This exercise is an active way of telling the plot of the play in 5 acts by distilling the information of each act. You will need the 5 Acts Resource.

• Divide the students into five groups and hand out one of the 5 Acts to each group.

• Explain that they are now going to, as a group, tell the story of that act. They can choose to designate one person as narrator who reads though the action of the plot while the rest of bring the action of the act to life.

• All students need to be involved.

• Those not narrating need to create still or moving images to represent the plot descriptions.

• After 10 minutes to rehearse, invite students to perform each Act in turn.

• How does this way of telling the story summarise and embed the knowledge of the plot? 

A good way of understanding the events of the play is to create character timelines and tracking a character throughout the 5 acts of the play.  This is an  activity for you to work through in class with your students and there are other similar activities on the Shakespeare Learning Zone.  

• Ask students to get a pen paper and across the top draw a line on which they write down each of the Acts 1 – 5. 

• Ask the students to pick one of the following characters:  

• Macbeth 

• Lady Macbeth 

• Banquo 

• Macduff 

• Malcolm  

• Explain to your students that they need to choose three words that describe that character and add them to the top of your timeline.   

• Then, go through the play and write down how that character is described by other characters in each of the Acts. Add these quotes to your timeline, under each Act heading.   

• This is an exercise we often do in a rehearsal room; it starts to give the actor a clearer picture about the character; who they are and how others view them throughout the play. 

As an extension exercise you could look at themes within the play as well. 

• Ask your students to keep a list of key quotes and examples of themes such as the supernatural, fate and ambition as they appear in the play.   

• You could even add them to your timeline.  

• For example, in Act 1 Macbeth reads out a letter from his wife that says:  ‘Thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition’. You could ask students to add this to their timelines to start to build up a picture of when and why characters mention certain themes.  

This activity looks at how Macbeth changes throughout the play. Students are asked to think about why Shakespeare depicts him as such a hero at the start of the play, and such a villain at the end. You will need the Macbeth in Battle Resource.

• Arrange students in a circle and hand out the Macbeth in Battle Resource. 

• Ask students to chorally read aloud the description of Macbeth in battle. 

• Ask a student to volunteer to represent Macbeth who stands in the middle of the circle and make a frozen image of Macbeth, depicting one of the descriptions of Macbeth as a solider.  

• Distribute ‘The Rise of Macbeth’ resource around the circle, allocating lines to students.  

• Ask each student to say their line and make a gesture towards Macbeth as they speak which makes their intention towards him clear, making eye contact each time.  

• Ask the student in the middle ‘How does he feel about himself at the opening of the play?’ 

• Now explore what is said about Macbeth at the end of the play ‘The fall of Macbeth’ and repeat the exercise with different students taking lines and adding gestures.    

• You might want to address a chair rather than having a student as recipient of these words. 

• Divide the students into groups of 4 and ask them to create two images of Macbeth: one from the start, and one from the end of the play.  

• What has happened to Macbeth between the start and end of the play? Why might Shakespeare depict him as such a hero at the beginning and such a villain at the end? Why might this be important in terms of the social and historical context? 

This exercise starts to unpick the language of the scene by focusing on the facts, inferences and what other characters say about them. By asking students to really interrogate the language of a scene we can start to look at what factual elements are written by Shakespeare and what are often interpretations. You will need the Act 1 Scene 3 Resource.

Watch the Scene in Performance with Christopher Eccleston as Macbeth and Raphael Sowole as Banquo in Polly Findlay's 2018 production.

• Divide students into group of five groups, they will each need a pen.  

• Hand out each group one of the five sections from Act 1 Scene 3 Resource.  

• Ask them to read through their section and make a note in the side of the page of the facts in the text.  

• Ask them to read it again and make a note of the inferences.  

• Ask students to read it one last time and then make a note about everything that is said by others about each of the characters, and then what they say about themselves. What do we learn from doing this exercise? What do we find out about the relationships of the characters? When is the scene taking place? Ask students what choices they might make about staging their section.  

• Allocate the students 10-15 minutes to rehearse their section, bearing in mind the textual analysis work they have done.   

• Ask students to perform each section in turn. What other questions arise from performing the text?