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Macbeth Revision Material For English Lit GCSE
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Macbeth Revision Material For English Lit GCSE
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lOMoAR cPSD| 37668344Macbeth Revision Material For English Lit
GCSE
Working With Literature
Six ‘Macbeth’ essays by Wreake Valley students
No matter what level you are aiming for, you are likely to learn something useful in
each of these six example essays.
The coloured hi-lights show where each student has done well in terms of including
quotations (part of AO1), terminology (part of AO2) and context (AO3).
Level 4 essay
In Act 1, 7 Shakespeare shows how Lady Macbeth is ambitious and is determined to do the
murder when Macbeth thinks about failing. One thing that shows this is “when you durst do
it then you were a man”. This shows that she is trying to say he’s not a man like he used to
be, that he’s not strong enough to do the deed and doesn’t deserve to be called a “man”.
Shakespeare also presents Lady Macbeth in this scene to be ambitious and violent when she
says “while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and
dash’d the brains out.” This shows that she would rather kill her baby than not go through
with the plan. In this extract Lady Macbeth seems determined and ambitious and not like
women should have been in the 1606 when the play was written.
The first key moment where we see what Lady Macbeth will be like in the rest of the play is
in Act 1, scene 5 when she gets the letter from Macbeth. The letter is very important
because it shows how passionate she is to become queen and her husband king, so then she
comes up with a plan. Shortly after that in Act 1, scene 7 (the extract) Lady Macbeth
convinces Macbeth to kill King Duncan that night. Lady Macbeth explains her plan here and
Macbeth changes his mind again. In the seventeenth century it wouldn’t be normal for a
1
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woman to act like this, it would be about the man to make the plans and convince a woman
how easy it would be to do it.
The key message in this scene where Macbeth gets persuaded is when he says the four
simple words “If we should fail?” to which Lady Macbeth replies “We fail?” Shakespeare
uses Lady Macbeth here to show her desire for power and strongly say that it’s impossible
to fail.
In Act 1.5 when Lady Macbeth thought Macbeth wasn’t going to kill King Duncan because he
was too kind, full of “the milk of human kindness”, she said “unsex me here”. This shows she
wishes she was a man so she could kill King Duncan because she feels like she could kill him
mentally just not physically.
In Act 5. 1 Lady Macbeth starts to sleep walk because she can’t deal with the fact that her
husband killed King Duncan and that it’s all her fault and she says “My bloody hands”. This
shows she’s saying it’s her fault and she holds the guilt. This leads to her committing suicide
in Act 5.5.
Level 5 essay
Lady Macbeth is shown as forceful and bullies Macbeth here in act 1.7 when questioning
him about his masculinity. This follows from when Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth to
be ambitious when Macbeth writes her a letter and she reads it as a soliloquy in act 1.5.
After this letter she stated to Macbeth “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent
under’t” which implies that she wants Macbeth to carry out her plan of committing the
regicide towards King Duncan. We can see here that Lady Macbeth is telling Macbeth what
to do which goes against the fact that in the seventeenth century it was a patriarchal society
where men were shown as dominant towards females. However, in front of the audience
Lady Macbeth clearly disagrees with this as she states “Unsex me here” which proves the
point that Lady Macbeth wants to become a man so she can commit the regicide herself
instead of ‘useless’ husband.
In the extract, when Lady Macbeth said “To be more than what you were, you would be so
much more of a man” suggests that Lady Macbeth is manipulating her husband because of
his new decision based on his underlying loyalty to King Duncan. Back in the seventeenth
century, if this was to happen they would be going against the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ which
is when God chooses the next king because society was highly religious then. Macbeth
replies “If we should fail?” she replies with an exclamative sentence “We fail!” which shows
Lady Macbeth is full of ambition and the use of repetition in “fail” shows that there is some
sort of angry annoyance while the plural pronoun “We” shows that they’re in it together.
Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth to be mentally unstable in act 1 scene 7 and then again
in act 5. The quotation from the extract “and dash’d the brains out” emphasises that she is
unstable because she is would have killed her own child. Later on in the play in act 5, scene
1 Lady Macbeth sleepwalks and sees blood on her hands saying “All the perfumes of Arabia
2
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