Plot overview — Macbeth — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Plot overview
Introduction
What you need to know
The whole play in brief, act by act, and how its events turn on Macbeth's choices.
Where each act's key moment falls, and how the second half mirrors the first.
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.
