Act 2 — Macbeth — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Act 2
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The dagger soliloquy, Duncan's murder, the Porter, the discovery and the flight of Malcolm and Donalbain.
Key quotations: 'Is this a dagger which I see before me', 'I go, and it is done', 'Macbeth does murder sleep', 'Infirm of purpose!', 'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?', 'A little water clears us of this deed', 'an equivocator', 'Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope / The Lord's anointed temple', 'There's daggers in men's smiles', 'Even like the deed that's done'.
Form: the dagger soliloquy, the short shared lines after the murder, and the Porter's prose.
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.
