Grade 9 Macbeth Essay Question Model Answer (WJEC Eduqas GCSE English Literature)

Grade 9 Macbeth Essay Question Model Answer

Your WJEC Eduqas GCSE English Literature Shakespeare component will ask you to write two essays on Macbeth:

• One short essay question based on an extract from the play

• One longer essay question — you won’t have access to an extract

This revision guide is for the longer, 25-mark essay. For a model answer on the extract question, click here.

To get the highest marks for this essay, you need to make a clear plan, and then put forward your own argument and sustain it throughout your writing. 

In your GCSE exam, you will also need to refer to different parts of the play throughout your answer to explore the development of Shakespeare’s themes or ideas.

How am I assessed?

The exam board recommends you spend 40 minutes on this section of the exam paper, and the essay is out of 25 marks. Here is how the marks are divided:

Grade 9 Macbeth model answer

Below you will find a sample answer for an Eduqas GCSE English literature Macbeth question. This Macbeth model answer includes annotations which show where and how this answer has met the assessment objectives. It’s an example answer to the following question:

Guilt is a key theme in Macbeth. Write about how Shakespeare presents guilt at different points in the play. Refer to characters and events from the play in your answer.

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Annotated Macbeth Grade 9 essay

Shakespeare presents guilt through the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to explore the terrible mental, and ultimately fatal, consequences of their sinful actions (AO1).

The act of regicide is such a religiously appalling act that Macbeth feels intense guilt immediately after committing the murder of King Duncan (AO1). In Act 2, Scene 2, Macbeth returns to Lady Macbeth having just killed Duncan, and — among other incoherent utterances — states that “Macbeth does murder sleep”. Shakespeare uses the symbol of sleep to represent peace and order, and so Macbeth’s frantic exclamation suggests that his mind and conscience are disordered and that, perhaps, he will never attain eternal peace by reaching Heaven. The guilt he feels also manifests in hallucinations: he hears a ghostly knocking on the doors of Dunsinane castle. Furthermore, Macbeth’s continued use of religious diction in this scene (“amen”; “God”; “blessing”) suggests he implicitly understands the religious consequences of his deed: killing a king is a direct challenge to God’s order and Macbeth seems to recognise, even at this early stage, that it will not go unpunished (AO1).

Macbeth’s guilt continues to have disastrous consequences for his mental state later in the play. In Act 2, Scene 2, Shakespeare introduces the motif of blood (AO2), which is a physical manifestation of his characters’ guilt. Macbeth asks whether all the water in “Neptune’s ocean” will be able to clean his hand of Duncan’s blood, but he cannot rid himself of the image of blood, which symbolises his guilty conscience. In Act 3, Scene 2, Macbeth confides to his wife that his feelings of paranoia and guilt have only increased, using the metaphor of a “scorpion” to describe how his mind and judgment have been poisoned by guilt (AO1). Just two scenes later, his mental collapse is revealed when he sees an apparition of Banquo, covered in blood. The blood — and so his feelings of guilt — have overwhelmed him completely. Shakespeare presents his total mental deterioration through frequent use of repetition and broken sentences, as well as switching between blank verse and the unusual use of rhyming couplets in Macbeth’s speech (AO2).

Despite Lady Macbeth initially believing she could live with the consequences of regicide, her guilt ultimately consumes her too. In her soliloquy in Act 1, Scene 5, she calls on spirits to “stop up th’access and passage to remorse”. Her hubris is clear at this point in the play: the use of the imperatives suggests that she thinks she has the agency and power to control evil forces and feelings of remorse about the murder of the king, her guest. Even after the regicide, she believes that only “a little water clears us of this deed”. However, like her husband, the feelings of guilt — using the same imagery of blood — begin to haunt her and ultimately lead to her own mental collapse and suicide. By Act 5, Scene 1, Lady Macbeth is a hollow shell of the seemingly powerful woman she once was (AO2), sleepwalking and speaking incoherently. Again Shakespeare uses an unusual verse form to depict her mental state: she speaks not in blank verse, but in prose, which he usually reserved for characters of low status, or those who have lost their minds (AO2). Tellingly, Lady Macbeth also echoes the language of Macbeth in this scene (AO2), expressing surprise that King Duncan would have “had so much blood in him”. This reminds the audience of the character’s hubris in believing she could have lived guilt-free after such a heinous act, but the blood also symbolises her feelings of guilt, which now overpower her completely.

In conclusion, Shakespeare seems to suggest that the guilty — those who commit mortal sins like regicide — will suffer dire consequences, both in life and after death, for their crimes (AO1). Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are totally overwhelmed by their guilty consciences, leading to their mental disintegration and, ultimately, their deaths (AO1).

Sources

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Edited by Cedric Watts, Wordsworth Classics, 2005