Macbeth 2: guilt, kingship and the supernatural
Once the crown is taken, the play changes shape. This lesson tracks the three ideas examiners ask about most — guilt, kingship and the supernatural — and shows how to write about them together rather than in separate boxes.
Lesson overview
What you'll learn in this lesson
Analyse the language, form and structure the playwright uses to create meanings and effects, using subject terminology.
Key learning points
- • Guilt as imagery, not emotion
- • Two models of kingship
- • The supernatural and audience belief
- • Context that earns marks
This lesson at a glance
- 30 minutes
- 21 parts to scroll through
- 4 quick checks
- Marked quiz at the end
- Gentle pace: short sittings with pauses
Words to know
Scroll down — the lesson carries on below
Watch & discover
Part 1 of 21
Visual introductionPicture this
Macbeth 2: guilt, kingship and the supernatural
Once the crown is taken, the play changes shape. This lesson tracks the three ideas examiners ask about most — guilt, kingship and the supernatural — and shows how to write about them together rather than in separate boxes.
In a nutshell
Analyse the language, form and structure the playwright uses to create meanings and effects, using subject terminology.
Learning cycle
Part 2 of 21
Learning cycle 1 of 2
Part 1 · Guilt as imagery, not emotion
A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.
Explore the idea
Part 3 of 21
Learn
Guilt as imagery, not emotion
Guilt in Macbeth is physical: hands, water, blood, sleep. Macbeth asks whether an ocean could wash his hand clean and answers himself — the hand would redden the sea instead. Lady Macbeth begins by calling water the whole solution and ends rubbing at a spot that is not there. Tracking one image across a play is the fastest route to a conceptual argument, because it lets you compare two characters using the same evidence.
Reset break
Part 4 of 21
Pause
That's sitting 1 of 5 done
Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.
Explore the idea
Part 5 of 21
Learn
Two models of kingship
Duncan gives; Macbeth takes. Duncan's language is full of planting and growing, Macbeth's of borrowed robes that do not fit. Shakespeare sets a good king beside a usurper so the audience measures one against the other — useful context, since James I claimed descent from Banquo and had survived a plot against his own life.
Quick check
Part 6 of 21
Quick check
Part 7 of 21
Reset break
Part 8 of 21
Pause
That's sitting 2 of 5 done
Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.
Learning cycle
Part 9 of 21
Learning cycle 2 of 2
Part 2 · The supernatural and audience belief
A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.
Explore the idea
Part 10 of 21
Learn
The supernatural and audience belief
A Jacobean audience did not need persuading that witches were real, so the equivocation matters more than the magic: the witches tell truths that mislead. 'None of woman born' and a marching wood both come true in ways Macbeth never imagined. Write about equivocation as a technique of the play, not just a plot twist.
Explore the idea
Part 11 of 21
Learn
Context that earns marks
AO3 is worth six marks on this question and is earned by linking period to meaning. 'James I was king in 1606' earns nothing. 'The play stages regicide as an act that unsettles nature itself, for an audience whose king had recently survived the Gunpowder Plot' earns the mark, because the context explains an effect in the text.
Reset break
Part 12 of 21
Pause
That's sitting 3 of 5 done
Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.
Quick check
Part 13 of 21
Quick check
Part 14 of 21
Explore the idea
Part 15 of 21
Worked example
Model paragraph
Shakespeare makes guilt inescapable by giving it a body. Macbeth's fear that his hand would 'the multitudinous seas incarnadine' inverts the ordinary logic of washing: instead of the water cleaning the man, the man stains the water, and the polysyllabic Latinate diction swells the crime beyond any human scale. Lady Macbeth's confident 'a little water clears us of this deed' is set against it, so that her later sleepwalking reads as the play's own answer to her. Guilt is thus structural as well as emotional — an image the play refuses to let either character wash out.
Reset break
Part 16 of 21
Pause
That's sitting 4 of 5 done
Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.
Challenge round
Part 17 of 21
Game · Sort it
Which of these are true?
Drag each card into the right column. Tap a card first if dragging is fiddly.
True
Not true
Challenge round
Part 18 of 21
Game · Fill the gaps
Finish the sentences
Choose the word that belongs in each gap.
Duncan's ____ is full of planting and growing, Macbeth's of borrowed robes that do not fit.
Challenge round
Part 19 of 21
Game · Recall cards
Why is tracking one image across the play useful in an essay?
Card 1 of 4
Mastery quiz
Part 20 of 21
Marked quiz
End of lesson quiz: Macbeth 2: guilt, kingship and the supernatural
4 questions, marked with the reasoning shown. No timer.
1. Why is tracking one image across the play useful in an essay?
2. Which sentence uses context for marks rather than decoration?
3. What does 'equivocation' mean in the play?
4. How does Shakespeare contrast Duncan and Macbeth as kings?
Lesson round-up
Part 21 of 21
Lesson round-up
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Ask LunaPart 1 of 21 · Watch & discover