 Hello, and welcome back to another GCSE revision video. Now guys, within this fairly brief lesson, I want to show you the three clever points that you can use in any Macbeth essay and how you can relate them to the three main characters. Okay, so this is Macbeth's character, Lady Macbeth's character, and the witches. And most importantly, how you can cleverly tie them all back to the main context point. Okay, so of course there's lots of context points that you can remember from Macbeth, but the main one, okay? This is what the whole plays hinged on is the violation of divine right of kings, okay? So based off of this one context point, this is the three points that you can use to relate to these three main characters. And on top of that, I'll also show you guys how these points are really, really flexible and versatile when you're thinking about all the main themes in the play. And even, for example, other questions that you can perhaps anticipate coming up, be it character questions, be it theme questions, okay? So guys, based on divine right of kings, which is a central context point in the play, right? This idea that, you know, all of this chaos in Scotland ensued from Macbeth's really terrible action of Regicide. And of course, Shakespeare is warning his audience against following any type of ambition to violate, you know, the king's power or subvert the king's power. Let me show you guys how you can use this one context point to relate it to the three main characters. And the points that you can consider when you're writing about Macbeth and these characters in any essay, okay? Now guys, firstly, let's quickly go over the meaning of divine right of kings because you have to be absolutely crystal clear on this idea, this really central belief that a lot of Jacobians at the time, during Shakespeare's time, believed in, okay? Now, let's begin by talking about and, you know, recapping on what divine right of kings really means, okay? Remember that this idea of divine right of kings was based off the idea that every Jacobian believed at the time that everybody has a rank in nature, okay? So in society, especially in Jacobian society, there was a hierarchical structure and Jacobians believed that wherever you belonged within that hierarchy, you lived within that position and you died in that position, i.e. if you're born a peasant, you should be happy to live as a peasant and die as a peasant because that was your position. That was the, you know, that's what fate had deemed was good for you, right? And of course, if you're born a king, you became a really good king and lived as a good king and then you died as a king because God had chosen you directly, okay? And I've even drawn this little pyramid here to show you guys this great chain of being, this natural order, but not only does this great chain of being, was it relevant to people's position in the social hierarchy, right? So you've got God at the top, he chooses the king, followed by the noblemen, then the merchants, then peasants, and then animals, and then right at the bottom of this social hierarchy, you've got the devil, right? Not only does this relate to people's social hierarchy, it also stretched to gender, okay? So remember that also part of the belief of the great chain of being is this notion that men will always form more dominant and above women, okay? So that's the first idea of divine right of kings is hinged on this belief that God, right at the top of this natural hierarchy in the great chain of being, chose the king directly. And hence, the king being chosen by God could never be subverted. In other words, what I mean by that is he could never be challenged. He could never be disobeyed because if he disobeyed the king, you're disobeying God's representative directly and hence you are indirectly disobeying God. If you were still think about committing treason or killing the king, that also would mean that you were killing God's representative. So of course that can never be done. Hence, final step in understanding divine right of kings, the act of killing the king, the act of regicide. Not only was it treasonous, but it went against the great chain of being because of course it disrupts this natural hierarchy. And most importantly, it defied God and went against nature, right? Because God was really, it made God really angry, okay? So that's the central context point to be really, really clear on divine right of kings. If you literally remember divine right of kings, not only is it an important and amazing context point that you can literally use for any question, but now what I want to show you guys is how based off of this one context point, you can make these three points to do with the main characters in the play. As I said, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth and the witches. Now of course, when we think about the great chain of being, Lady Macbeth actually subverts her rank as a woman within this great chain of being because in act one, scene seven, she questions Macbeth's masculinity, okay? She tells him, when you dust do it, then you are a man. In other words, when Macbeth says, no, we'll proceed no further in this business, you know, I'm not gonna kill the king. Lady Macbeth uses his masculinity against him and there's this power dynamic in the relationship whereby Lady Macbeth subverts her role, right? She goes, she rises in this relationship and she's the one that does the leading, right? And of course, Jacobians would have seen this with horror that would have said, oh my God, women are not supposed to lead men. And hence, they then therefore called her the fourth witch because she was going against her nature, okay? That's the first point to make when you're thinking about, especially Lady Macbeth's character, but also when you're equally thinking about the themes of ambition, right? Her subverting going above her position as a woman in their marriage, of course illustrates this ambition that she had for power. Equally, of course, as I said, this led a lot of people to see her as the fourth witch. Therefore, there's also really, really powerful references that you can make to the supernatural theme, okay? However, the second clever point that you can make based off of this one central context point of Divine Right is, of course, to do with Macbeth and his out of registered in that two scene one, okay? So in that two scene one, this is where he sees this bloody dagger. Is this a dagger which I'll see before me? The handle toward my hand, right? And of course, he then realizes because he's about to commit the act of regicide and kill King Duncan. Remember that by end of act two, scene one, he kills King Duncan offstage, okay? Now, this is really, really important because firstly, what this illustrates is Macbeth has now become a fallen hero, okay? He has given into his hamsha, which means his fatal flaw of ambition and committed the act of regicide and thus disrupted the social order, disrupted the natural hierarchy and shock horror rose above his position from being a feign and a knight to now trying to make himself king. However, the third point, of course, the people that, or rather the characters that spark this seed of ambition within Macbeth are the witches. So of course, the third point that you can make in any essay is to do with the witches and how they spark Macbeth to disrupt the divine right of kings. Now remember, contextually speaking, Jacobians believed that witches were women who made a pact with the devil to get some form of power in exchange for working closely with the devil, okay? Even King James himself was very superstitious, wrote a whole book called Demonology about this, right? And thus, when you're thinking about the idea of divine right of kings, you want to obviously think about the witches as key figures, key characters. They are agents of chaos. They're the ones who deliberately plant these seeds of ambition in Macbeth's mind and cause him to commit regicide or rather they influence him to commit regicide through speaking in half trutes. And what you can relate this to is, of course, in Act One, scene three, where they hail Macbeth, you know, they say, all hail Macbeth, Thane of Cordo, hail Macbeth, or rather, hail Macbeth, Thane of Glombs, hail Macbeth, Thane of Cordo and hail Macbeth, King hereafter. But equally, because they spark this ambition and they cause all of this chaos, Ross and the old man, when they are speaking in Act Two, scene four, they say that King Duncan's horses, which are very well trained, they start, they turned against each other, right? He, Ross also describes how an owl kills a hawk, right? Everything in nature becomes topsy-turvy because Divine Rite of Kings has been destroyed, okay? So when it comes to Macbeth, in all honesty, if you just made it a point of just remembering Divine Rite of Kings as your main context point, right? A03, from that one context point, you can make these three points. But equally, let's say you get a question on ambition. You can literally tie these three points to do with ambition. If you get a question that's supernatural, equally, you can tie these three points, okay? These are really great versatile points that you can use for any Macbeth essay. Thanks so much for listening and I hope this helped.