The witches — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
The witches
Characters
What you need to know
How Shakespeare presents The witches, and how the character develops across the text: their prophecies, equivocation and influence on Macbeth.
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: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair', 'All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!', 'The weird sisters, hand in hand', 'you should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so', 'Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none', 'Double, double toil and trouble', 'By the pricking of my thumbs', 'none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth'.
Form: their chanting trochaic rhythm and rhyme, set apart from the play's blank verse.
Context: Daemonologie, the North Berwick trials, and equivocation; and the debate over fate and free will.
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.
