Blog 02: Macbeth

In this week’s blog, the focus will be another key GCSE text: Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

With all of these blog posts, I’ll be highlighting three important things to consider to elevate your exam responses.

Key Character

The protagonist (the ‘first actor’: so nothing to do with being a good guy, which he definitely isn’t!) is a good one, but so is Lady Macbeth — consider the question of whose ambition is bigger, hers or her husband’s. Is her ambition to be queen merely a mirror of her husband’s to be the king, or does she in fact drive him to act as he does; and thus is she the key catalyst for the play’s action?

Key Theme

Following on from this, the idea of ambition is centrally important — remembering that, in his soliloquy in Act 1 Scene 7, Macbeth decides, when he has come up with any number of reasons not to kill Duncan, that the only reason to go ahead with the murder are his royal ambitions: ‘I have no spur/To prick the sides of my intent, but only/Vaulting ambition’.

Key Quotation

From Lady Macbeth, to her husband, in Act 1, Scene 5: ‘Look like th’ innocent flower,/But be the serpent under ’t.’ More fuel to the argument about whose ambition is greater. It also sets up the idea of masking, or pretence — this line was spoken by an actor who was himself (no women on stage in Shakespeare’s time, remember: bring in your knowledge of historical context [AQA AO3]) pretending to be an ‘innocent flower’ of a different sort.

📌 If you want more of this focus on character, theme, language, and context to prepare you for your exams, get in touch.