Macbeth: Context

Context is assessed as AO3: understanding the ideas, beliefs and events surrounding a text and how they shape its meaning. AO3 is worth roughly 15% of the course, so it earns marks, but only when you tie it to the text rather than reciting history.

Macbeth was written around 1606, early in the reign of King James I. The beliefs of that Jacobean audience, about kingship, God, witches and order, are woven into the play. A murder we might read simply as a crime, they read as a sin that overturns the cosmos.

The rule for the exam is simple: use context to explain why a moment lands the way it does. For example, note that killing a king horrified a Jacobean audience far more than it might horrify a modern one, and then show how Shakespeare exploits that horror.

Strong AO3 is embedded, not bolted on. Aim for a sentence that links a specific choice by Shakespeare to a belief his audience held, rather than a standalone paragraph of history.

The single most useful context for Macbeth is the Divine Right of Kings: the belief that a monarch is chosen by God and answerable only to God. Rebellion against a king was therefore rebellion against God.

King James I held this belief firmly and had written about it. To his subjects, a lawful king's body was sacred. This is why Macbeth's murder of Duncan is not merely killing a man; it is regicide (the killing of a king), an act against the divine order itself.

Shakespeare underlines Duncan's God-given status. Macbeth admits Duncan "hath borne his faculties so meek" and been "so clear in his great office" that "his virtues will plead like angels" against the murder. Duncan is presented as a good and holy king, which makes killing him worse and makes the disorder that follows feel deserved.

Belief	Effect in the play
The king is chosen by God	Duncan is described as saintly and pure
Killing a king is a sin against God	Nature convulses after the murder
Order flows from a rightful king	Peace returns only when Malcolm is crowned

In 1605, just before Macbeth was written, a group of Catholic conspirators tried to blow up Parliament and kill James I. This was the Gunpowder Plot, and its discovery was still fresh when the play was first performed.

For that first audience, the murder of a king was not an abstract idea from history; it was a horror they had just narrowly escaped. Shakespeare, whose company performed for the king, wrote a play in which killing a monarch brings guilt, madness and national ruin, a message that quietly reassured James and warned off would-be traitors.

The plot also lies behind the play's interest in deception and hidden treachery. The theme "Fair is foul, and foul is fair," and the image of the "innocent flower" hiding "the serpent under't," echo the Jacobean anxiety about traitors who smile while plotting. The Porter's drunken talk of "equivocation" (deliberately misleading language) even glances at the trial of the plotters, who were accused of it.

Jacobeans widely believed witches were real. They were thought to be agents of the Devil who could curse, prophesy and control the weather. Belief was so serious that people were tried and executed for witchcraft.

King James was personally fascinated by the subject. He believed witches had tried to kill him with storms at sea, and in 1597 he wrote a book, Daemonologie, warning of their dangers. The three "weird sisters" would therefore have been genuinely frightening to the original audience, not a bit of fantasy.

Shakespeare gives the witches uncanny, disturbing power:

• They speak in a different rhythm from other characters, chanting in trochaic tetrameter ("Double, double toil and trouble"), which sets them apart as unnatural.
• Their equivocating prophecies are true but misleading, tempting Macbeth to his ruin without ever ordering him to act.
• They are linked to a world where "fair is foul," where appearances cannot be trusted.

For AO3, the point is not just that witches appear, but that the audience believed them dangerous and real. That belief is what makes their influence over Macbeth feel like genuine spiritual temptation.

Jacobeans understood the universe as a strict hierarchy, the Great Chain of Being: God at the top, then angels, then the king, then nobles, then ordinary people, then animals and finally objects. Everything had its ordained place.

Crucially, the chain linked the political order to the natural order. A rightful king kept society in harmony; disturbing the chain, above all by killing a king, was thought to bring chaos into nature itself.

Shakespeare dramatises this idea through pathetic fallacy and unnatural events after Duncan's death, where nature is used to reflect human events. The night of the murder is described as unnaturally violent; the sun does not rise; and, most strikingly, Duncan's horses are reported to have "turned wild in nature" and eaten each other. These signs tell the audience that Macbeth has torn a hole in the natural order.

Ordered world (rightful king)	Disordered world (after regicide)
Day and night in their places	Darkness at noon
Animals behaving naturally	Horses eating one another
A peaceful, loyal kingdom	Suspicion, murder and civil war

Order is only restored at the very end, when the rightful heir Malcolm takes the throne, mending the broken chain.

AO3 is credited on the Shakespeare question, but it is the smallest of the three main objectives there, so it must support your analysis rather than replace it.

• Embed a short piece of context inside a point about the text. For instance, note that a Jacobean audience would see Duncan's murder as a sin against God's chosen king, then analyse how Shakespeare makes that horror felt.
• Choose the context that fits the moment. Writing about the witches invites witchcraft and Daemonologie; writing about the murder invites the Divine Right and the Gunpowder Plot; writing about the disorder that follows invites the Great Chain of Being.
• Avoid a history essay. A long paragraph on James I that never touches Shakespeare's language earns little credit.

A single well-placed sentence of context, tied to a quotation, is worth more than a page of background. Link, don't list.

1. Writing a history lesson instead of literary analysis

AO3 rewards context that illuminates the text. A paragraph about the Gunpowder Plot that never connects to a moment in the play scores poorly. Always link the context back to a specific choice Shakespeare makes.

2. Treating the witches as harmless fantasy

To a Jacobean audience the witches were real and dangerous. Reading them as mere entertainment misses why their influence over Macbeth was so unsettling for the original audience.

3. Forgetting that Duncan's murder is a sin, not just a crime

Under the Divine Right of Kings, killing a king was an offence against God. This is why nature itself convulses after the murder. Missing the religious weight flattens your reading of the play's disorder.

4. Getting King James muddled

James I was Scottish, ruled England from 1603, feared witchcraft, and (as the play flatters) was said to descend from Banquo. Mixing him up with Queen Elizabeth or the Tudors undermines your context.

5. Over-relying on context

AO3 is the smallest of the three main objectives on this paper. An answer heavy on history but light on language and structure (AO2) is unlikely to reach the top bands. Keep context in proportion.