Context in Context

Context in Context

AO3 is worth real marks, and it is the objective students most often lose by writing something that is true. The failure is always the same shape: a paragraph of history arrives, sits there, and never touches the play. "Shakespeare lived in the Jacobean era. Anyway, Macbeth kills Duncan..." Everything in that is correct, and it earns almost nothing. The fix is one idea, and this whole module is about executing it: context must be integrated, used to change how a moment in the play reads. We will work on Macbeth.

Why does it score nothing?

A student opens their essay with a well-written paragraph on Jacobean history. Every fact in it is accurate. Why does it earn almost no AO3 credit?

• Because it never touches the play: nothing in the paragraph changes how a moment in Macbeth reads
• Because history is irrelevant to a literature exam
• Because a single paragraph is not enough for AO3
• Because AO3 is worth so few marks that it is not worth attempting

The world of Macbeth

Macbeth was written around 1606, for an audience holding beliefs it is worth knowing precisely. Here are the four that do the most work, stated as what people believed:

How each one changes a reading

Which are usable?

All six statements below are about Macbeth or its author. Select ALL THREE that could actually do AO3 work in an essay.

• James I held that kings were appointed by God
• Jacobean audiences genuinely feared witchcraft, and people were executed for it
• The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was an attempt to kill the king, and was fresh in the first audience's memory
• Shakespeare was a shareholder in his own theatre company
• The play is set in Scotland
• The play criticises the modern welfare state

Bolted on, or integrated?

The same fact can be worth nothing or worth a band, and the difference is visible in the grammar. Watch where the sentence about the play is:

Which one is integrated?

Which sentence uses context in the way AO3 rewards?

• Because the Great Chain of Being made the king God's deputy on earth, Duncan's murder unleashes the unnatural horrors that follow, so that a Jacobean audience would see the disorder as the direct consequence of the crime
• Shakespeare lived through both the Elizabethan and the Jacobean eras, writing plays for both monarchs
• Many people believed in the supernatural back in those days, which was very different from today
• James I believed in the divine right of kings. Macbeth murders Duncan while he is a guest in his castle

Find the AO3

This is a sentence from a student essay. Tap the part that is doing the AO3 work.

• Shakespeare has nature itself revolt after the murder, with horses turning on each other,
• which an audience holding the Great Chain of Being would read as the order of creation breaking apart

When the horses turn

Here is integration doing its work on a single scene. The morning after the murder, Ross and an Old Man report that darkness has smothered the day, that an owl has killed a falcon, and that Duncan's horses have broken out and eaten each other. Read on its own, that is strange and rather good imagery. Read alongside the Great Chain of Being, it stops being decoration: the falcon is above the owl in the natural order and the horses are tame beasts turning wild, so creation is inverting itself exactly as the murder inverted the order at the top of it. Notice that the context did not add information. It changed what the scene means.

Build the point

You are writing a paragraph about the murder of Duncan and you want the AO3 mark. Make the calls.

• Which context fits a point about the murder itself?
• Where in the paragraph should the context go?
• Your sentence now explains that the murder is a crime against God. What does it still need?
• How can you check, before moving on, that the context is genuinely integrated?

The shape of the sentence

An integrated context sentence has three parts, and they can go in any order provided all three are in the SAME sentence: 1. The moment in the play. Something specific: a line, an action, a stage image. 2. The belief. Named precisely. "The Great Chain of Being", not "people were religious then". 3. The join. "so that", "which is why", "for an audience who...". This is the part that turns two true statements into one point. Then link back to the question. And use the deletion test: take the context out, and if the point survives unharmed, you had decoration rather than analysis.

Build the sentence

Start with the moment: Duncan is murdered in his sleep by a host who owed him protection. Add the belief: a Jacobean audience held that a king ruled by _____ right, appointed by God. Now join them so the belief changes the reading, and the murder becomes a crime against _____ rather than against a man, which is why the natural world _____ in the scenes that follow. Finally, link the whole thing back to the _____ you were asked.

Integrate it yourself

Exam practice. In about 50 words, write one or two sentences using context in the integrated way, on: "How does Shakespeare present the murder of Duncan as shocking?" Include:

• a specific Jacobean context, named precisely (divine right, or the Great Chain of Being)
• the context INSIDE the sentence about the play, joined with "so that" or "for an audience who"
• a link back to the question's focus, which is why the murder is shocking

Context mastered

AO3 rewards context that is _____ into a point about the play, never a detached paragraph of history. For Macbeth the contexts worth knowing are the _____ right of kings, the Great Chain of Being, the Jacobean fear of _____, and the expectations placed on women. Every context point should deepen the effect on the audience and _____ back to the question, and the test is whether the point survives having the context deleted.