The supernatural — Macbeth — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
The supernatural
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores the witches, visions and the supernatural, and fate against free will across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair', 'This supernatural soliciting / Cannot be ill, cannot be good', 'The instruments of darkness tell us truths', 'Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts', 'Is this a dagger which I see before me', 'never shake / Thy gory locks at me', 'Double, double toil and trouble', 'none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth'.
Fate and free will, and whether the witches cause Macbeth's crimes or reveal his ambition; Daemonologie and equivocation.
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.
