Act 5 — Macbeth — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Act 5
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking and death, 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow', the battle and Macbeth's death, and Malcolm's restoration.
Key quotations: 'Out, damned spot!', 'Here's the smell of the blood still', 'Hell is murky', 'Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief', 'my way of life / Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf', 'Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased', 'She should have died hereafter', 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow', 'Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing', 'Macduff was from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd', 'Lay on, Macduff', 'this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen'.
Form: Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking in prose, and the equivocations that come true.
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.
