Act 4 — Macbeth — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Act 4
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The apparitions, the murder of Macduff's family, and Malcolm testing Macduff in England.
Key quotations: 'Double, double toil and trouble', 'By the pricking of my thumbs', 'beware Macduff', 'none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth', 'Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill', 'The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand', 'He loves us not', 'Bleed, bleed, poor country!', 'the king-becoming graces', 'All my pretty ones?', 'But I must also feel it as a man'.
Equivocation in the apparitions' promises, and Malcolm's test of Macduff as a lesson in kingship.
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.
