planning sheet 2.5: individual oral commentary (macbeth...

Cambridge English Literature for the IB Diploma

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Planning sheet 2.5: individual oral commentary (Macbeth 3)

Macbeth, Extract 3

This is a planning sheet for preparing an IOC on the extract below from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It will help you practise for the IOC in Part 2 of your IB English Literature course. You should complete the IOC planning stages at the end of this sheet once you have been through the extract in class.

Act 1 Scene 5 LADY MACBETH MACBETH LADY MACBETH MACBETH LADY MACBETH

The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood, Stop up th’access and passage to remorse That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between Th’effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, 'Hold, hold.' Enter MACBETH Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor, Greater than both by the all-hail hereafter, Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present, and I feel now The future in the instant. My dearest love, Duncan comes here tonight. And when goes hence? Tomorrow, as he purposes. O never Shall sun that morrow see. Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time, bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue; look like th’innocent flower, But be the serpent under't.

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(Source: Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5, lines 36–64, Cambridge School Shakespeare 2nd edition)

This is a shortened version of the IOC planning sheet which you should complete for the extract above (see planning sheet 2.1 for more detailed instructions). Some sections have been filled in to help you.



Guiding question 1: What do we learn about Lady Macbeth and about the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth from this passage?

Guiding question 2: What is interesting about the language Shakespeare uses in this scene?

Theme/ idea 1:

Theme/ idea 2: A key theme developed here is the difference between appearance and reality, which runs throughout the play.

Theme/ idea 3:

Introduction to commentary

Theme/ idea 1

Quotations to support idea Notes on language/ structure/ form



Theme/ idea 2


Your face, my thane, is as a book where men / May read strange matters.

• The key theme of appearance and reality is developed here. The simile picks up on Duncan’s earlier line ‘There’s no art to read the mind’s construction in the face.’

• Interesting note of possessiveness in ‘my Thane’. • The ‘strange’ matters perhaps recall the

‘equivocation of the fiend’ – the strange business of the ‘weird sisters’.

• Shakespeare seems to be making a reference to how facial expressions can be read, and be interpreted in different ways, rather like language we read in a book.

look like th’innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't.

• Metaphor continues the exploration of appearance and reality, with something dark and sinister intrinsic to the image.

• The imagery is more overt: the serpent could be the tempting serpent of the Bible and Lady Macbeth wants Macbeth to be more like her (the serpent) and less ‘innocent’.



Theme/ idea 3


Conclusion to commentary

planning sheet 2.5: individual oral commentary (macbeth...

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