English Department

Year 11 Handbook

Set Texts

- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

- An Inspector Calls by J.B Priestley

- Macbeth by William Shakespeare

- Power and Conflict Poetry Cluster

Welcome to GCSE English Language and

English Literature!

You will study both English Language and English Literature at KS4

which means that, at the end of Year 11, you will be leaving Compass

School with two English GCSEs!

We follow the AQA specification for both qualifications and the

breakdown of each is outlined below.

English Language English Literature Paper 1: Explorations in Creative

Reading and Writing (50%)

Section A: Reading 4 questions in response to an unseen piece

of fiction. Section B: Writing

1 extended creative piece

Paper 1: Shakespeare and the 19th Century Novel (40%)

Section A: Reading

4 questions in response to 2 unseen non-fiction pieces.

Section B: Writing 1 extended writing piece that presents a

viewpoint. Paper 2: Writers’ Viewpoints and

Perspectives (50%)

Section A Shakespeare: students will answer one question on their play of

choice. They will be required to write in detail about an extract from the play and then to write about the play as a whole.

Section B The 19th-century novel: students will answer one question on their novel of

choice. They will be required to write in detail about an extract from the novel and then to write about the novel as a whole.

Paper 2: Modern Texts and Poetry (60%)

Section A Modern texts: students will answer

one essay question from a choice of two on their

studied modern prose or drama text.

Section B Poetry: students will answer one

comparative question on one named poem

printed on the paper and one other poem from

their chosen anthology cluster.

Section C Unseen poetry: Students will

answer one question on one unseen poem and

one question comparing this poem with a

second unseen poem.

Understanding Assessment Objectives

GCSEs are marked using Assessment Objectives set out by the exam board

(AOs). It is important that you understand the AOs so that you can make sure

you are meeting all of them in your work.

English Language Assessment Objectives

AO1:

o identify and interpret explicit and implicit information and ideas

o select and synthesise evidence from different texts

AO2: Explain, comment on and analyse how writers use language and structure to achieve effects and

influence readers, using relevant subject terminology to support their views

AO3: Compare writers’ ideas and perspectives, as well as how these are conveyed, across two or

more texts

AO4: Evaluate texts critically and support this with appropriate textual references

AO5: Communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, selecting and adapting tone, style and

register for different forms, purposes and audiences. Organise information and ideas, using structural

and grammatical features to support coherence and cohesion of texts

AO6: Candidates must use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and

effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation. (This requirement must constitute 20% of the marks

for each specification as a whole.)

English Literature Assessment Objectives

AO1: Read, understand and respond to texts. Students should be able to:

- maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response

- use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations.

AO2: Analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using

relevant subject terminology where appropriate.

AO3: Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were

written.

AO4: Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate

spelling and punctuation.

Term 1: A Christmas Carol

You will tackle this question on Literature Paper 1: Shakespeare and the 19th

Century Novel. Here is what the question will look like on the exam:

This question is worth 30 marks and will require an essay response of

around 700-800 words.

Model Response

In this extract we see how the Cratchit family are happy despite their poverty. The novella was

published in 1843, which was in the middle of the industrial revolution, so many people were

moving into cities, leading them to become overcrowded and therefore poverty-stricken. This

poverty is evident there in the quote “the family display of glass”, which we then learn consists of

“two tumblers” and a “custard-cup without a handle”. The word “display” shows just how little they

own, as they seem proud to showcase these small, dilapidated objects off, as this is all they have.

However, they seem content as such trivial matters don’t change how they feel towards each other.

Dickens compares the cups to “golden goblets”, which to me suggests that the Cratchits feel

enriched simply by each others’ company, which is worth more to them than anything materialistic.

Earlier in the same scene, we learn just how vibrant the scene is among this family when Dickens

personifies even the potatoes, saying they were “knocking” to get out of their pan, as if the joyous

atmosphere was so desirable to be amongst that even inanimate objects wanted to be part of the

festivities. In the extract we are told that the chestnuts cracked “noisily”, which conveys the same

idea, building a feeling of community despite the poverty in the scene.

The Ghost of Christmas Present first takes Scrooge to see the Cratchits’ Christmas, which makes him

realise the importance of family at this time, then continues this theme of company by showing him

other scenes brought to life by Christmas spirit. For example, when the ghost takes him to a

lighthouse, the poor workers there are described as having “horny hands”. This suggests that they

have struggled through great hardships and have suffered more in their lives than Scrooge ever

would, and yet their show of unison when they all sing together at Christmas let them disregard

their struggles for a time.

One member of the Cratchit family who strongly highlights the struggles of the poor is Tiny Tim. In

this extract, his hand is decribed as a “withered little hand”, suggesting it has prematurely withered

like a flower with no light. As the word “withered” has connotations of a flower, to me, this could

perhaps be seen as a metaphor for how something beautiful has been hindered and killed by the

tight-fistedness of the rich in society, which is something that Dickens was strongly trying to convey

in this novella. Light is often a symbol of hope, so this flower could be shrivelled due to a lack of

light, which is the lack of generosity from the upper classes. Dickens may have intended “withered

little” as a juxtaposition, as we would normally associate “withered” with old age and “little” with

childhood. This contrast highlights how wrong it is that an innocent child should be so shunned by

society due to his wealth and status, and this demonstrates Dickens’ frustration over the inequality.

Dickens uses a similar adjective to describe the hands of the children Ignorance and Want. The word

“shrivelled” is used here, which compares these children, who are also victims of the struggles of

poverty, to Tiny Tim. It creates a similar image of premature decay to highlight the neglect of lower

classes in society. The boy in this scene represents ignorance, and the Ghost of Christmas Present

tells Scrooge to “most of all beware the boy”. This strongly conveys Dickens’ message about poverty

and the poor, as he is trying to tell society that ignoring the struggles and problems of the poor will

be their downfall. This is demonstrated in stave 4 when Tiny Tim dies, and the Cratchits say that

when Bob had Tiny Tim on his shoulders he walked “very fast indeed”. When we have a weight on

our shoulders, the phrase normally implies a burden and a worry, however here I think that Tiny Tim

represents the burden that the rich think the poor impose upon society. Here, Dickens could be

saying that if we only realised the potential of the poor, they may actually prove helpful and

contribute to society, however they are seen only as a dead weight on the shoulders of society due

to the ignorance of the rich.

The origins of A Christmas Carol Article by:John Sutherland Themes:Poverty and the working classes, London, The novel 1832–1880 Published:15 May 2014

Professor John Sutherland considers how Dickens’s A Christmas Carolengages with

Victorian attitudes towards poverty, labour and the Christmas spirit.

Prince Albert – the newly installed husband of Queen Victoria – is popularly associated with institutionalising the British family Christmas, an institution which is still with us. It was Albert, for example, who brought from his native Germany the tannenbaum, or Christmas Tree. 1841 is the normally given as the date for this happy importation. The Christmas tree replaced the traditional British ‘yule log’ – wood designed to give winter warmth, not something to deck with pretty lights, fairies, favours and (round its base) presents. Both the tannenbaum and the Yule log (along with mistletoe) were incorporated into Christian festivity from pre-Christian pagan rituals associated with the seasonal turn of the year – the rebirth of the land and the green gods. There is no Biblical warrant for Christ’s day of birth being 25 December.

Shortly after the arrival of the Christmas tree into the British parlour, Dickens, with A Christmas Carol, institutionalised what one could call the modern 'spirit of Christmas’. Dickens subtitled his story ‘A Ghost Story for Christmas’. The ghosts are imported from folklore and legend, not the Christian gospels. The famous spirit of Christmas designed by the artist John Leech for the first edition of A Christmas Carol clearly draws on classic pagan iconography:

Dickens had warm memories of his own childhood Christmases and, now the father of a young family (as was Prince Albert), made the annual event a merry holiday. Feasting, games, and domestic dramas were the order of the ‘twelve days of Christmas’ in the 1840s Dickens household.

Money lending, scratching pens and ghosts

A Christmas Carol opens with Ebenezer Scrooge in his chilly ‘counting house’ on Christmas Eve (Stave 1). Outside London, the ‘great wen’ is shrouded in filthy brown fog. It is the ‘hungry forties’. The 1840s saw huge distress among the working classes and mass starvation in Ireland. ‘Chartism (a working-class reformist movement) raised the fearful possibility of revolution. It was a nervous time.

Opposite Scrooge’s door a dying woman is sitting in the gutter – ghosts of rich businessmen dancing around her. It is they who have brought her to this sad pass.

, seven years previously, Scrooge is the sole proprietor Scrooge & Marley. He is a money lender. He lends money, but he is not inclined to part with money. Two gentlemen, soliciting charitable donations, are dismissed with an angry ‘Bah! Humbug!’. Another visitor, his nephew, injudiciously wishes his uncle a merry Christmas: ‘Merry Christmas!’, explodes Scrooge, ‘every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding!’ The nephew, like the two gentlemen, is ‘humbugged’ off (Stave 1).

At the end of his 12-hour day Scrooge dismisses his clerk, Bob Cratchit. Cratchit – his name evokes a scratching pen – is a ‘scrivener’. Before typewriters and photocopying machines, the necessary copying of business and legal documents was done long hand. The typewriter girl was 40 years in the future. Cratchit has one day’s holiday a year, and earns 15 shillings (75p) per six-day week: half a crown a day. On it he supports a large, happy, but chronically hard-up family. The family favourite is Tiny Tim, a little ‘cripple’ boy (on his father’s shoulder, in the illustration below):

That Christmas Eve Scrooge, alone in his cold empty house is destined to be haunted. First by his partner, Marley, doomed to wander forever as penance for his hard-heartedness.

Then, overnight, the miser is visited by three spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. In the last visitation, Scrooge is shown his own gravestone and realises the worthlessness of a life devoted to money-grubbing.

Scrooge wakes up – it is Christmas morning and he is a changed man. From now on he will be good-hearted: good-hearted most of all to the Cratchit family and Tiny Tim, to whom he will be a year-round Father Christmas.

How a society treats its children

How a society treats its children, Dickens believed, is the true test of that society’s moral worth. His religious beliefs were complicated, as are most people’s. But very simply, he favoured the New Testament over the Old. He wrote a version of the gospels for his own children, The Life of our Lord, four years after A Christmas Carol. Dickens, we can assume from the centrality of childish innocence in his fiction, was particularly moved by Christ’s injunction: ‘Except ye … become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’. Christmas celebrates the birth of a child. So does all Dickens’s great fiction: not least A Christmas Carol.

The first stirrings of the tale can be found in a visit Dickens made to Manchester a month before he began writing. One of the great orators of his time (only fragments of his eloquence, alas, survive) he spoke at the city’s Athenaeum on 5 October.

It was a memorable evening for those present, and those who read accounts of the speech in the next day’s papers. As Dickens’s biographer, Michael Slater, describes:

Dickens dwelt on the terrible sights he had seen among the juvenile population in London's jails and doss-houses and stressed the desperate need for educating the poor. This occasion seems to have put into his mind the idea for a [Christmas Eve tale] which should help to open the hearts of the prosperous and powerful towards the poor and powerless but which should also bring centrally into play the theme of memory that, as we have seen, was always so strongly associated with Christmas for him.

The Athenaeum speech was also an opening shot in his campaign, which bore fruit eight years later, to get a public library for the adult working classes in the city. Nor were children forgotten. They too needed the printed word. In the early 1840s Dickens took a particular interest in ‘ragged schools’. As he described them, in an article in 1846:

The name implies the purpose. They who are too ragged, wretched, filthy, and forlorn, to enter any other place: who could gain admission into no charity school, and who would be driven from any church door; are invited to come in here, and find some people not depraved, willing to teach them something, and show them some sympathy, and stretch a hand out, which is not the iron hand of Law, for their correction.

Industry, poverty and utilitarianism

Manchester – the ‘workshop of the world’ – was famous not merely for its industry but the utilitarian philosophy that drove it. It may not be clear what Scrooge’s line of business is. But his beliefs, before his change of heart, are crystal clear – pure Manchester.

‘Are there no workhouses?’ he asks, when the two gentleman ask for a charitable donation. If the poor die (like the poor woman outside his house) it will, he says, solve ‘the surplus population’ problem (Stave 3; Stave 1). Concern with over-population had been stimulated by the stern

philosophy of Thomas Robert Malthus who foresaw catastrophe for England if its masses were not ‘checked’ by famine, war, or disease. For the more thoughtful, the anxiety was fostered by the census which, since 1821, had been counting how many inhabitants there were in the country. In 1841 the figure was approaching 29 million – there were serious doubts as to whether British agriculture could feed them, something which led to the repeal of the Corn Laws, in 1846, allowing cereals to be imported from the New World.

The 1840s were not merely ‘hungry’ but hard hearted. It was a philosophy embodied in Ebenezer Scrooge - not merely a solitary miser (like, for example, George Eliot’s Silas Marner) but the ‘spirit of the age’ in human (and, arguably, inhuman) form. Hard heads, hard hearts, good business. Soft heads and soft hearts lead to the bankruptcy court, Scrooge would have said. Dickens disagreed.

Children worked, like slaves, in Manchester factories (as Michael Slater points out, the chimneys in the background of John Leech’s illustration of the destitute children ‘Ignorance and Want’ are more reminiscent of Manchester’s industrial landscape than of London streets). Six months after A Christmas Carol was published the 1844 Factories Act decreed, however, that 9–13 year olds could only work nine hours a day, six days a week. This was regarded as a humane reform.

Why were they wanted for this work? Children were cheap labour but, more importantly, their fingers were small and dexterous. But the machines were dangerous. There were crippled Tiny Tims by the hundred in Manchester.

The modern reader – of whatever age – is less sensitive to sentimentality than our Victorian forebears. At Dickens’s readings from his novels, audiences would regularly be moved to open tears by, for example, the death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, or the murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist. One suspects that many Victorian tears were shed over the foreseen (but happily forestalled) death of Tiny Tim.

Dickens designed the externals of his book with the meticulous care he applied to its contents. It would be, he instructed his publishers, a handsome five-shilling production: ‘Brown-salmon fine-ribbed cloth, blocked in blind and gold on front; in gold on the spine … all edges gilt’. Dickens spared no expense. John Leech’s half-dozen illustrations should be coloured, he instructed. The result was a book whose production costs, and relatively high price (five shillings), meant that this most popular of works returned, on its first 5,000-copy print run, small profit for Dickens.

The first edition shot off the bookshop shelves even before Christmas Day 1843. And A Christmas Carol has sold massively ever since. It is the most filmed, and TV-adapted of his works. And, one suspects, as long as there is Christmas, there will be Dickens’s wonderful tale alongside it and Tiny Tim’s benediction, ‘God Bless Us, Everyone’.

Key Words and Spellings

Please add your own as we read

Altruistic Epiphany Archetype Misanthropic Resolution

Facetious Impropriety Purgatory Antithesis Exposition

Antagonistic Covetous Equilibrium Unhallowed Portmanteau

Miser Redemption Condemned Spectre Empathise

Bitter Intimation Foil Solemnised Protagonist

Isolated Miser Allegory Skinflint Antagonist

Solitary Purgatory Limbo Philanthropic Construct

Hostile Aggressive Salvation Foreshadowing Intrusive

Colloquial Agitate Benevolent Charitable Condescension

Destitute Endeavour Facetious Humility Impropriety

Key Contextual Information (AO3)

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, and spent the first nine years of his

life living in the coastal regions of Kent, a county in southeast England. Dickens'

father, John, was a kind and likable man, but he was financially irresponsible, piling

up tremendous debts throughout his life. When Dickens was nine, his family moved

to London. At twelve, his father was arrested and sent to debtors' prison. Dickens'

mother moved seven of their children into prison with their father but arranged for

Cha rles to live alone outside the prison, working with other child laborers at a hellish

job pasting labels on bottles in a blacking warehouse.

The three months Charles spent apart from his family were severely traumatic. He

viewed his job as a miserable trap--he considered himself too good for it, stirring the

contempt of his worker-companions. After his father was released from prison,

Dickens returned to school, eventually becoming a law clerk. He went on to serve as

a court reporter before taking his place as one of the most popular English novelists

of his time. At age 25, Dickens completed his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, which

met with great success. This started his career as an English literary celebrity, during

which he produced such masterpieces as Great Expectations,David

Copperfield, and A Tale of Two Cities.

Dickens' beloved novella A Christmas Carol was written in 1843, with the intention of

drawing readers' attention to the plight of England's poor. (Social criticism, a

recurring theme in Dickens' work, resounds most strongly in his novel Hard Times.)

In the tale, Dickens stealthily combines a somewhat indirect description of hardships

faced by the poor with a heart-rending, sentimental celebration of the Christmas

season. The calloused character of the apathetic penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooge,

who opens his heart after being confronted by three spirits, remains one of Dickens'

most widely recognized and popular creations.

A Christmas Carol takes the form of a relatively simplistic allegory--it is seldom

considered one of Dickens' important literary contributions. The novella's emotional

depth, brilliant narration, and endearing characters, however, offer plenty of rewards

for literature students, Dickensian fans, and Grinches alike.

Term 2: An Inspector Calls

You will tackle this question on Literature Paper 2: Modern Texts and Poetry.

Here is what the question will look like:

You will be given the choice of two questions: you must only answer one!

There is no extract provided this time; you must be able to quote from

memory!

Model Answer

In An Inspector Calls, JB Priestley uses the character of Mrs Birling to portray a typical

higher-class woman. In multiple occasions in the play, Mrs Birling (Sybil) is presented as

dismissive and a snob. This behaviour is evident from the very start of the play where she

tells off her husband for thanking the chef in front of a guest, Gerald. She says “Arthur,

you’re not supposed to say such things.” This authoritative tone of Mrs Birling shows that

she takes pride in her social respectability and so wants her whole family to not ruin it. Mrs

Birling is from a higher social status than Mr Birling so she is socially superior. This is a

reason why she is telling off Mr Birling as well. We learn that she takes high responsibility in

social etiquette, which are the ways society expects you to behave.

In the same conversation, JB Priestley presents Mrs Birling as traditional in the lines “Sheila,

the things you girls pick up these days.” Here it is clear that Sybil is quite ashamed of the

language that her daughter is using because it is not sophisticated and not how the higher

class should talk. The repeated telling off of two members in her family echoes and

emphasises her social superiority. The collective noun “girls” shows that Mrs Birling is

distancing herself from them and is appalled that Sheila is part of them, and not behaving

traditionally. This again shows that Mrs Birling is a bit of a snob and so presents her as an

unlikeable character.

When the Inspector arrives and begins interrogating the family members, both Mr and Mrs

Birling tried to use a commanding tone and their social influence to get him to leave but he

does not. As each character’s acts are revealed, Mrs Birling repeatedly shows no sympathy

for Eva Smith. This echoes her social class because she as a higher class woman was not

expected to feel sympathy for the lower class person. This however contrast with the charity

that Mrs Birling runs for woman in need. Therefore, the audience can think that Mrs Birling

is not running the charity for the good of lower class woman but more to earn social respect

and show off her status. This presents her as an unlikeable character because she is selfish,

self-centred and doesn’t really care about the good of those in lower classes.

When Gerald confesses that he had Eva Smith, but at the time known as Daisy Renton (with

Renton suggesting (renting and prostitution), as a mistress, Mrs Birling is appalled as says

“that’s disgusting”. Here, Mrs Birling’s dismissive attitude is showing that she is totally

against the idea of men having mistress but she doesn’t further accuse Gerald, which could

suggest that she is aware it happens with higher class men and so accepts it. When she is

interrogated by the Inspector, Mrs Birling repeatedly lies and tries to avoid the truth but the

Inspector starts asking deliberate questions to prevent her from doing this. This behaviour

presents Mrs Birling as a snob and shows off her higher class attitude because she is trying

to avoid the truth and make it suit her. When she finally does reveal that she “used her

influence” to deny Eva Smith from receiving help at her charity she says “unlike the other

three, I am not ashamed of what I did”. Here Mrs Birling is distancing herself from the rest

of the family to try and keep up her respectability. By doing this, she is once again presented

as a snob and it suggests that Mrs Birling feels more strongly towards building up and

protecting her social respect than her care for her family. This is further emphasised later in

the play when Eric says “You never loved me”. This quote provides evidence to Mrs Birling’s

attitude towards her family because it states that she never showed love towards her

children. Therefore, due to her lack of motherly responsibilities and love that every child

deserves to receive, she is presented as an unlikable character.

Mrs Birling tries to blame someone else to avoid her reputation being ruined. When she

confesses that she prevented Eva Smith from receiving help, she begins blaming the father

who “impregnated” Eva Smith. The Inspector’s cleverness is showed in this part of the play

because he has laid a trap for Mrs Birling and she has fallen straight into it. This suggests

that Mrs Birling is not very smart, unlike Sheila who realises and tries to warn her but Sybil

doesn’t listen. Mrs Birling says that the father should make a “public confession” and that

there should be “a scandal” about this. This echoes to her dismissive tone as she is again

trying to blame someone else. She doesn’t even think that the man could be her son and

this is being she is of too high of a class that she can’t even imagine that. When she does

find out, she bursts into tears and can’t bear what her son has done. In this situation, the

audience will feel some sympathy towards her but others (especially lower class audience)

will think that she deserves this for her inhuman attitudes to the lower class. This attitude is

evident when she says “a girl of that sort”. Here she is referring to Eva but is distancing her

and showing no sympathy to her situation by classing her in a group of people who are not

appreciated by society. As a result of this, she is seen as an unlikeable character.

When Sybil finds out that the Inspector is a hoax, she instantly forgets all that had happened

that evening and goes back to what she was doing earlier on. By showing no remorse for Eva

Smith through the character of Mrs Birling, JB Priestley is suggesting that there is no chance

that the higher class can change to be able to have equal rights and equal morals. He speaks

to his audience through the voice of the Inspector where he says “We are all members of

one body”. This states that we are all the same kind, we are all human beings, so everyone

needs to treat each other equally and as they would be liked to be treated. JB Priestley

contrast Mrs Birling’s character with Sheila’s to show that there is hope in the younger

generation for change. This is evident when Sheila says “between us we have killed a girl”.

This shows that Sheila feels strongly guilty for her actions and shows remorse but Mrs

Birling doesn’t accept this. In fact she criticizes Mr Birling for not interrogating the Inspector

at the start, or letting her question him at the start of the evening. This emphasises how Mrs

Birling has behaved throughout the course of the play and shows that she has not changed

one bit. This presents her as unlikeable because she is showing no sympathy for Eva and JB

Priestley has intentionally made the character of Mrs Birling unlikeable to show that there is

no hope in the older generation for changing and accepting moral views, but there is hope

in the younger generation.

An introduction to An Inspector Calls Article by:Chris Power Themes:Power and conflict, Exploring identity, 20th-century theatre Published:7 Sep 2017

Chris Power introduces An Inspector Calls as a morality play that denounces the

hypocrisy and callousness of capitalism and argues that a just society can only be

achieved if all individuals feel a sense of social responsibility.

J B Priestley’s play An Inspector Calls, first performed in 1945, is a morality play disguised as a detective thriller. The morality play is a very old theatrical form, going back to the medieval period, which sought to instruct audiences about virtue and evil. Priestley’s play revolves around a central mystery, the death of a young woman, but whereas a traditional detective story involves the narrowing down of suspects from several to one, An Inspector Calls inverts this process as, one by one, nearly all the characters in the play are found to be guilty. In this way, Priestley makes his larger point that society is guilty of neglecting and abusing its most vulnerable members. A just society, he states through his mysterious Inspector, is one that respects and exercises social responsibility.

What is social responsibility?

Social responsibility is the idea that a society’s poorer members should be helped by those who have more than them. Priestley was a socialist, and his political beliefs are woven through his work. There are many different types and degrees of socialism, but a general definition is as follows: an ideal socialist society is one that is egalitarian – in other words, its citizens have equal rights and the same opportunities are available to everybody; resources are shared out fairly, and the means of production (the facilities and resources for producing goods) are communally owned.

Therefore, socialism stands in opposition to a capitalist society, such as ours, where trade and industry is mostly controlled by private owners, and these individuals or companies keep the profits made by their businesses, rather than distributing them evenly between the workers whose labour produced them.

It is precisely this difference between a socialist and a capitalist society that Arthur Birling is discussing in Act 1 when Inspector Goole arrives:

But the way some of these cranks talk and write now, you’d think everybody has to look after everybody else, as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive – a man has to mind his own business and look after himself…

The Inspector’s arrival cuts Arthur Birling off mid-sentence, enacting in miniature the clash between two ideological positions that unfolds throughout the rest of the play.

The play’s structure and setting

An Inspector Calls is a three-act play with one setting: the dining room of ‘a fairly large suburban house belonging to a fairly prosperous manufacturer’. The year is 1912, and we are in the home of the Birling family in the fictional industrial city of Brumley in the North Midlands. In the dining room five people are finishing their dinner: four members of the Birling family and one guest. Arthur Birling is a factory owner; his wife Sibyl is on the committee of a charity, and is usually scolding someone for a social mistake. Their adult children are Sheila and Eric, and their guest is Gerald Croft, Sheila’s fiancé, who is from a wealthier manufacturing family than the Birlings. One

other person is present: Edna the maid, who is going back and forth to the sideboard with dirty plates and glasses.

Priestley’s description of the set at the beginning of the play script stresses the solidity of the Birlings' dining room: ‘It is a solidly built room, with good solid furniture of the period’. But a later section of this scene-setting – on the walls are ‘imposing but tasteless pictures and engravings’, and the ‘general effect is substantial and comfortable and old-fashioned but not cosy and homelike’ – suggests that although the Birling’s have wealth and social standing, they are not loving to one another or compassionate to others. The setting of the play in a single room also suggests their self-absorption, and disconnectedness from the wider world.

Priestley establishes each of the characters in this opening scene. Arthur Birling is a capitalist businessman through and through, entirely focussed on profit even when discussing the marriage of his daughter:

I’m sure you’ll make her happy. You’re just the kind of son-in-law I’ve always wanted. Your father and I have been friendly rivals in business for some time now – though Crofts Limited are both older and bigger than Birling and Company – and now you’ve brought us together, and perhaps we may look forward to the time when Crofts and Birlings are no longer competing but are working together – for lower costs and higher prices.

His wife Sibyl scolds him, telling him it isn’t the occasion for that kind of talk, establishing her as someone primarily interested in doing things properly and conforming to established social rules. Sheila, at this stage in the play, seems to be preoccupied by the thought of her marriage to Gerald, a privileged and deeply conservative man of 30, while the youngest Birling, Eric, appears more interested in the port going around the table than anything anyone is saying.

Priestley has some fun using this opening section to show how wrong Arthur Birling’s opinions are, thus positioning the play as anti-capitalist. He does this through the use of dramatic irony, having Arthur state opinions that the audience, with the advantage of hindsight, knows to be incorrect. When Eric mentions the likelihood of war – remember that the play is set two years before the outbreak of World War One – but was written and first performed 30 years later – Arthur cuts him off:

… you’ll hear some people say that war’s inevitable. And to that I say – fiddlesticks! The Germans don’t want war. Nobody wants war, except some half-civilised folks in the Balkans. And why? There’s too much at stake these days. Everything to lose and nothing to gain by war.

He goes on to describe an ocean liner that is clearly meant to be the Titanic (which sank in April 1912) as ‘unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable’, and suggests that in time, ‘let’s say, in the forties’, ‘all these Capital versus Labour agitations and all these silly little war scares’ will be long forgotten. In fact, as audiences in 1945 would have been keenly aware, the period between 1912 and 1945 saw a huge number of strikes, including the monumental General Strike of 1926, and not one but two global conflicts, the second of which had only recently ended.

Dramatic irony is rarely a subtle technique, but Priestley’s use of it is exceptionally blunt. This could be considered clumsy, but it underlines the fact that An Inspector Calls is a play with a point to make, and a character whose sole job is to make it.

The Inspector

When Inspector Goole arrives everything changes. He tells the Birlings and Gerald that a young woman, Eva Smith, has committed suicide by drinking disinfectant, and he has questions about the case. Over the course of the next two acts he will lay responsibility for Eva Smith’s death at the feet of each of the Birlings and Gerald Croft, showing how their indifference to social

responsibility has contributed to the death of this young woman. Or is it young women? He shows each person an identifying photograph of the dead woman one by one, leading Gerald to later suspect they were all shown photographs of different women.

But who is the Inspector? In the play’s penultimate twist, he is revealed not to be a police inspector at all, yet, as Eric states, ‘He was our Police Inspector, all right’. Details about him are scant. He says he is newly posted to Brumley, and he is impervious to Arthur Birling’s threats about his close relationship with the chief constable ‘I don’t play golf’, he tells Birling. ‘I didn’t suppose you did’, the industrialist replies: a brief exchange that makes a clear point about class, and the battle between egalitarianism and privilege. Beyond these sparse biographical details, the Inspector seems less like a person and more like a moral force, one which mercilessly pursues the wrongs committed by the Birlings and Gerald, demanding that they face up to the consequences of their actions. His investigation culminates in a speech that is a direct expression of Priestley’s own view of how a just society should operate, and is the exact antithesis of the speech Arthur Birling made in Act 1:

We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. We don’t live alone. Good night.

Hypocrisy

Throughout the course of the Inspector’s investigation, and the testimony of Gerald and each of the Birlings, the supposedly respectable city of Brumley is revealed to be a place of deep class divisions and hypocrisy. As Arthur Birling’s behaviour towards Eva makes clear, it is a place where factory owners exploit their workers as a matter of course – part of his ‘a man has to look after himself’ philosophy. Eric accuses his father of hypocrisy for sacking the dead girl after she asked for higher wages, because the Birling firm always seeks to sell their products at the highest possible prices.

This exploitation is not limited to the factories. In the testimony of Gerald, and later Eric, the Palace Theatre emerges as a place where prostitutes gather, and where the supposedly great and good of the town go to meet them. When Gerald first met Eva, as he describes it, she was trapped in a corner by ‘Old Joe Meggarty, half-drunk and goggle-eyed’. Sibyl Birling, scandalised, asks ‘surely you don’t mean Alderman Meggarty?’ An unsurprised Sheila tells her mother ‘horrible old Meggarty’ has a reputation for groping young women: the younger characters are either more knowledgeable or frank about the dark secrets of the city, whereas the older Birlings live in a dream world of respectability, or hypocritically turn a blind eye to any disreputable behaviour by supposedly respectable people.

The play begins with the characters’ corrupt, unpleasant natures safely hidden away (a respectable group in a respectable home, enjoying that most respectable event, an engagement party); it ends with naked displays of hypocrisy. When it is confirmed that Goole is not really a policeman, Arthur, Sibyl and Gerald immediately regain an unjustified sense of outrage. ‘Then look at the way he talked to me’, Arthur Birling complains. ‘He must have known I was an ex-Lord Mayor and a magistrate and so forth’. Once it is confirmed, in the play’s penultimate twist, that there is no suicide lying on a mortuary slab, they forget the immoral, uncharitable behaviour they were recently accused of – things, remember, that they undoubtedly did – and begin talking about getting away with things.

Only Sheila and Eric recognise and resist this hypocritical behaviour. ‘I suppose we’re all nice people now!’ Sheila remarks sarcastically. Earlier she broke off her engagement to Gerald, telling him ‘You and I aren’t the same people who sat down to dinner here’. Likewise, Eric angrily accuses his father of ‘beginning to pretend now that nothing’s really happened at all’. Priestley’s vision is cautiously optimistic insofar as the youngest characters are changed by the Inspector’s visit, while the older Birlings and Gerald appear to be too set in their beliefs to change them.

Eva Smith: Everywoman

The play leaves open the question of whether Eva Smith is a real woman (who sometimes uses different names, including Daisy Renton), or multiple people the Inspector pretends are one. There is no right answer here, and in terms of Priestley’s message it is beside the point: because his socialist principles demand that everyone should be treated the same, in his opinion abusing one working-class woman is equivalent to abusing all working-class women. Eva Smith is, therefore, not an individual victim, but a universal one.

This helps explain the effectiveness of the play’s final twist. Having discovered that Inspector Goole is not a real policeman, and that there is no dead woman called Eva Smith at the Brumley morgue, a phone call announces that a woman has killed herself, and an inspector is on his way to question the Birlings. The invented story Inspector Goole related has now come true. This seems a bizarre coincidence with which to end the play, but if we consider An Inspector Calls as a moral fable, and not as naturalistic theatre, it begins to seem much more like a logical, even inevitable, conclusion. The characters have been confronted with the error of their ways; some have repented, some have not. Now is the time for judgement, and for the watching audience to ask themselves, according to Priestley’s design, are any of these people like me?

Key Words and Spellings

Please add your own as we read

Misanthropic Capitalist Socialist Bourgeoisie Proletariat

Immature Avaricious Naïve Exploitation Omniscient

Construction Moral Portentous Superior Inferior

Squiffy Materialistic Archetypal Representative Irony

Infirmary Manufacturer Assertive Anxious Rebukes

Responsibility Snob Hysterical Patronising Prejudice

Reputation Shallow Compassion Perceptive Sympathy

Genuine Trivial Embarrassed Awkward Purposefulness

Authority Conscience

Key Contextual Information (AO3)

Born to a working-class family in Yorkshire, in the north of England, John Priestley,

who published under the name J. B. Priestley, wrote plays, novels, biographies,

travelogues, and assorted essays, many notable for their political engagement.

Priestley fought for England in the First World War, and the experience was

formative for him. He later studied literature and political science at Cambridge, and

on graduating began his career as an essayist, before branching out into other

genres. He wrote quickly and thoroughly, producing dozens of texts. He published

treatments of the lives of Charles Dickens and George Meredith, and a broader

historical assessment of literary art and its effect on people’s lives (Literature and

Western Man). Today, Priestley’s notoriety derives from his writing for the

theater. An Inspector Calls, the play with which he is most commonly associated,

opened in the Soviet Union in Russian translation after the Second World War, and

in London soon after. Reviews over the next decades of Inspector and his other

works were mixed, but a production of Inspector in the 1990s in London revived

interest. Priestley’s plays continue to be performed in the US and the UK.

An Inspector Calls might be understood in several contexts. First, it is an example of

immediate post-war drama, which means that it was written after World War Two.

Post-war dramas take up some of the economic, political, and social issues

prompting that conflict, including socialism versus free-market capitalism, democracy

versus fascism, and communal versus individual rights and privileges. It is also a

historical drama, as it is set in the run-up to the World War One. This produces

instances of dramatic irony throughout the play. Characters refer to the possibility of

World War One, and of later calamities that would seem, to the post-World War Two

audience, pivotal and lamentable landmarks in world history. The small-scale but

devastating violence described in the play points to the slaughter of many thousands

that will occur only a few years after its narrated action.

Second, An Inspector Calls marks the beginning of a turn from the literary period of

realism to what would later be called the postmodern, the absurdist, or the surreal.

Priestley’s play considers realistic characters in a realistic upper-middle-class

situation, and characters speak in “prose” rather than in “verse.” That is, the

characters’ language is closer to dialogue in a novel than to the speeches of

Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Othello, for example. In this way, Priestley draws on the

familial conflicts found in the plays of writers like Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, and

Eugene O’Neill. But the presence of the “Inspector” marks within An Inspector

Calls the possibility of actions beyond rational reasoning. Priestley’s work can be

viewed as a hinge between more realistic plays of the early twentieth century and the

darker, less plot-driven, and more openly experimental dramas of writers like Samuel

Beckett and Harold Pinter.

Third, the performance history of the play sheds some light on its possible meanings,

both at the time of its composition and in later interpretations. The play opened in the

Soviet Union in 1946, and therefore reached its first audiences in Russian. Priestley

sympathized with socialism broadly, but was not a member of any one political party,

as his biographers note. Although An Inspector Calls is set some thirty-five years

before its first performance, its consideration of industrial power and human worth

was still very much an issue at the time of its debut. Priestley weighs what blame

belongs to whom, and how ill-considered actions on the individual scale can have

fatal, if unintentional, consequences. Anyone watching the play in the 1940s might

see the heedlessness of Arthur, the aloofness of Sybil, the outward guilt of Sheila, or

the drunkenness of Eric both as personal flaws and as potentially allegorical

statements about national responsibility in continental Europe, the UK, and the

United States.

The revival of An Inspector Calls in the 1990s demonstrates that the play’s

preoccupations resonate beyond the Cold War period. Indeed, after the collapse of

the Soviet Union in 1991, the relationship between capital and labor, or between

management and those doing the work, was of particular interest. So was the idea

that democratic values might potentially have prevailed over the rigid bureaucratic

governance of the USSR and its satellite states. The openness with which the play

ends is, similarly, an opportunity for re-evaluation, as Priestley never explains fully

how individual crimes contribute to a more general guilt or innocence in the play’s

main characters.

Power and Conflict Poetry

You will tackle this question on Literature Paper 2: Modern Texts and Poetry.

Here is what the question will look like:

Any one of the 15 poems might be the named poem and you will

have to select the ‘one other poem’ to compare it to. You will not

have this second poem with you in the exam and so you will need a

detailed knowledge of all 15!

Model Answer

Both ‘Bayonet Charge’ and ‘Remains’ present the realistic effects of war on an individual, however,

‘Bayonet Charge’ presents inner turmoil of a solider during action whereas ‘Remains’ presents the

conflicted mind of a solider after conflict. Hughes – poet laureate from 1984-98 – was inspired by

Wilfred Owen’s ‘Spring Offensive’ and the effects of war he felt through his father to explore a

realistic portrayal of conflict. Armitage aimed to explore the effects of war on discharged servicemen

in a collection ‘The Not Dead’ which was inspired by testimony of soldiers from the Gulf War.

Both poets present the horrific nature of war, however, Armitage does this in a colloquial fashion,

giving a sense of heightened realism, whereas Hughes in a conflicted way. Hughes uses a semantic

field of bodily parts – ‘belly’ ‘arm’ ‘eye’ ‘chest’ – to emphasise the physical impact of war. The fact

that it is his own equipment which threatens his body rather than the enemy suggests the awful

reality of war. Hughes repeats the word ‘raw’ ‘In raw’, to emphasise the confusion of the solider, he

is unable to rationalise and think calmly. The word ‘raw’ has connotations of being exposed and

stripped of safety, therefore the repetition highlights his vulnerability. Hughes uses enjambment and

caesuras to show the soldiers inner turmoil. He tries to control the situation and think clearly –

caesuras – however the chaos of conflict is overwhelming – enjambment.

Armitage however uses colloquial language to emphasise the shock. The phrase ‘pain itself, the

image of agony’, is very simplistic, however, the caesura mid-line forces the reader to pause and

reflect on the situation. The word ‘agony’ has connotations of intense suffering, therefore allowing

the reader to create their own ‘image’.

Armitage uses the metaphoric verb ‘every round as it rips through his life’ which implies an even

more awful action as personifies the weapon to purposefully harm him. The verb ‘rips’ implies a

longer action, allowing the reader to create a vision of the scene.

Both poets present the guilt felt by a solider, however Armitage presents guilt towards humans

whereas Hughes presents guilt towards nature.

Hughes uses a semantic field of nature – ‘green hedge’ ‘air’ ‘yellow hare’ ‘green hedge’ – to

emphasise the immorality of conflict. The ‘green hedge’ could be the soldier’s imagination, as he

attempts to switch back into a charging mood by tempting himself with the pure imagery of nature.

The colour ‘yellow’ has connotations of happiness and freedom, therefore to place a ‘yellow hare’ in

a warzone highlights the destruction of happiness and freedom.

Hughes mocks patriotism – ‘king, honour, human dignity, etcetera’ – to present his view that conflict

is futile and wrong, especially when it causes the destruction of nature. Armitage uses a cyclical

structure with the repetition of ‘probably armed, possibly not’, which each carry an equal weighted

meter, showing the inner conflict of the soldier.

Armitage uses the phrase ‘his bloody life in my bloody hands’ suggesting that he has no escape from

guilt now. The two meanings of ‘bloody’ could either suggest his anger at the whole situation and his

actions, or the permanent effect on him and the immovable guilt that ‘remains’ on his ‘hands’.

Overall, both Hughes and Armitage present the traumatic effects of conflict on individuals, however

Armitage does this more effectively as he explores the long term effects and possible PTSD that may

follow experiences of war.

Tissue Imtiaz Dharker 2006

The poem uses tissue as an extended metaphor for life. She describes how life, like tissue is fragile. However, she also discusses some of the literal uses of paper that are intertwined with our lives, such as recording names in the Koran- She then goes onto to discuss how we are made from tissue ( living tissue which is our skin) emphasising that life is fragile. Dharker has Pakistani origins & was raised in Glasgow. Many of her poems looks at issues of identify.

The Emigrée Carol Rumens 1993

The speaker speaks about a city that she left as a child. The speaker has a purely positive view of the city. The city she recalls has since changed, perhaps it was scene of conflict, however, she still protects the memory of her city. The city may not be a real place but represent a time, emotion -perhaps the speaker’s childhood. According to Ben Wilkinson (critic), Rumens has a ‘fascination with elsewhere.’

Kamikaze Beatrice Garland 2013

Kamikaze is the unofficial name given to Japanese pilots who were send on a suicide mission. The mission was considered one of honour but this poem is about a pilot who aborted the mission. Hi daughter imagines that her father was reminded of his childhood & the beauty of nature & life whilst on the mission. When he returned home he was shunned.

Checking Out Me History John Agard 2007

The narrator discusses his identity & emphasises how identity is closely linked to history & understanding your own history. In school he was taught British history & not about his Caribbean roots to which he feels resentful. He mocks some of the pointless things he was taught & contrasts the nonsense topics with admirable black figures.

Key Words and Spellings

Please add your own as we read

Stanza Caesura Enjambment Regular Irregular

Rhyme Rhythm Repetition Simile Metaphor

Persona Scheme Context Alliteration Rhetorical

Emotive Structure Form Monologue Sonnet

Connotation Couplet Hyperbole Chartered Manacles

Romantic Visage Pedestal Boundless Woe

Appals Blights Hearse Spools Supplements

Octave Sestet Volta Personification Juxtaposition

Oxymoron

Term Three: Macbeth

You will tackle this question on Literature Paper 1: Shakespeare and the 19th

Century Novel. Here is what the question will look like:

This question is worth 30 marks and will require an essay response of around 700-800 words.

Model Response

Ambition is an important theme in Macbeth and is the driving force of the play because Shakespeare allows ambition to overpower Macbeth’s morals when he kills Duncan. Eventhough the witches and Lady Macbeth had been allowed to influence Macbeth, he may not have killed Duncan if his ambition wasn’t so strong. This essay will discuss the ways in which Shakespeare presents ambition in the extract and the play as a whole, and how he does this. Shakespeare shows that ambition changes even the most noble people in this speech. He allows Lady Macbeth to describe Macbeth’s nature as being ‘too full o’th’ milk of human kindness” in her soliloquy (allowing the audience to hear her thoughts). The noun ‘milk’ has connotations of purity and innocence, implying that macbeth isn’t evil enough to act on his ambitions. However, during macbeth’s reign after becoming king, he is described as a ‘butcher’, a powerful adjective that emphasises Macbeth’s cruelty and the amount of people he has killed without reason. This change in character from being too kind and innocent to becoming a tyrant suprises the audience and conveys the dangers of having ambitions that leads to bad deeds. Furthermore, Shakespeare also presents ambition as being able to take over one’s morals and reasons. In Lady Macbeth’s speech, Shakespeare allows her to say ‘Art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it’. The noun ‘illness’ creates an impression to the readers of ambition being different from acting on it, and describing it as an ‘illness’ emphasises the amount of destruction it can cause to the audience. ‘Illness’ could also suggest that acting on ambition can cause someone to become without morals and kindness. Macbeth also acknowledges his own ‘vaulting ambition’ after listing all the reasons not to kill Duncan. The metaphor suggests that macbeth’s ambition is stronger than his moral conscience and is the only reason left for him to murder Duncan Macbeth’s ambition is also contrasted with Banquo’s, who was also present when the witches gave the prophecies. Macbeth immediatly believes the witches, and when he becomes Thane, proving that the first prediction had come true, he begins to believe them more and acts on his ambitions to become king. Banquo, however, is the opposite of Macbeth. Although he does believe the witches, he does not act on his ambitions and even suspects that Macbeth has “play’dst most foully for’t”. This contrast in attitudes towards ambition and the suspenseful two-fold structure of ‘Macbeth’ that sees his rise to power and his downfall further emphasises the destructive nature of ambition, but also conveys to the audience that being able to control your ambitions can prevent a tragedy like Macbeth’s to occur. In conclusion, Shakespeare presents ambition as being able to change people, take over morals and reasons and can lead to one’s downfall if it isn’t controlled. This allows Shakespeare to also convey to the audience the destruction that someone would experience if they attempted to assassinate King James I of England at the time.

Character analysis: Lady Macbeth Article by:Michael Donkor Published:19 May 2017

Focussing on characterisation, language and imagery, Michael Donkor analyses Lady

Macbeth in Act 1, Scene 5 of Macbeth, and considers how this scene fits into the play

as a whole.

Key quotation

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 top-ful 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 murth'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!' (1.5.38–54)

Setting the scene

Act 1, Scene 5 of Macbeth is set in Macbeth’s castle in Inverness. It forms part of the audience’s first encountering of Lady Macbeth.

Lady Macbeth has just read Macbeth’s letter, which outlines the weird sisters’ prophecies. She proceeds to express to herself her concern that Macbeth does not possess the steeliness or desire to use underhand means to acquire the glittering titles the witches have said lay before him.

The passage we’re interested in here follows this directly. It opens with a messenger interrupting Lady Macbeth’s meditations on the letter. The attendant informs Lady Macbeth of her husband and King Duncan’s impending arrival (‘The king comes here to-night’ (1.5.30)). The passage moves on to Lady Macbeth resuming her interrupted soliloquy, now in chillingly resolute mood as she readies herself for the imminent killing of Duncan. Then Macbeth arrives and she instructs him to leave the planning and execution of their bloody plan in her hands.

How does Shakespeare present Lady Macbeth here?

In this scene, Lady Macbeth’s characterisation is used to continue the play’s steady ratcheting up of tension. The suspense of this passage is enhanced by the fact that Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy after the messenger has left is uttered in a stolen moment of stillness before action and fretful dialogue commences. It is a fleeting opportunity for her to consider her own feelings and responses to the unfolding events before Macbeth enters with weaknesses that will inevitably require her ‘tending’. This time pressure accounts for the strikingly condensed nature of the soliloquy. In just 17 lines, the audience are offered a dense series of images that speak of Lady

Macbeth’s own complexities, contradictions and itchy anxiety about the ungodly acts she and her husband are about to commit.

The soliloquy’s opening image – a croaking raven – is a telling one. The bird not only has associations of ill omens but was also renowned for eating the decayed flesh of fallen soldiers on battlefields, closely linking to the idea of the Macbeths – and Lady Macbeth in particular – being a sinister, parasitical couple feeding on the lives of those more powerful and benevolent than themselves.

This idea recurs (but taking the argument in a different direction) when Lady Macbeth calls on ‘spirits’ for assistance; in some ways what she seeks is for her own body to be decomposed. She asks dark agents to ‘come’ and strip her of her femininity, to ‘unsex’ her body, using a series of listed imperatives that foreshadow the persuasive techniques she will subsequently use on Macbeth towards the end of the scene.

But, having called upon malevolent presences to help disintegrate her body, she does not want to remain in a sexless, physically diminished state. She also wants to be reconstituted and refigured as a being hard and armoured like her warrior husband; as a monstrous being with unnaturally thickened blood and breasts that produce deadly poisonous 'gall'.

That Lady Macbeth calls on mystical, external forces to assist her with this transformation is worth interrogating too, for two reasons. Firstly, it clearly gives weight to the reading of the character being a fourth witch, whose speech here has incantatory rhythms that lend it a distinctly supernatural quality. Secondly, this request for the support of others also perhaps reveals a sense of lacking beneath the surface of Lady Macbeth’s boldly assured malevolence: Lady Macbeth does not 'naturally' possess the zeal and evil required to undertake her plan, and so has to seek out the power of 'murth'ring ministers' to help her do it.

Alternatively, rather than interpreting Lady Macbeth's requests for dark assistance literally, we can see them as more metaphorical utterances: the speech is, in fact, a kind of 'pep talk' directed to herself and designed to undermine the merest inkling of 'remorse' she might feel. It is a moment of self-encouragement to help bolster and 'thick[en]' the most reprehensible parts of her character.

Images of obscurity abound in this passage: 'dark ... sightless ... thick night ... pall … dunnest smoke', all clearly chiming with Lady Macbeth's desire for her wrongdoing to pass unseen by prying eyes. These images serve as a counterpart to Macbeth's transparency – his open face where 'men can read strange matters' without any difficulty. These allusions, of course, carry with them the obvious associations of impure intent and evil. But, in this instance, they also reflect Lady Macbeth's need to conceal and hide her own weakness and misgivings from herself and from Macbeth. With such a reading in mind, when Macbeth enters and Lady Macbeth presents him with careful guidance about how to dissemble, her instruction about controlling appearance to ensure that guilt does not reveal itself is as much for herself as it is for Macbeth.

How does this presentation of Lady Macbeth fit into the play as a whole?

The most familiar, recognisable reading of Lady Macbeth’s role in the play is that she is the puppet master who pulls – often mercilessly yanks – at Macbeth’s strings. Several aspects of her portrayal in Act 1, Scene 5 add to this view. When Macbeth enters, not only does she shape and direct his behaviour, she also speaks significantly more than he does. Macbeth’s utterances are concise and practical, hers expansive, detailed and richly embroidered with imagery, reflecting the elaborate workings of a mind masterminding a dastardly plan. The perception of Lady Macbeth as the powerful, motivating force behind the couple’s scheme is of course sharpened in Act 1, Scene 7 when, using terrifying images of infanticide and her ‘undaunted mettle’ (1.7.73)

,she taunts Macbeth for his lack of masculine resolve and reignites his passion to pursue power at any cost.

However, the view that insecurities lurk within Lady Macbeth's outward strength connects our extract with her final appearance in the play, in Act 5, Scene 1. In this later scene after the Macbeths’ killing spree, Lady Macbeth’s mind is ‘infected’ (5.1.72) by guilt and madness (as opposed to being possessed by demonic powers as in Act 1, Scene 5). Her speech is presented in loose, unravelling prose where questions, repetitions and reversals show a fully exposed frailty and an anxiety that ‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten [her] little hand’ (5.4.51).

As well as her vulnerability having developed between Act 1, Scene 5 and this final encounter with her, in the latter scene her attitude towards darkness shows progression too. Previously, Lady Macbeth had courted darkness and dimness. But by the end of the play her desire is for clarity; to be free of dirty, blemishing entities. She wants to be rid of ‘damn'd spot[s]’ (5.1.35) and the ‘murky’ (5.1.36) nature of the Hell that awaits her provokes great fear.

Themes

The thematic complexity of this passage explains why it continues to fascinate audiences. In a play that, in many ways, presents us with a world turned upside down – where ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ (1.1.11) – this scene offers us a glimpse of conventional gender roles being inverted. Lady Macbeth’s wish to be symbolically ‘defeminised’ is seemingly granted with great speed: her activity, forcefulness and engagement that are present as soon as Macbeth arrives shows that she is taking on characteristics that an Elizabethan audience would have identified as being more ‘masculine’.

How has this scene been interpreted?

Trevor Nunn’s 1979 version of the play (recorded for television), with Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth and Ian McKellen, as her husband remains a towering and chilling production of the text, of which Act 1, Scene 5 is a particular high point. Here, Dench’s performance is multifaceted. Often, her lines are delivered with an icy austerity, in suitably hushed, hissed tones. Dench’s call to the ‘spirits’ is presented as the character engaging in a real, meaningful dialogue with these presences; it is a conversation so powerful and real to Lady Macbeth that its implications shock and frighten her, making her voice waver, making her squeal with fear.

Macbeth’s arrival in the scene brings about a subtle shift in Dench’s performance. Rather than aggressively cajoling her husband into following her ‘fell purposes’, instead Dench interestingly uses her feminine wiles – using womanliness she renounced seconds before – to flirt with and coerce Macbeth into action. Their conversation here, and Lady Macbeth’s persuasion, is full of seduction and unsettling sensuality.

Key Contextual Information (AO3)

Political Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in 1606. It is important to understand the political context in which it was written, as that is the key to the main theme of the play, which is that excessive ambition will have terrible consequences. Shakespeare was writing for the theatre during the reigns of two monarchs, Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. The plays he wrote during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, are often seen to embody the generally happy, confident and optimistic mood of the Elizabethans. However, those he wrote during James's reign, such as Macbeth and Hamlet, are darker and more cynical, reflecting the insecurities of the Jacobean period. Macbeth was written the year after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, she had no children, or even nephews or nieces. The throne was offered to James Stuart, James VI of Scotland, who then became James I of Britain. He was a distant cousin of Elizabeth, being descended from Margaret Tudor, the sister of Elizabeth's grandfather, Henry the Eighth. James was the son of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, who had been deposed and imprisoned when he was a baby, and later executed on Elizabeth's orders. Brought up by Protestant regents, James maintained a Protestant regime in Scotland when he came of age, and so was an acceptable choice for England which had become firmly Protestant under Elizabeth. However, his accession was by no means a popular choice with everyone. Since he was not a direct descendant of Elizabeth, there were other relatives who believed they also had a strong claim and James feared that discontented factions might gather around them. At first the Catholics had hoped James might support them, since his mother had been such a staunch Catholic, but when they realised this would not happen conspiracies developed, one of which was the Gunpowder Plot. Guy Fawkes and his men tried to blow up James and his parliament in 1605. The conspirators were betrayed, and horribly tortured on the rack until they confessed. They were then executed in the most brutal fashion as a warning to other would-be traitors. Shakespeare's play Macbeth is to some extent a cautionary tale, warning any other potential regicides (king-killers) of the awful fate that will inevitably overtake them.

Philosophical Religious thinkers in the Middle Ages had upheld the idea of 'The Great Chain of Being'. This was the belief that God had designed an ordered system for both nature and humankind within which every creature and person had an allotted place. It was considered an offence against God for anyone to try to alter their station in life. After death, however, all would be raised in the kingdom of heaven, if they respected God's will. Since royal rank was bestowed by God, it was a sin to aspire to it. This doctrine – a convenient one for King James – was still widely held in Shakespeare's day.

Although his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was a beautiful and charming woman, James I was aware he was ugly and lacking in the charisma which inspired loyalty. But he was an intelligent and well-educated man, and espoused various beliefs which he felt would keep

his position secure. One of these was the so-called 'divine right of kings'. This was the belief that the power of monarchs was given directly by God, and thus monarchs were answerable only to God. Any opposition to the King was an attack on God himself, and therefore sacrilege, the most heinous of sins. The anointing ceremony at the coronation made the King virtually divine. All the Stuart kings strongly supported the belief in their 'divine right' to rule as it was an effective safeguard of their position. They even claimed Christ-like powers of healing. In Macbeth, Shakespeare alludes to King Edward of England successfully healing the sick: 'such sanctity hath heaven given his hand'. Queen Anne was the last British monarch who used 'the Queen's touch' in this way.

Historical Shakespeare's plot is only partly based on fact. Macbeth was a real eleventh century Scottish king, but the historical Macbeth, who had a valid right to the throne, reigned capably in Scotland from 1040 till 1057. He succeeded Duncan, whom he had defeated in battle, but the real Duncan was a weak man, around Macbeth's own age, not the respected elderly figure we meet in the play. In reality, Macbeth was succeeded by his own stepson, not by Duncan's son, Malcolm, who came to the throne later. The Stuart kings claimed descent from Banquo, but Banquo is a mythical figure who never really existed. Shakespeare found his version of the story of Macbeth in the Chronicles of Holinshed, a historian of his own time. Holinshed does include a Banquo in his version, but he is also a traitor who assists Macbeth in the murder. As a tribute to the Stuarts, and James in particular, Shakespeare presents Banquo as a wise, noble and regal figure who arouses jealousy in Macbeth as much for his own good qualities as for the promise the witches make to him of founding a dynasty.

Shakespeare and the Court During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare's acting company was called the 'Chamberlain's Men', and it is known that they performed for the court. After the accession of James they changed their name to the 'King's Men' as a tribute to him. The patronage of the King and court was obviously valuable to Shakespeare. In Macbeth, Shakespeare seeks to flatter and please the King in various ways. Macbeth, the character who usurps the place of a lawful King, is shown as losing everything as a result – he becomes hated and demonised by all his subjects, as does his wife, who supports him in his crime. Banquo, whom the Stuarts claimed as their ancestor, is presented in a completely positive light. When the witches show Macbeth the future, he sees a line of kings descended from Banquo that seems to 'stretch out to the crack of doom'. This flatters King James with the promise of a long-standing dynasty, although in fact James's father, Charles I, would be executed, and the Stuart line was to die out with Queen Anne in 1714.

Shakespeare also included other enthusiasms of the King in the play. James had written a book called Basilikon Doron, which looks at the theme of kingship. In the book, James identifies the ideal king as one who does his duty to God and to his country and who is also a man of spotless personal integrity. In the play, Shakespeare, too, explores this topic, with the character of Malcolm representing the template of the ideal king. In addition, the idealised portrait of Edward the Confessor, the 'holy king' who has the power literally to heal his people, would come across to a contemporary audience as an indirect tribute to James himself. James was also very interested in the supernatural, and had written a paper

called Daemonologie on the subject. During his reign as King of Scotland, James is known to have been directly involved in some witch trials at North Berwick. Women were regularly burnt as witches, and Shakespeare presents his witches unequivocally as powerful and evil emissaries of the devil. In his day, the majority of the general public, too, believed in witches and the power of the supernatural, and the witch scenes would have been taken very seriously.

Key Words and Spellings

Please add your own as we read

Desert Incantation Tryst Pentameter Iambic

Trochaic Tetrameter Noble Regicide Divine

Succession Tragedy Hubris Hamartia Tragedy

Foreshadowing Irony Soliloquy Supernatural Usurp

Superstitious Banquo Heinous Manipulative Traitor

Prophecy Eerie Surreal Malevolent Sinister

Vulnerable Ambition Conscience Appearance Reality

Sinister Potential Valiant Aside Hallucination

Monologue Upheaval Clandestine Fatalistic Bloodlust

Foreboding Disdain Determination

English Language Paper 1: Explorations in Creative

Reading and Writing

Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing

What's assessed

Section A: Reading

one literature fiction text

Section B: Writing

descriptive or narrative writing

Assessed

written exam: 1 hour 45 minutes

80 marks

50% of GCSE

Questions

Reading (40 marks) (25%)– one single text

1 short form question (1 x 4 marks)

2 longer form questions (2 x 8 marks)

1 extended question (1 x 20 marks)

Writing (40 marks) (25%)

1 extended writing question (24 marks for content, 16 marks for technical

accuracy)

Question 1 – Find 4 things

Question 2 – Language

Question 3 – Structure

Question 4 – To what extent do you agree..?

English Language Paper 2: Writers’ Viewpoints

and Perspectives

What's assessed

Section A: Reading

one non-fiction text and one literary non-fiction text

Section B: Writing

writing to present a viewpoint

Assessed

written exam: 1 hour 45 minutes

80 marks

50% of GCSE

Questions

Reading (40 marks) (25%) – two linked texts

1 short form question (1 x 4 marks)

2 longer form questions (1 x 8, 1 x 12 marks)

1 extended question (1 x 16 marks)

Writing (40 marks) (25%)

1 extended writing question (24 marks for content, 16 marks for technical

accuracy)

Question 1 – Select 4 true statements

Question 2 – Summarise the differences

Question 3 – Language

Question 4 – Compare viewpoints and perspectives

Academic Writing - Analytical Verbs A strong assertion requires a strong analytical verb. Your assertions should have one of the verbs from the list below, to show what exactly you aim to prove. A good analytical verb ensures that your essay does not merely indicate something that happens in the book, but rather, what you think the author intended.

Advocates Compares Alludes to Articulates Asserts Clarifies

Collates Classifies Characterizes Bolsters Builds Balances

Categorizes Depicts Defends Debates Critiques Creates

Confirms Concludes Continues Details Establishes Employs Emphasizes Elicits Elevates Differentiates Develops Expresses

Facilitates Frames Gathers Generates Guides Highlights

Identifies Illustrates Implements Implies Perpetuates Moves Integrates Presents Portrays Promotes Propels Proposes

Raises Provoke Reduces Reinforces Represents Reveals

Revitalizes Substantiates States Strengthens Suggests Exaggerates

Examples:

At the start of the novella, Dickens exaggerates the character of Scrooge,

placing emphasis on his negative traits in order to generate a feeling of disgust

in the reader. This establishes Scrooge as an archetypal villain and, through his

subsequent change, allows Dickens to demonstrate the transformation that he

believes is needed in society.

Through the voice of the Inspector, Priestley articulates his own socialist views.

The cool and collected nature of the Inspector contrasts with the Birling family

and their hyperbolic behaviour and allows Priestly to present another way.

Practice Questions: A Christmas Carol

When Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish

the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to

pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighbouring church struck

the four quarters. So he listened for the hour.

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to

eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to

bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve!

He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most preposterous clock. Its rapid little

pulse beat twelve: and stopped.

“Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, “that I can have slept through a whole day and far into

another night. It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at

noon!”

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the

window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he

could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still

very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro,

and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off

bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, because “three days

after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,” and so forth,

would have become a mere United States’ security if there were no days to count by.

Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and

over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and

the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought.

Marley’s Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after

mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring

released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through,

“Was it a dream or not?”

Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more, when he

remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell

tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he

could no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his

power.

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a

doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.

Starting with this extract, how does Dickens present the theme of time?

Remember to write about:

• Scrooge in the extract

• Scrooge in the novella as a whole

A hand plan is a really easy way to plan our essays. Our thesis statement acts

as an introduction and outlines our response to the question. Each ‘finger’

then represents a different point that we can make and our conclusion sums

up our argument, linking back to the thesis statement that we started with.

Thesis Statement

– an overarching

response to the

question

One way that

Dickens presents

the theme of

time and why.

One way that

Dickens presents

the theme of

time and why.

One way that

Dickens presents

the theme of

time and why.

Refer back to

your thesis – why

has Dickens

chosen to present

time in this way?

Practice Questions: An Inspector Calls

1) How and why does Sheila change in An Inspector Calls?

2) How does Priestley present ideas about family in An Inspector

Calls?

3) How does Priestley use the Inspector to promote his own agenda?

Practice Questions: Power and Conflict Poetry

1) How do the poets present the loss of power in Ozymandias and

one other poem?

2) How do the poets present the power of nature in Kamikaze and

one other poem?

3) How do the poets present the effects of conflict in Charge of the

Light Brigade and one other poem?

Practice Question: Macbeth

At this point in the play, Banquo and Macbeth have just met the witches. The witches have

just told Macbeth he will one day be the King of Scotland.

BANQUO Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair? I' the name of truth, Are ye fantastical, or that indeed Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner You greet with present grace and great prediction Of noble having and of royal hope, That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not. If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favours nor your hate. First Witch Hail! Second Witch Hail! Third Witch Hail! First Witch Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. Second Witch Not so happy, yet much happier. Third Witch Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none: So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo! First Witch Banquo and Macbeth, all hail! MACBETH Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more: By Sinel's death I know I am thane of Glamis; But how of Cawdor? The thane of Cawdor lives, A prosperous gentleman; and to be king Stands not within the prospect of belief, No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence You owe this strange intelligence? or why Upon this blasted heath you stop our way With such prophetic greeting? Speak, I charge you. (The Witches vanish)

5

10

15

20

25

Starting with this conversation, explain how far Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a

character who believes in the supernatural power of the witches.

Write about:

How Shakespeare presents Macbeth’s reaction to the witches here

How Shakespeare presents his beliefs in them elsewhere in the play.

Further Reading and Support

Helpful websites

www.sparknotes.com

www.youtube.com/user/mrbruff

www.nfs.sparknotes.com

www.bbc.com/education

Complimentary Reading

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Othello by William Shakespeare

Television and Movie Resources

A Christmas Carol

Macbeth

English isn’t as solitary as an oyster! Check out the links between English and your other subjects:

Maths -