How Shakespeare presents Banquo, and how the character develops across the text: a foil to Macbeth who hears the same prophecies but resists them.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none', 'The instruments of darkness tell us truths', 'Restrain in me the cursed thoughts', 'Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all', 'Thou play'dst most foully for't', 'May they not be my oracles as well', 'Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!', 'never shake / Thy gory locks at me'.
Context: James I's descent from Banquo, Holinshed's Banquo, and the show of kings with its mirror.
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.
