Duncan and Malcolm — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Duncan and Malcolm
Characters
What you need to know
How Shakespeare presents Duncan and Malcolm, and how the character develops across the text: good kingship, and its restoration at the end.
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: 'O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!', 'There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face', 'He was a gentleman on whom I built / An absolute trust', 'This castle hath a pleasant seat', 'his virtues / Will plead like angels', 'the king-becoming graces', 'Bleed, bleed, poor country!', 'this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen'.
Context: the divine right of kings, Edward the Confessor's healing touch, and Malcolm's test of Macduff.
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.
