3 exam-style questions with full mark schemes and model answers. Write your own answer and the AI examiner marks it against the mark scheme.
Read the following extract from Act 2 Scene 1 of Macbeth by William Shakespeare and then answer the question that follows.
At this point in the play Macbeth waits alone outside Duncan's chamber for the bell that will signal him to commit the murder, and sees a vision of a dagger before him.
Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: -- I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still; And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood, Which was not so before. -- There's no such thing.
Explore how Shakespeare presents Macbeth's ambition and guilt in this extract and in the play as a whole. (Total for question = 40 marks, including 4 marks for the range and accuracy of spelling, punctuation and grammar.)
Read the following extract from Act 1 Scene 5 of Macbeth by William Shakespeare and then answer the question that follows.
At this point in the play Lady Macbeth has just read her husband's letter about the witches' prophecy and calls on dark spirits to give her the resolve to help him seize the crown.
Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full 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, your 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,
Explore how Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a powerful woman in this extract and in the play as a whole. (Total for question = 40 marks, including 4 marks for the range and accuracy of spelling, punctuation and grammar.)
Read the following extract, the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, and then answer the question that follows.
This sonnet opens the play. The Chorus sets the scene in Verona and tells the audience the lovers' fate before the action begins.
Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows Doth with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which, if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Explore how Shakespeare presents fate and the feud in this extract and in the play as a whole. (Total for question = 40 marks, including 4 marks for the range and accuracy of spelling, punctuation and grammar.)