Context — Macbeth — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Context
Introduction
What you need to know
The Jacobean context that shapes Macbeth: James I, the divine right of kings and the Great Chain of Being, the Gunpowder Plot,
James's interest in witchcraft (Daemonologie), and the play as a tragedy written for a Jacobean audience.
How to use this context in an answer about the play rather than as background.
Tragedy: the tragic hero, hamartia and catharsis, and how Macbeth fits the pattern.
The North Berwick witch trials, where witches were accused of raising storms against James's ship.
Shakespeare's source, Holinshed's Chronicles, in which Banquo helps Macbeth kill Duncan, and James I's descent from Banquo.
Equivocation: Father Henry Garnet's trial after the Gunpowder Plot, and the Porter's 'equivocator'.
The natural order overturned after Duncan's murder: the omens of Act 2 Scene 4.
Edward the Confessor's healing touch in Act 4 Scene 3: the good king Macbeth is not.
Eduqas doesn't mark context in the Shakespeare section: in the exam, mention it only in a phrase that supports an interpretation, never as a separate paragraph.
Eduqas's Shakespeare questions don't mark context: the extract question (15 marks) and the whole-play essay (20 marks, plus 5 for spelling, punctuation, vocabulary and sentence structures) both mark response and analysis of language, form and structure (AO1 and AO2). Use context only in a phrase that supports an interpretation, and say which question each worked paragraph practises.
