Hi friends,
I'm struggling with my FA4 for English. Our text is Macbeth and as you know we have to answer an unseen question in exam conditions. Does anyone have any advice on how to remember important quotes and to structure the essay? Also what types of quotes would I be looking for? I'm worried that I will only remember a few quotes that won't even be relevant to the question when I get in there .
Thanks,
justsomerandom21.
Hi random!
The unseen exam question is definitely the scary part of English, but there's lots of smart ways to prepare for it! Learning quotes, as you've mentioned, is one of the most important, but rather than feeling like you have to memorise half the play, go through your quote bank (or set one up if you haven't already - go through the play and any online/in-class resources, picking out the important lines. You can use things like Sparknotes or Quizlet to get you started). Find the
quotes that could be used for multiple themes - e.g. Lady Macbeth telling her husband to "look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't" is a great quote for the theme of deception, but you could also use it to discuss guilt, appearances vs. reality, gender, power, cunning, and the characters of Macbeth and Lady M in general, as well as their relationship. That makes this one a great one to memorise, so going through a list and highlighting similarly multi-purpose quotes would be an excellent study tactic.
Another strategy I'd recommend (and this will hopefully help with your essay structure question) is to collect or make a list of possible exam prompts. Chat to your teacher if you need help with this, but the aim is just to cover a wide range of themes and major characters to make your practice more efficient. We're not trying to 'guess' the exam prompt, but if you write a handful of practice essays about these main themes/characters, you'll notice two things:
1) A LOT of the ideas in the text overlap - themes aren't like separate islands; they all connect to one another somehow! Hence, you don't have to treat your evidence and analysis like separate islands either. A quote that you use and analyse in one essay might also work perfectly in your next essay too, and the one after that. That's not to say you should only aim to memorise a few general examples; rather, try to learn ~30* quotes, for example, and then use ~12 in each essay.
Spoiler
* I just picked 30 arbitrarily; depending on how well you know the play, you might already know quite a few quotes off by heart already, especially the *iconic* ones like "fair is foul and foul is fair". If not, 30 would be a good goal between now and the exam, but don't use that as a hard rule! The quotes can be pretty short (e.g. "gory locks"), so hopefully you can go beyond 30 if you feel confident. And remember that you can talk about aesthetic techniques like the symbolism of the dagger or the motif of weather as evidence too!
They might be a different combination of 12 each time, but you'll notice that whenever you write about a theme like
the supernatural, you can draw upon the same framework of evidence and just tie it to the specific question differently each time, e.g.
- Witches: "fair is foul and foul is fair"
- Macbeth: "So foul and fair a day I have not seen"
- Witches: "in thunder, lightning or in rain"
- Banquo: "have we eaten on the insane root / That takes the reason prisoner?"
- Macbeth: "gory locks" [of Banquo's ghost] + "thy bones are marrowless"
- Macbeth: "is this a dagger which I see before me?"
- Witches: "Show his eyes, and grieve his heart; / Come like shadows, so depart!"
- Macbeth: [about the line of kings apparition] "Horrible sight! Now, I see, ’tis true; / For the blood-bolter’d Banquo smiles upon me"
2) The more essays you write, the more you'll settle into a groove. Your intros can use the same lines to introduce the text (though you'll answer the specific question differently each time), your topic sentences will start to follow a similar pattern (e.g. 'Shakespeare explores the notion of ____ through the character of ____'), your quotes should be frequently rotated, as outlined above, and your concluding sentences about Shakespeare's overall messages will just vary slightly depending on the prompt. For example:
QUESTION 1: How does Shakespeare invite us to consider the notion of ambition in
Macbeth?
QUESTION 2: Ambition is Macbeth's downfall. To what extent do you agree with this statement?
(obviously you'd never get these two prompts to choose from as they're too similar! And an essay written about the first question could be ~90% identical to one written about the second, but you'd have to pick the right moment to mould your discussion to suit the prompt - e.g. using the word 'downfall' at the start or end of your body paragraphs.)
TOPIC & CONCLUDING SENTENCE FOR BOTH QUESTIONS:
TS: Throughout the play, Shakespeare unpacks the dangerous allure of ambition through his portrayal of Macbeth.
CS: Therefore, Shakespeare's depiction of Macbeth underscores how ambitious desires can bring about one's downfall.
Then, obviously, if you got a prompt that instead asked about the
consequences of [selfishness], or the [fatal flaw] of Macbeth, you'd instead use these key words throughout your essay instead of
downfall and
ambition. But hopefully you can see how by writing a practice essay for just one essay question, you're really preparing yourself for a whole range of potential topics!
Lastly, if you're feeling a bit of a time crunch, try to do some skeleton essay plans instead of writing entire practice essays. This is still good practice, and you can really hone in on whatever areas you find trickiest! For example, if you can't easily come up with three body paragraphs or arguments, focus on that when planning. Or, if you never know how to end your paragraphs, include concluding sentences in your plan.
I hope that helps - best of luck with the Macbeth prep, and let me know if you have any questions!