Macbeth Prediction 2025

Prediction Videos

• Not a guarantee, but like an insurance policy. 25% chance of relevance, especially when watching multiple videos on different texts.
• The essay plan provided will be adaptable to various essay questions.

2024 Prediction & Adaptation

• In 2024, the prediction was on the supernatural, but it didn't appear directly. AQA focused on Lady Macbeth.
• The video explained how to adapt the supernatural content to fit the Lady Macbeth question.
• Viewers who watched the end were able to utilize a percentage of the information.

2025 Prediction: Guilt

• Although the supernatural didn't appear in 2024, the 2025 prediction is about guilt.

Essay Plan: Thesis Statement

• The quickest way to get top grades is to start with the thesis statement where you lay out Shakespeare's ideas.
• The play is a cautionary tale and Shakespeare uses Macbeth's guilt to show that usurping, committing regicide is going to lead to the destruction of your mental health and well-being. It's not worth killing King James, but what happens to Macbeth?
• Lady Macbeth is consumed and destroyed by guilt, leading to commentary on the patriarchal society.

Lady Macbeth:

• Is Shakespeare showing that women need to learn their place and not demonstrate ambition but be subservient to men supporting the patriarchal society, or is he asking us to sympathise with Lady Macbeth who is driven to evil means to get power because patriarchal society doesn't give her power?
• Either way, the guilt destroys her. It's a cautionary tale either against women or against the dangers of the patriarchal society you decide.

The Witches:

• The witches represent the experience of having no guilt, signifying pure evil.
• Evil is what Macbeth becomes, leading to his punishment and destruction.
• Explaining these three arguments in your essay and summarising them at the beginning in your thesis statement.

Quotes & Analysis

• The average grade nine essay has 13 quotes.
• Sixteen quotes will be provided.

Quote 1: "Why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair?"

• Macbeth experiences guilt early; the thought of regicide is horrifying him even before committing any crime.
• Guilt is a warning system.
• It prevents committing sin and making mistakes.
• Even if one succeeds in killing King James, the guilt will lead to failure.

Quote 2: "Is this a dagger which I see before me? Come, let me clutch thee."

• Macbeth embraces his madness and rejects his guilt.
• He embraces the imaginary bloody dagger and embraces killing Duncan, and therefore God and his own mind destroys him.

Quote 3: "Methought I heard a voice cry 'Macbeth shall sleep no more' Macbeth hath murdered sleep, the innocent sleep…"

• Shakespeare dramatizes the quick descent into madness.
• Becoming king will suck all the joy out of his life.
• The great prize of kingship is worthless unless you are the divinely appointed king
• Political message: keep King James.
• Relevant context: the play is put on at the court of King James, King James has paid for this play so the political message is directed at the audience King James nobles, some of whom, after the gunpowder plot, will be thinking, 'Killing the king! What a wonderful idea! Maybe I will become the new king.

Quote 4: "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?"

• Macbeth, having gone against the divine right of kings, turns to Neptune, a primitive god, not a Christian god.
• Guilt will force you to reject God, leading to an eternity in hell.
• God will turn against you because of what you've done, you'll never be able to justify it.
• You're feeling this feeling of guilt because this is God's way of speaking to you, and like Macbeth, you will be turning away from God.

Lady Macbeth's Perspective

• Lady Macbeth initially feels no guilt but will later be haunted by it.
• She says, "I shame to wear a heart so white," instructing Macbeth to reject guilt.
• White symbolizes innocence and purity, but she uses it to symbolize cowardice, like waving the white flag, and so Shakespeare is going to use her words against her she is rejecting innocence, she's rejecting what it is to be a good person, she's rejecting what it is to be a woman and therefore society and God is going to punish her and she's going to die before Macbeth, and she's going to kill herself because her mind has been destroyed by guilt.

The Killing of Banquo

• This is the first time Macbeth doesn't commit the murder himself.
• Macbeth values his friendship with Banquo more than his relationship as a subject to King Duncan.
• Macbeth says, "Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake thy gory locks at me."
• He has visions of Banquo's ghost, indicating a more personal assassination and greater guilt.
• Once you've killed the king there will be a need to assassinate other people, people who are going to be your friends.

Disowning Guilt

• Macbeth overcomes guilt by stopping feeling.
• He says "it will have blood", shifting the responsibility away from his personal decision.
• If he had listened to his feelings of guilt this would never have happened.

Lady Macbeth Foreshadowing

• When Macbeth says Methought I heard a voice cry Macbeth does murder sleep' she says to him you lack the seasons of all nature's sleep' but just like when she said Macbeth is too full of the milk of human kindness, she is completely wrong.
• The sleepwalking scene shows Macbeth's love for Lady Macbeth, but also indicates that he and Lady Macbeth are sleeping separately, as he doesn't know what she says in her sleep. Whose sleep has he murdered? Lady Macbeth's and that word murder is important because it's directly going to lead to her killing herself.
• Macbeth has maneuvered her into a position where she wants to commit suicide.

Quote: "Out, damned spot!"

• She uses the word damned to signify that she's going to hell.
• "Hell is murky" suggests that going against conscience leads to destruction on earth and eternal destruction in hell.
• "What's done cannot be undone" means that the consequences of terrible actions remain, even if guilt is suppressed.

Patriarchical Message

• The message from thesis statement because she did say Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts unsex me here and what she's also being punished for is by rejecting her role as a woman and becoming what she perceives as masculine.
• Rejecting her feminine role is what directly leads to her punishment, and so we can read this as a way to stop women wanting more and demand that they accept their role in society even if that role leaves them powerless.
• Shakespeare could be hinting that patriarchal society attacks women, and if they fail in that role, how on earth are they going to achieve status?

Macbeth's Reaction to Lady Macbeth's Death

• He says, "She should have died hereafter."

• The speaker thinks he is deeply in love with his wife still.

• Macbeth knows he can't win, and is desperate to find out who is going to kill him. He is already welcoming death.

• He turns against God and says, "Life is a tale told by an idiot."

  • His Hamasha was his love for his wife but also his bloodlust.
  • Macbeth is committing a huge sin, denying God, imagine how his Christian audience would react to that, obviously they're going to reject him just as they're going to reject his callous and evil assassination of King Duncan.

• Life for him is now mihilistic it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

  • Macbeth is punished for ignoring the guilt that would have kept him at his place in society and seeking to rise.

Macduff as a Counterpoint

• His wife calls him a traitor and she proves to be correct because she says he's abandoned us and we're now exposed and in thirty seconds or so or a minute who turns up but Macbeth's assassins kills Lady Macduff and her whole family.
• Macduff himself says, "Sinful Macduff, they were all struck for thee."
• Macduff accepts his guilt and seeks to atone for it by killing Macbeth.

Macbeth's Guilt Transference

• When Macbeth meets Macduff, he starts to experience guilt, saying, "My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already."

• This isn't arrogance saying no man can kill me, it's saying look, I've got to find this guy who's going to kill me, and I don't want to kill you in the process.

• When Macduff tells him he was untimely ripped from his mother's womb, Macbeth welcomes the fear, regaining his humanity.

• He is a victim of fate and victims of God. Remember he's not accepting responsibility for what he's done he is blaming the person who wrote the tale that he is acting in.

Final Message

• Macbeth didn't feel guilt, and his actions taught bloody instruction.
• At the end Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have descended the great chain of being, so rather than being at the top as king and queen, she has become a fiend, not even human because, hey, we're in a patriarchal society and women are always worse than men that's one message of the play and the king has become merely a butcher, and so both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are rightfully punished by a Christian God who re establishes the social order, puts Malcolm back on the throne.
• All of that could have been avoided if Macbeth had listened to that suggestion guilt playing in his head when he first thought about killing Duncan.

Adapting to Different Questions

• Use the information learned to answer different questions, along with any other knowledge.
• Supernatural is a likely topic if guilt does not come up.

Adapting the Thesis Statement for Supernatural

• Instead of guilt, use the word supernatural.
• The supernatural gives Macbeth this idea to kill Duncan through the predictions of the witches but the prediction also leads to his guilt which he ignores.

Role of the Supernatural

• The job of the supernatural is to get Macbeth to ignore his feelings of guilt, to ignore his doubts. How does it do that? Well, it starts implanting images in his mind which are calls to action, so the dagger causing towards killing King Duncan.
• The supernatural influences Lady Macbeth.
• The supernatural plays with Macbeth, taking joy in destroying his mind.
• The supernatural messes with characters' heads and their Christian beliefs.

Defense Against Evil Powers

• Listen to your conscience and feelings of guilt to stop committing terrible sins.

The Supernatural's Victory

• The supernatural succeeds in toying with Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and Macduff.
• It destroys lives and upsets the social order.

The Ending

• The restoration of Malcolm may be bittersweet because Fleance will become king.