● The three witches are shown to be able to tell the future (That will be ere the set of sun),
like the Fates
Structure
● 5 Act Structure - typical for Shakespearean tragedies
● (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement)
● Genre - Tragedy. Moral falling leading to catastrophic downfall. Can be political or
personal.
● Tragic heroes - protagonists who are both heroic in deed and nature, but also who
possess a fundamental character flaw which causes their downfall e.g. Achilles’ heel,
Ozymandias’ hubris.
● Tragedies were part of Ancient Greek theatre - integral part of democracy, social order,
acted as a mirror to society. Tragedy is portrayed through civil lessons, catharsis in the
climax.
● Aristotelian unities - place, time (24 hours), believable action
Glossary
● Hurlyburly - battle
● Macbeth is the eponymous character
● Catharsis - release of built-up tension
● Hubris - fatal sense of pride
● Hamartia - a character’s flaw
● Peripeteia - a sudden reversal of fortune
, Scene summaries
Act 1 - scene 1:
● Starts with the paranormal with the witches
● Witches finish their sentences, sound like casting a spell
● Witches speak in rhyming couplets
● There is battle going on someone else's and introduce us to Macbeth
● 3 witches are an inverted version of the holy spirit and are like the 3 fates
● ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’, what is bad is good for them but is a paradox so it doesn’t
make sense
● Last line is equivocation for the witches
Act 1 - scene 2:
● Men are recounting the battle to King Duncan
● They talk of how Macbeth defended the king from a rebellious thane (lord)
● This Thane of Cawdor is a traitor, sided with the king of Norway
Act 1 - scene 3:
● Shakespeare uses mirroring/parallelism as Macbeth's first line is ‘foul and fair a day I
have not seen’ when meeting the Witches for the first time which they said in scene 1
‘foul is fair and fair is foul’.
● Witches prophecies Macbeth to become ‘thane of Cawdor’ and then king
● ‘Lesser’ and ‘greater’ is an equivocation, the witches do not make sense
● Macbeth thinks Cawdor is ‘a prosperous gentleman’ as he does not know of his betrayal
● Banquo and macbeth use iambic pentameter that suggests they close friends
● Whenever Shakespeare uses ‘Aside’, other characters cannot hear so the character can
speak their thought process in a soliloquy
● Banquo warns Macbeth about the Witches prochies ‘The instruments of darkness tell us
truths’
● Macbeth thinks of killing Duncan as his first thought when the witches prophecies him
becoming king
Act 1 - scene 4:
● ‘Gentleman on whom i built an absolute trust’ - dramatic irony by Duncan as the next
thane of Cawdor will betray him
● ‘Stars, hide your fires’ - Macbeth wants the heavens to turn the blind eye as he wants to
become king
● Duncan calls Macbeth ‘peerless’, dramatic juxtaposition between Duncan view of
Macbeth and what Macbeth thinks of himself
● A running theme in the play is predestination vs agency, scene 4 builds up on this
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