How Shakespeare presents The witches, and how the character develops across the text: their prophecies, equivocation and influence on Macbeth.
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: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair', 'All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!', 'The weird sisters, hand in hand', 'you should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so', 'Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none', 'Double, double toil and trouble', 'By the pricking of my thumbs', 'none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth'.
Form: their chanting trochaic rhythm and rhyme, set apart from the play's blank verse.
Context: Daemonologie, the North Berwick trials, and equivocation; and the debate over fate and free will.
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.
