Macbeth flashcards
11 cards on Macbeth: the key points, worked examples and the slips to watch. Swipe through them, or print them.
Card 1 of 11
Macbeth
Building an argument
What makes a Macbeth essay an argument rather than a retelling?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Building an argument
Key points
- Open with a big idea the whole essay proves: ambition corrupts Macbeth from within.
- Make every paragraph a step in that argument, and start it with a point, not an event.
- Write about Shakespeare's choices: "Shakespeare presents Macbeth as…", not "Macbeth is…".
- End on what the play is saying to its audience.
Watch out
If a sentence could sit in a plot summary, it is not analysis yet.
Macbeth
Shakespeare's methods
Which methods does Shakespeare use most in Macbeth, and what do they do?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Shakespeare's methods
Key points
- Soliloquy: Macbeth's private thoughts show the audience his guilt and fear.
- Imagery of blood, darkness and sleep tracks guilt across the play.
- Dramatic irony: Duncan trusts Macbeth while the audience knows his plan.
- Verse breaks down as minds unravel: Lady Macbeth sleepwalks in prose.
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”
A paradox: from the first scene, nothing is what it seems.
Watch out
Naming a method earns little; its effect on the audience earns the marks.
Macbeth
Macbeth: hero to tyrant
How does Macbeth change from the start of the play to the end?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Macbeth: hero to tyrant
Key points
- He begins as a brave, loyal soldier praised by the king.
- After the murder he kills more to stay safe, and grows numb to it.
“O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!”
The king's praise: Macbeth starts as a hero.
“I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more”
Killing has become a river he cannot turn back from.
“this dead butcher, and his fiend-like queen”
How the play's final voice remembers him.
Macbeth
Guilt across the play
How does Shakespeare show guilt growing in both Macbeths?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Guilt across the play
Key points
- Macbeth's guilt starts at once; Lady Macbeth's is buried until it breaks out.
- Blood and lost sleep are the signs of it, from Act 2 to Act 5.
“Macbeth does murder sleep”
He has killed his own peace along with Duncan.
“A little water clears us of this deed”
She dismisses guilt as easy to wash away.
“Out, damned spot! out, I say!”
The blood she dismissed now haunts her sleep.
Macbeth
Context: kingship and the Jacobean audience
Why would killing a king horrify Shakespeare's first audience?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Context: kingship and the Jacobean audience
Key points
- The Divine Right of Kings: a king was chosen by God, so regicide was a sin against God.
- The Great Chain of Being: killing the king upsets the order of everything, even nature.
- The play was written around 1606, just after the Gunpowder Plot to kill James I.
- James I traced his line to Banquo, which is why Banquo is shown as noble.
Watch out
Context earns marks only when it explains the point you are making.
Macbeth
The witches and fate
Do the witches control Macbeth, or does he choose his own path?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
The witches and fate
Key points
- James I believed in witchcraft and wrote a book about it, so the witches were a real threat.
- They only predict; Macbeth chooses to murder to make the prophecy come true.
- Banquo hears prophecies too, but does nothing evil.
“The instruments of darkness tell us truths”
Banquo sees the trap that Macbeth walks into.
“Something wicked this way comes”
Even the witches now see Macbeth as wicked.
Macbeth
Ambition
Which quotations show Macbeth's ambition, and what do they suggest?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Ambition
Key points
- Macbeth knows his ambition is the only thing driving him to murder.
- He hides his desires even from himself, using images of darkness.
“Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself”
Like a rider jumping too far: ambition leads to a fall.
“Stars, hide your fires! / Let not light see my black and deep desires”
He wants darkness to hide what he wants.
Macbeth
Lady Macbeth
How does Shakespeare present Lady Macbeth, and how does she change?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Lady Macbeth
Key points
- At first she is more ruthless than Macbeth, and rejects what her world expects of a woman.
- By Act 5 guilt has broken her, and she dies offstage.
“unsex me here”
She asks the spirits to take away her femininity.
“look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t”
A lesson in deceit, with an echo of the serpent in Eden.
“all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”
"Little" shows how small and broken she has become.
Macbeth
Masculinity
What does the play suggest it means to be a man?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Masculinity
Key points
- Lady Macbeth links being a man to violence, and uses it to push Macbeth.
- Macduff offers another kind of manhood, one that can show grief.
“When you durst do it, then you were a man”
She taunts him: daring to kill is what makes a man.
“But I must also feel it as a man”
Real men feel, too: the play's answer to her.
Macbeth
Appearance and reality
How does Shakespeare show that faces in the play cannot be trusted?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Appearance and reality
Key points
- Characters hide murder behind welcoming faces.
- Duncan trusted one traitor's face, then trusts Macbeth's: dramatic irony.
“There’s no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face”
Said of the old traitor, moments before Macbeth enters.
“Is this a dagger which I see before me”
Even Macbeth cannot tell what is real any more.
Macbeth
Writing accurately
How do you pick up the marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Writing accurately
Key points
- Spell names and terms correctly: Macbeth, Banquo, Macduff, Birnam, Dunsinane, soliloquy.
- Write in the present tense: "Shakespeare presents", not "Shakespeare presented".
- Keep sentences controlled, and put quotation marks round every quotation.
- Leave two minutes at the end to reread and correct.
Print these cards
Four cards to an A4 sheet, each the size of a standard A6 revision card.
One-sided
Each card prints on one face: the question at the top, the notes under it.
Two-sided
Questions on the front, notes on the back. Print double-sided and flip on the long edge, then cut along the lines.