Act 3 — Macbeth — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Act 3
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Macbeth as king, Banquo's murder and Fleance's escape, the banquet and Banquo's ghost.
Key quotations: 'To be thus is nothing; / But to be safely thus', 'Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown', 'O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!', 'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck', 'Come, seeling night', 'Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!', 'never shake / Thy gory locks at me', 'Are you a man?', 'I am in blood / Stepp'd in so far', 'Nought's had, all's spent'.
How the balance between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth shifts, and the banquet as a public collapse.
Edexcel's Shakespeare question has two parts: part (a) on the printed extract marks only language, form and structure (AO2), so context earns nothing there; part (b) on the play elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1, 15 marks) and context (AO3, 5 marks), not language analysis. Say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
