 Hello and welcome back to yet another GCSE revision lesson now with the Macbeth exam just two weeks away You might be panicking just a little bit You may have left all your revision till last minute or perhaps you're drowning in notes And you're not entirely sure where to start and what to remember last minute prior to the upcoming exam So as you can see behind me what I did was I created the main context theme as well as quotes to remember for Macbeth if you were literally revising last last minute and you're not entirely sure where to start And what to remember so guys if you forget everything else make sure you remember these essential points. Let's begin firstly by going over the top three context points to remember for any Macbeth essay that you write. The first thing is always remember that Shakespeare's message was a warning to his audience not to violate divine right of kings because what that would do is it would disrupt the great chain of being. This is a cautionary tale whereby you have Macbeth who violates divine right of kings by killing King Duncan. This restructs the natural order causes chaos and of course remember that this is contextually reflecting how Shakespeare wants to tell people not to even think about overthrowing King James I and of course this is also can be tied to the gunpowder plot because Guy Fawkes tried to however his plan was foiled okay it was discovered and neutralized. The second context point to remember for Macbeth if you forget everything else and this is especially in relation to Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff is to do with women's roles in Jacobian society at this time remember. Lady Macbeth was the ideal woman she sat at home she looked after her son she didn't know what was happening with her husband right her husband Macduff didn't even consult her on anything that he did he just disappeared and went off to England that's a typical Jacobian woman however Lady Macbeth stands as a stark contrast to that Lady Macbeth is ambitious she stands up to her husband she even questions his masculinity this is not what a woman should do women at the time should not be ambitious and this led a lot of Jacobians to see Lady Macbeth as supernatural because she's going against her nature as a woman and this led her to call her the fourth witch and of course her going crazy at the end could be the audience's way of basically saying actually she deserved it this is God's punishment to her for not following her nature as a woman that's the second main context point to talk about and the final context point is of course to do with the supernatural the witches start off the chain of events that happen that leads to the tragedy of Macbeth they're the ones that trigger his hamsha which is his ambition his fate or flaw and this leads to have a series of mistakes and this ultimately leads to his downfall now the supernatural in terms of from Shakespeare's perspective what agents of chaos that were not to be believed that would cause chaos that would cause problems in Scotland and remember that King James the first was very superstitious he even wrote a whole book called Demonology talking about why you shouldn't trust the witches and how to spot them okay so remember that this is a really really important context point the Jacobian audience would have been very superstitious at the time they would have taken on banquet's views that we shouldn't trust the instruments of darkness hence Macbeth makes a massive mistake by listening to the witches and letting that guide his actions which leads him to kill King Duncan those are the three context points if you forget everything make sure you memorize and commit those points to memory you can use those three context points in any Macbeth essay that you get in your upcoming exams now let's go into themes the first theme is of course the theme of ambition this is Macbeth's hamsha make sure you use the word hamsha this is a word from Aristotle the Greek philosopher who basically said any tragedy must have a high born hero who has a fatal flaw that leads to his downfall in Macbeth's case his fatal flaw is as ambition and remember that Shakespeare saw ambition as a bad thing because it disrupted the great chain of being that's the first theme you can write about the second theme of course is the supernatural and this actually is very closely tied to the third theme of guilt remember the supernatural similar to the point to do with context the supernatural must never be trusted they are agents of chaos they speak in equivocations and riddles in order to misguide Macbeth of course this as I mentioned ties into the theme of guilt both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth receive supernatural hallucinations which represent their guilt Macbeth sees the floating dagger he also sees the dead ghost of Banquo Lady Macbeth sees the spots of blood on her hands both of which represent guilt and this is used as a theme by Shakespeare to illustrate how really remorseful they feel the next theme is of course appearances and reality and especially this is shown through Lady Macbeth's character she says look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it what does that mean she basically tells Macbeth use an appearance of looking like a good person in order to misguide others of course the reality of who you are must be covered and of course both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth manipulate reality through using appearances and this misguides most of the characters the only person that doesn't believe them is Macduff and he survives the final theme is that of loyalty and betrayal Macbeth is strongest when he is loyal to King Duncan the play starts off by him being very loyal this is when he's really strong this is when we admire him however once he betrays King Duncan he also betrays Banquo as well as Macduff right by having his family killed this weakens his character of course Lady Macbeth is presented as an inherently corrupt and weak character she focuses on betraying all of these different people she triggers Macbeth to betray others however she later feels very remorseful when she sees the spots of her blood her blood on her hands and she wishes she were loyal those are the five top themes to remember for Macbeth now if you are struggling for quotations I know there's lots of different characters that you need to remember you need to remember obviously what these characters represent first see Macbeth Lady Macbeth but don't forget you've got the witches you've got Banquo you've got King Duncan all of those characters and of course also Macduff you need to know a quotation for so here's a list of 10 quotes that cover all of the main characters that you need to be familiar with the first quotation if you forget everything else make sure you remember what the witches say they say fair is foul and foul is fair in other words they say this in the beginning of the play in act one scene one to basically show that they're about to topple and to transform the natural order they're about to bring chaos the first waiting until the hurly burly is done i.e Scotland is that piece before they use Macbeth to topple the natural order that's the first quotation this illustrates of course from the start that the witches are agents of chaos the second quotation is Lady Macbeth showing how corrupt how ambitious she is she says come your spirits ellipsis unsex me here here she wants to be changed she sees her gender her femininity as a really massive annoyance and she wants the spirits to change her to remove her femininity from her of course what this indicates from a really early stage is that firstly she's very corrupted by ambition but secondly she also is somebody that is going to use Macbeth manipulate him in order to attain what she wants the third quotation is of course Macbeth who considers his vaulting ambition remember that this is now where we can see this the seeds of ambition are firmly planted in his mind he wants to be king and he wonders he weighs up what him and Macbeth are patching in terms of the plot he's thinking should i kill the king should i not i do have vaulting ambition but i'm not sure if i can handle kingship the fourth quotation is to do with king Duncan how gullible he is and how loyal he is to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and equally how he trusts appearance is too much and this is what Macbeth and Lady Macbeth used against him he says that there's no art to find the mind's construction in the face what this is illustrating is that King Duncan finds it very difficult to tell what people are thinking just by looking at their face that's why he was betrayed by the first lane of cordal mcdonald and then also betrayed by the second lane of cordal who killed him Macbeth the next quotation is of course Lady Macbeth who plays with the idea of appearance as a reality she tells Macbeth to look like the innocent flower but be the serpent the juxtaposition of flower and serpent she basically says Macbeth use the appearance to misguide and mislead others the next quotation the sixth is Macbeth's first hallucination he asks is this a dagger rhetorical question he is feeling so guilty about killing king Duncan he hallucinates but however he still goes ahead and kills him the next quotation is of course Banquo we see initially Banquo and Macbeth are very close however once the witch has given him the prophecies and then a series in the chain of events happened where Macbeth suddenly goes from being Thane of Glombs to Thane of Cordal then king Banquo starts doubting is this guy did he do something to make this happen because he asks and he says he's listening here thou hast it now king cordal glombs oh glamorous if you want to say glamorous okay this quotation is really powerful because we can see here that Banquo is started to doubt Macbeth but he does it too late because Macbeth has him murdered the next quotation is of course Macduff we can see that Macduff never ever strays from divine right of kings and respecting lineage okay he respects Malcolm's position after king Duncan dies because even if he kills Macbeth he hands the crown back to Macduff or Malcolm okay so this is Macduff hands the crown back to Malcolm and we can see that he really respects the king because once he discovers his dead body he says that it's a most sacrilegious murder he's horrified the next quotation so this quote number nine is of course Macbeth's second hallucination which represents his guilt he sees Banquo as dead ghost and he tells him never shake that gory locks we can see here that Macbeth has overcome with paranoia and the final quotation if you forget everything else is the quote that contrasts how Lady Macbeth is quite strong very ambitious at the beginning two at the end she's weak she's overcome with remorse and she's very penitent she's very guilty she says out damn spot this is her supernatural hallucination where she sees spots of blood on her hands and she wants to reverse all the terrible actions that she has influenced Macbeth to do but of course she is beyond redemption and she ends up committing suicide so that's really it when it comes to the main context theme and quotes to remember if you are studying with Beth at a last minute basis now guys be aware that I have a very upcoming uh we rather have a very exciting upcoming collaboration with Mr. Sally's this Sunday where we're going to be going over our Macbeth predictions so do make sure you look out for that video where I'm going to be going over my predictions for the upcoming Macbeth exams this year and Mr. Sally's is also going to be presenting his predictions for the upcoming Macbeth exams thanks so much for listening