Tracking Motifs

Let's start with the most pervasive motif in the play: Chiaroscuro. Key-ar-os-cure-o? Perfect. Chiaroscuro. It's an art term for the contrast between light and dark. Shakespeare uses light and dark constantly in Macbeth. But it's not just about the time of day. It's about good and evil, right? Light is good, dark is bad? Yes, but we need to elevate our vocabulary for the examiner. "Dark means bad" won't get you a Grade 9. Instead, we say that darkness represents moral obscurity and concealment. Listen to Macbeth in Act 1, Scene 4. He's just found out Malcolm is the heir to the throne, blocking his path. He says: "Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires." He literally wants to turn the lights off so nobody can see what he's thinking. Exactly! But more importantly, he wants to hide it from himself. Light represents divine judgement - the eye of God. Lady Macbeth does the exact same thing a scene later. She begs for "thick night" to come, wrapped in the "dunnest smoke of hell," so that her knife cannot see the wound it makes. Right, so if I get a question on ambition... You talk about how unchecked ambition requires the concealment of darkness. What if the question is about the supernatural? You discuss how the Witches operate exclusively in the dark - they are instruments of moral obscurity. Here is your high-level vocabulary for this motif. Write these down. Chiaroscuro. Concealment. Moral obscurity. Divine scrutiny. If you can weave those terms into your essay, you instantly sound like an academic, not just a student repeating the plot.

Motif number two: Nature and Disease. I always struggled with this one. Why is everyone always talking about the weather and sick people? To understand this, you have to understand how Jacobean people saw the universe. They believed in something called the Great Chain of Being. God at the top, then angels, then the King, then men, animals, plants, and so on. So everything has its proper place. Exactly. And the King is God's appointed deputy on Earth. That's the Divine Right of Kings. So, what happens to the universe when you violently murder God's representative? The whole chain breaks. The whole chain breaks! The macrocosm - the wider universe - is thrown into absolute chaos. This is why, on the night Duncan is murdered, there are terrible storms. Chimneys are blown down. Earthquakes. Oh, and the horses! An old man says Duncan's horses broke out of their stalls and ate each other. Spot on. It's a subversion of the natural order. But as the play progresses, this natural disruption turns into something worse: disease. Macbeth hasn't just broken Scotland; he has infected it. Because he's a tyrant? Yes. Think about the imagery used in Act 5. Scotland is described as a sick patient. Caithness talks about pouring their blood to cure the "sickly weal" of the country. Macbeth himself asks the doctor to cast the "water of my land" to find its disease and purge it. It's ironic, though, isn't it? Macbeth is asking the doctor to cure Scotland, but Macbeth is the disease. That is exactly the sentence you write in your exam! Macbeth is the pathogen. Malcolm, the rightful heir, is the cure. Time for your high-level vocabulary. Ready? We don't just say "the weather is bad." We talk about the macrocosm reflecting the microcosm. We don't say "Scotland is messed up." We discuss the subversion of the natural order. And instead of "sickness imagery," we use the term pathological motif. Pathological motif. Macrocosm. Got it. I can use that for questions on kingship, right? Kingship, tyranny, violence, the supernatural... it fits everywhere.

Our final motif. It's a bit more subtle, but examiners absolutely love it. The motif of clothing. Or, to use our fancy vocabulary: sartorial imagery. Clothing? Like... what they're wearing? Specifically, clothes that do not fit. Think about it. When Macbeth is first given the title Thane of Cawdor, he is confused. The old Thane is still alive. He asks Ross, "Why do you dress me in borrowed robes?" Oh, like he's wearing someone else's coat. It's not actually his. Exactly. Clothing in Shakespeare's time was a strict indicator of status and rank. You literally wore your power. So, wearing a "borrowed robe" means taking power that does not legitimately belong to you. Which is exactly what he does when he steals the crown. Yes! And how does the crown fit him? By the end of the play, Angus says Macbeth's title hangs loose about him, "like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief." Ouch. It's a brilliant insult, isn't it? Macbeth is the dwarfish thief. Duncan was the giant. The imagery physically diminishes Macbeth. He is too small for the role of King. He is playing dress-up. So, it's about being a fake. We can elevate that. It's about illegitimacy. It's about maintaining a facade. Lady Macbeth tells him to look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it. That's another form of dressing up, of disguising your true nature. Vocabulary for this one? Sartorial imagery. Illegitimacy. Usurpation. And the facade of power.

Okay, so I've got Light and Dark, Nature and Disease, and Clothing. How do I actually structure this in the exam? You use the extract as your launchpad. Let's say the extract is the dagger speech, and the question is about madness. Okay, I'd talk about the dagger... but then I zoom out to the whole play? Yes. You zoom out using a motif. You could say: "While the dagger represents his immediate psychological break, Shakespeare uses the pathological motif throughout the play to show how Macbeth's madness acts as a contagion, infecting all of Scotland." And then I'd bring in the sick country quote. "Sickly weal". Boom. You've just linked the extract to the rest of the play using a high-level conceptual thread. The examiner is weeping tears of joy. Remember, the examiners aren't looking to catch you out. They are looking to reward you for understanding how a play works. Quotes are the bricks, but motifs are the mortar. Learn your chiaroscuro. Understand your natural order. Spot those borrowed robes. You don't need to fear the blank page anymore, because you already know the code. I'm Mr Harrison, your Director of Studies. Now, go get that Grade 9.