Act 1 — Macbeth — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Act 1
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The witches, the prophecies, Duncan's praise of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth's letter scene and the plan to murder Duncan.
What each scene establishes about character and theme, with key quotations.
Key quotations: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair', 'Hover through the fog and filthy air', 'This supernatural soliciting / Cannot be ill, cannot be good', 'Two truths are told', 'There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face', 'He was a gentleman on whom I built / An absolute trust', 'Stars, hide your fires', 'The raven himself is hoarse', 'too full o' the milk of human kindness', 'take my milk for gall', 'I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent', 'screw your courage to the sticking-place', 'Bring forth men-children only'.
Language and form: the witches' chiasmus and chanting rhythm, Lady Macbeth's imperatives, the milk imagery, and Macbeth's fear that 'We still have judgment here'.
OCR's question on this play is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the play elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the play, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts as the play shows it, and 4 marks are for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4). An extract-based answer that never leaves the extract, or a discursive answer built on one moment, cannot go above Level 3. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the question it is for.
