How Shakespeare presents Banquo, and how the character develops across the text: a foil to Macbeth who hears the same prophecies but resists them.
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: 'Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none', 'The instruments of darkness tell us truths', 'Restrain in me the cursed thoughts', 'Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all', 'Thou play'dst most foully for't', 'May they not be my oracles as well', 'Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!', 'never shake / Thy gory locks at me'.
Context: James I's descent from Banquo, Holinshed's Banquo, and the show of kings with its mirror.
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.
