How Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth, and how the character develops across the text: from ruthless persuader in Act 1, through Duncan's murder and growing isolation, to guilt, sleepwalking and death.
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: 'The raven himself is hoarse', 'unsex me here', 'Come, thick night', 'look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't', 'screw your courage to the sticking-place', 'Infirm of purpose!', 'My hands are of your colour; but I shame / To wear a heart so white', 'A little water clears us of this deed', 'Help me hence, ho!', 'what's done is done', 'What's done cannot be undone', 'She has light by her continually', 'Here's the smell of the blood still', 'Hell is murky', 'all the perfumes of Arabia', 'this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen', 'by self and violent hands'.
Different readings: a woman who calls on evil spirits as the witches do, a woman who can seek power only through her husband, or someone who fears her own conscience; and whether her faint is real.
Context: Daemonologie and the witch trials, in which most of the accused were women.
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.
