Lady Macbeth — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Lady Macbeth
Characters
What you need to know
How Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth, and how the character develops across the text: from ruthless persuader in Act 1, through Duncan's murder and growing isolation, to guilt, sleepwalking and death.
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: 'The raven himself is hoarse', 'unsex me here', 'Come, thick night', 'look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't', 'screw your courage to the sticking-place', 'Infirm of purpose!', 'My hands are of your colour; but I shame / To wear a heart so white', 'A little water clears us of this deed', 'Help me hence, ho!', 'what's done is done', 'What's done cannot be undone', 'She has light by her continually', 'Here's the smell of the blood still', 'Hell is murky', 'all the perfumes of Arabia', 'this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen', 'by self and violent hands'.
Different readings: a 'fourth witch', a woman denied power by her society, or someone who fears her own conscience; and whether her faint is real.
Context: Daemonologie and the witch trials, in which most of the accused were women.
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.
