Dear gentle reader, Macbeth is not complicated. You’re just approaching him wrong

Dear gentle reader,

I know. You’ve been staring at the same Macbeth quotes since October. You’ve read “I have done the deed” so many times it has stopped meaning anything. And yet every time someone says “write about how Shakespeare presents ambition,” your mind goes completely blank.

Here’s what I think is happening: you’ve been told to memorise Macbeth when what you actually need to do is understand him.

Macbeth is a man who could have had everything - he was celebrated, respected, brave enough to disembowel someone on a battlefield and be applauded for it - and he threw it all away chasing a crown that never brought him a single moment of peace. That is the play. That is the argument you need to make in your essay.

Every quote you choose, every technique you identify, should be in service of that idea. The oxymoron “so fair and foul a day” isn’t interesting because it’s an oxymoron. It’s interesting because it establishes, from the very first scene Macbeth appears in, that his world is one of moral contradiction - that he exists in the tension between honour and ambition before the witches have said a word to him. The seeds were already there. 

When examiners read top-grade essays, they’re not looking for a list of techniques. They’re looking for someone who has an actual argument about the text and uses techniques as evidence for that argument. Those are very different things.

So here’s what I’d suggest: pick three big themes about Macbeth - ambition, guilt, the supernatural - and for each one, find two quotes that you know well enough to zoom in on a single word. One quote from your extract area, one from elsewhere in the play. That gives you the shape of a strong essay right there.

If you’re reading this and thinking “okay… but I don’t actually know what my three big ideas are, or which quotes are worth memorising” - that’s exactly what I’m covering in my Macbeth Last-Minute Literature Masterclass on Monday (5–6pm).

In this class, I’ll show you how to:

• Answer a Macbeth GCSE Exam Paper

• Learn how to write a Grade 9 GCSE essay

• Recap key context and themes - plus how to include them in your exam (not just throw them in and hope for the best).

• LIVE LESSON RECORDING

You’ll also get predictions, a prediction table, and a cheat sheet with all the key quotes and themes you need because at this stage, you shouldn’t be re-reading the play, you should be refining what you already know.

If you want to walk into your exam knowing exactly what you’re doing, you can join here:
https://www.firstratetutors.com/literature

SIGN UP HERE

Yours, and in solidarity with everyone who has read “unsex me here” more times than they ever expected to,

Barbara