Coursework: Choosing a literary focus
Turn a broad interest into a manageable literary question, then choose evidence that develops and tests an argument across your whole work.
From a topic to a literary question
The extracts below are worked examples, not additional compulsory texts. Transfer the process to the modern play and heritage work you are actually studying. Macbeth and Pride and Prejudice are heritage choices; Macbeth also makes dramatic techniques easy to see. Practising a dramatic technique here does not make Macbeth eligible for the Modern Drama assignment.
A topic names an area: guilt, power, family, belonging. A literary focus asks what a writer makes that area mean and how. “Guilt in Macbeth” could become “How does Shakespeare present Lady Macbeth’s attempts to control guilt, and their limits?” The second version supplies a character, an action and a tension. It leaves room to discover an answer instead of assuming that she is either entirely fearless or entirely helpless.
A manageable question needs enough room for development but a clear boundary. “Everything about power” is too broad. “What does one adjective mean?” is too narrow for a whole-work assignment. A question about the changing use of power in one relationship can connect several moments without requiring every character or scene.
Read these two moments before accepting the proposed focus. A promising title must fit actual evidence.
Source A
Macbeth — Act 2, Scene 2
By William Shakespeare
Duncan has been murdered. Macbeth is distressed by the blood on his hands; Lady Macbeth has returned after placing the daggers with the guards.
[1] MACBETH.
[2] Whence is that knocking?
[3] How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?
[4] What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes!
[5] Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
[6] Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
[7] The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
[8] Making the green one red.
[9] Enter Lady Macbeth.
[10] LADY MACBETH.
[11] My hands are of your color, but I shame
[12] To wear a heart so white. [Knocking within.] I hear knocking
[13] At the south entry:—retire we to our chamber.
[14] A little water clears us of this deed:
[15] How easy is it then! Your constancy
[16] Hath left you unattended.—[Knocking within.] Hark, more knocking.
[17] Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us
[18] And show us to be watchers. Be not lost
[19] So poorly in your thoughts.
Notes
Numbers identify lines in this extract, including speech labels; act and scene locate it in the complete play. Editorial spelling and punctuation can differ between editions. Neptune is the Roman god of the sea; incarnadine means make red.
Source B
Macbeth — Act 5, Scene 1
By William Shakespeare
Later in the play, a Doctor and Gentlewoman observe Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep. Her hands appear to her to need washing.
[1] DOCTOR. What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.
[2] GENTLEWOMAN. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.
[3] LADY MACBETH. Yet here’s a spot.
[4] DOCTOR. Hark, she speaks. I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
[5] LADY MACBETH. Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two. Why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
[6] DOCTOR. Do you mark that?
[7] LADY MACBETH. The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that: you mar all with this starting.
[8] DOCTOR. Go to, go to. You have known what you should not.
[9] GENTLEWOMAN. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that: heaven knows what she has known.
[10] LADY MACBETH. Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!
Notes
This scene’s prose speeches retain paragraph boundaries; numbers identify supplied speech/paragraph units. Act and scene locate it in the complete play. Editorial spelling and punctuation can differ between editions.
In the earlier scene, “A little water” reduces the problem to removing visible blood. The brisk exclamation “How easy is it then!” projects confidence even while Macbeth hears threatening knocks. Later, the repeated washing action makes cleanliness impossible to secure. The question “will these hands ne’er be clean?” gives the old solution a new, desperate meaning. The focus therefore offers an argument about the limits of control, not merely a list of guilty statements.
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