Themes in Macbeth
Teaching Ideas
Lesson Objective: To explore the themes of Macbeth.
Success Criteria: • To learn about the themes of ambition, gender and fate/free will.
• To discover other themes in Macbeth.
Teacher Notes: This is a lesson for when the whole play has been read.
Starter
Macbeth Meaning
Pupils are asked what they think the overall message of Macbeth is and why they think this. You could do this as a class discussion
or in pairs. This helps pupils to begin to focus on the play as a whole.
Main Activities
Themes
This is a very short introduction to the three themes that this lesson covers: ambition, gender and fate/free will.
Ambition, Gender, Fate / Free Will
The next three activities are the same – just carried out using a different theme. You could go through these one at a time or – to
make it a bit more interesting - you could split the class into pairs or small groups and allocate each pair/group a different theme.
Groups/pairs can then feed back their results to the rest of the class.
Pupils are directed to look at the sheet Theme Quotes Analysis and fill in the table. The table asks pupils to look at a quote,
explain what it means and then link it to the theme they are considering. Then, using their notes, pupils are asked questions about
the theme. They should answer using the quotes to support their ideas.
Your Turn
Pupils are now asked to identify at least one other theme and to explain how that theme is portrayed in the story and find five
quotes which link to their theme. There are some ideas about possible other themes on the slide. These come in with a click and
so you can use it or not, as needed.
Plenary
Discuss
Pupils are asked to feed back their ideas on a new theme to the rest of the class. You could have pairs feeding back to each other
or run this as a class discussion.
Other resources which may help:
The Macbeth Themes Resource Pack has some helpful resources, such as the Quotes to Theme - Reference Sheet which lists
quotes linked to each theme. It may be good for revision and for reference when doing a mini exam question.
Similarly, the Quotes to Theme - Matching Game and Quotes to Theme - Matching Activity are two different ways of doing
the same thing – linking quotes to relevant themes. These both make excellent revision aids, especially since they can help with
recall of important quotes.
