Unit 10 — A Classic Text (Leistungsfach focus)

Learning objectives Link to heading

• I can read three soliloquies from Shakespeare’s Macbeth (LF set text) and write a 450-word literary essay with a complex thesis.
• I can engage Early Modern English vocabulary and rhythm with confidence.
• I can hold the Leistungsfach (advanced course) register: complex argument, integrated close reading, sustained voice.

curriculum framework (“Bildungsplan”) alignment Link to heading

• 3.4.1 Soziokulturelles Orientierungswissen / Themen
• 3.4.3.2 Leseverstehen
• 3.4.3.5 Schreiben
• 3.4.4 Text- und Medienkompetenz

(Sources: https://www.bildungsplaene-bw.de/,Lde/LS/BP2016BW/ALLG/GYM/E1/IK/11-12-LF / https://www.bildungsplaene-bw.de/,Lde/LS/BP2016BW/ALLG/GYM/E1/IK/11-12-BF)

Lead-in story Link to heading

The Leistungsfach (advanced course) Englisch class is reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606) over six weeks. Today’s checkpoint covers three soliloquies: 1.7 (If it were done), 2.1 (Is this a dagger), and 5.5 (Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow). The class has been keeping a soliloquy log: one image, one rhythm-break, one moral move per soliloquy.

1. Activate Link to heading

Soliloquy scan. With your partner, list one image, one rhythm-break, and one moral move per soliloquy.

2. Input Link to heading

Reading — three Macbeth soliloquies (extracts) Link to heading

1.7 (Macbeth): If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly: …

2.1 (Macbeth): Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?

5.5 (Macbeth): Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, …

Leistungsfach (advanced course) register Link to heading

Marks of LF register:

• Sustained close reading of language and rhythm.
• Integrated quotation rather than block-quotes.
• Tracking of one argument over 4-6 paragraphs.
• Confident use of literary vocabulary (soliloquy, blank verse, iambic pentameter, caesura, syntactic inversion, dramatic irony).
• Engagement with at least one piece of critical commentary or contextual frame.

3. Practise Link to heading

Niveau E — controlled Link to heading

1. Match: soliloquy → speech alone on stage; blank verse → unrhymed iambic pentameter; caesura → mid-line pause.
2. T or F: 1.7 explores moral hesitation; 2.1 stages hallucinated commitment; 5.5 collapses future-tense confidence.

Niveau E — productive Link to heading

3. Build 3 close-reading sentences using Leistungsfach register on the three soliloquies.

4. Produce Link to heading

Literary essay, 450 words (Leistungsfach register). Argue a single complex thesis tracing how Macbeth’s relationship to time changes across the three soliloquies. Use 4 integrated quotes + 6 academic discourse markers + 1 cleft.

Sample Link to heading

Macbeth’s three central soliloquies — 1.7, 2.1, and 5.5 — track a deterioration in his relationship to time, and that deterioration is, I shall argue, the most precise way to read his moral collapse. In 1.7, Macbeth approaches the prospective murder as a problem of completion: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly”. The structure of the argument is conditional, and the tense is hypothetical; Macbeth is still inside a world in which an act could be sealed off from its consequences. The repetition of done signals, however, an over-confidence the verse itself destabilises by the end of the speech. By contrast, in 2.1 Macbeth has stepped into the present imperative: “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?”. The hallucinated dagger is, accordingly, a present-tense object that compels rather than waits. It is precisely the shift from the conditional of 1.7 to the perceptual present of 2.1 that marks Macbeth’s loss of deliberative space. Whatever moral hesitation remained in 1.7 is, here, hijacked by an image he neither chose nor can refuse. In 5.5, the deterioration completes itself in the famous “tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” — three futures emptied of force by their own repetition. What had been hypothetical in 1.7 and present-compelling in 2.1 becomes, in 5.5, a “petty pace from day to day”: a future that will only ever shuffle into more of itself. More specifically, the verse-rhythm collapses with the meaning: the iambic pentameter loses its drive; the line “creeps in this petty pace” enacts the very tedium it describes. Critics have read 5.5 as nihilist; in my reading, it is the structural completion of the arc begun in 1.7. Macbeth’s collapse is the collapse of his ability to imagine time as anything other than a ledger of repetition. In this regard, the play stages moral failure not as a single act but as the drying up of the tense-system itself — and the soliloquies do most of that work without the help of any other character.

5. Reflect Link to heading

• I can read three soliloquies and trace a complex thesis across them.
• I can hold the Leistungsfach register over 450 words.
• I can integrate four quotes without breaking voice.

One thing in your notebook: Write one sentence using something you learned in this Unit.

Exam example Link to heading

Part A — Comprehension (~24 BE) Link to heading

Listen twice.

“In 1.7, Macbeth approaches the murder as completion: if it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / it were done quickly. In 2.1, he steps into the perceptual present: is this a dagger? In 5.5, the future collapses: tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.”

1. 1.7 mode: ___ . 2. 2.1 mode: ___ . 3. 5.5 mode: ___ . 4. Verb-system arc: ___ .

Part B — Analysis (~18 BE) Link to heading

Read the three soliloquy extracts above.

1. 1.7 — Macbeth’s tense / mood: ___ . 2. 2.1 — what compels: ___ . 3. 5.5 — the future as: ___ . 4. The arc, in one sentence: ___ .

Part C — Composition (~18 BE) Link to heading

Quote integration (“Leistungsfach”).

1. Integrated: Macbeth speaks of … ‘done quickly’. → ___
2. Integrated: In 2.1, the dagger is … → ___
3. Embedded fragment using ‘petty pace’: ___
4. Cleft on the verse-rhythm: ___

Mediation (~30 BE) Link to heading

Write 450 words: a Leistungsfach literary essay tracing Macbeth’s relationship to time across the three soliloquies. Use 4 integrated quotes + 6 markers + 1 cleft.

Downloads Link to heading

Common pitfalls Link to heading

• Drop-in quotes break the LF register.
• Don’t paraphrase Shakespeare — analyse his moves.
• Critical commentary is a flavour, not the meal.

Further reading / listening Link to heading

• Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World — accessible Shakespeare biography.
• Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language.

Downloads

Presentation

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Worksheet

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