WHAT? HOW? WHY? Macbeth Language Analysis Worksheet 2

Help students move beyond identifying techniques and develop deeper language analysis with this structured Macbeth worksheet on ambition.

Using the WHAT? HOW? WHY? structure, this worksheet helps students to identify Shakespeare’s ideas, zoom in on individual words and explore their deeper significance.

Using Macbeth’s “vaulting ambition” quotation, students explore how Shakespeare presents ambition as powerful, dangerous and increasingly difficult to control.

Students will:

• Identify what Shakespeare is presenting about Macbeth’s ambition
• Zoom in on individual words and explore their connotations
• Move beyond technique spotting into developed analysis
• Consider why Shakespeare has chosen particular language
• Explore the effects and implications of Macbeth’s ambition
• Build their own analytical paragraph using WHAT? HOW? WHY?
• Complete a challenge task exploring an alternative interpretation