Question
Edexcel Paper 1 Section A — Shakespeare (20 marks)
Read the extract from Act 1 Scene 1 (the witches' opening scene).
Explore how Shakespeare uses the supernatural in this extract and elsewhere in the play.
Mark scheme by AO band:
- AO1 (≈6 marks): Band 4–5 — clear or perceptive argument that the supernatural in Macbeth is a moral solvent that dissolves the categories Macbeth tries to live by. Quotation from the witches in Acts 1, 3 and 4, and the dagger.
- AO2 (≈6 marks): Band 4–5 — analysis of trochaic tetrameter (the witches' chant rhythm), antithesis ("fair is foul"), and the staging implications (thunder, lightning, vanishing).
- AO3 (8 marks): Band 4–5 — Jacobean context: James I's Daemonologie, the 1604 Witchcraft Act, the Gunpowder Plot, and the audience's belief in equivocation as a Jesuit charge.
Top responses argue the supernatural offers Macbeth no agency — only the illusion of it.
20 marks · take your time before peeking.
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Generated by TopMyGrade AI · cross-check official sources before relying on the mark-scheme phrasing.