12 Best Vocabulary Choices to Write About Shakespeare Plays
These words force you to get top grades.
This is the transcript to my video.
It shows you how to use the words with each of the three plays. It is worth practising using these, because it will make top grades so easy.
Hello and welcome to another Top Grades video made easy. The focus on these words is to help you write about the author's purpose. When you write about Shakespeare's purpose, you're automatically at least at grade seven.
So let's see how they would work with three Shakespeare plays: Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest. (Scroll to find the one you want).
Every time Shakespeare writes anything at all, he's reacting to the Jacobean or the Elizabethan Society he wrote in.
Macbeth
With Macbeth, he's criticizing this martial society that values violence as proof of manhood, and he's also trying to warn the Nobles not to change society by killing the King.
Our second word is "patriarchal". A patriarchy is any society run by men in the interests of men.
Well, we can clearly see that Macbeth is a patriarchal society, and the only way these ugly women, The Witches, can gain any power is to turn to the supernatural. Lady Macbeth, though married to Macbeth, has no power on her own. That's why Macbeth calls her "my dearest partner of greatness", knowing that that is what is at the root of her problems.
The other issue, of course, is that the only way to achieve status in this society as a woman is to produce an heir. Lady Macbeth is still producing milk to feed a baby that she has lost, so she needs to reclaim her status, hence the assassination of Duncan.
Our third word is "masculinity". In all three of these plays, he's asking whether men are in fact the best kinds of rulers. Remember, Elizabeth has been on the throne for so long, and we can certainly make the case that Shakespeare is interested in a more feminine kind of rule.
You can of course flip that completely on its head and show that he creates Lady Macbeth in order to show how women are inherently even more evil than men, and she's the corrupting influence that pushes Macbeth to regicide.
Our fourth word is "power". Whenever you write about power in society, linking those two words together, you're linking it to what Shakespeare thinks about the power of the day, King James, and how that power should be exercised.
So you can quite easily read Macbeth as a lesson to King James about what sort of king he should be: not like Macbeth, but also not like the King Malcolm pretends to be when he's testing Macbeth.
Word number five is Machiavellian. Machiavelli was a writer famous in Shakespeare's time, and he wrote about politics and wrote a satire about how a prince, a ruler, should behave in order to maintain power. We use it today to mean any kind of political trickery, any kind of way to manipulate events or people.
And you can clearly see how the witches manipulate Macbeth, how Macbeth manipulates his wife into persuading him to kill, how he tries to manipulate others through having servants as spies.
Number six: the Great Chain of Being. The idea that everything is in its natural order with God at the top, followed by the angels, followed by who is appointed as king or queen, followed by the nobles, followed by the merchants, followed by the normal people at the bottom, and then animals, and blah blah blah.
This, of course, is super relevant to Macbeth who starts off as a noble but becomes more animal-like as his mind is full of scorpions because he has killed the king. This has upset the great chain of being and therefore led to divine punishment.
Number seven: Original Sin. This is the Catholic idea that we are all born with the sin of Adam and Eve when they defied God and started eating of the tree, the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. They were expelled from Eden as a punishment. Various other punishments followed and the idea is that ever since then, we are all carrying that punishment with us.
Because we all carry that original sin with us, in other words, we are born with a greater capacity for evil than for good. Which is why Christianity has to teach us to be good. Left to our own nature, we're not.
You can easily see how Macbeth and Lady Macbeth enact their actual sin. They tear away the Christian rules of civilization and give vent to all their sins, which almost destroys Scotland in a civil war.
Number eight is Fate. In Shakespeare's plays, characters are constantly wrestling with how far they can act on their own choices versus how far their fate is controlled, either by God or by society.
In "Macbeth," Shakespeare points out that Macbeth could simply have waited. He would have become king anyway. But instead, he chooses to accelerate that fate by assassinating the king, which leads to all the tragedies that follow. So in "Macbeth," Shakespeare implies that characters should follow their fate.
At number nine, we have two opposing words: utopian and dystopian. With a utopia, you try and create a perfect world. A dystopia is a world that has fallen away from perfection and become damaged and damaging. You can easily write about the societies in all of those plays as either dystopian or utopian.
Number ten: Justice. When you look at the end of each of the plays, it's really easy for you to say, "What is Shakespeare saying about a just society?" He always tries to restore the natural order, and when you examine the ending, you can see whether he wants a Christian society, what kind of ruler he wants to rule it.
Does he want the status quo, as he does in "Macbeth," or a completely different society that is much more sensitive, as in "Romeo and Juliet," or one that rejects absolute power, as in "The Tempest"?
At number eleven, we have the word Redemption. This is a Christian idea. We commit sins, but we can redeem ourselves through goodness. That's how we all get over original sin and get into heaven. Well, he doesn't have that moral journey precisely in his plays. Instead, he has the idea of how we can overcome the bad acts of our past.
In "Macbeth," Macbeth and Lady Macbeth refuse to be redeemed, and so they go to hell. Macduff, on the other hand, tries to redeem himself as a husband. He has abandoned his family, who've been killed by Macbeth, and therefore, he won't fight anybody else until he has found Macbeth, and only then will he unsheathe his sword, a way to redeem himself as a failed husband and father at the same time. This redeems the country of Scotland from the tyranny of Macbeth's rule.
So, Shakespeare's writing at a really interesting time. Up until about 150 years before Shakespeare, writing plays, all plays are morality tales. The morality plays are written to exhibit good and evil, to deliver the messages of Christianity, and even retell biblical stories.
It's only when Shakespeare and his contemporaries start writing that they start inventing characters who think for themselves. Shakespeare dives into this idea of the soliloquy, characters speaking directly to the audience, not manipulating the audience, but delivering their innermost true thoughts.
All these plays are full of these soliloquies, and this is where we get the drama of characters trying to work out what decision they should make, what choice would be good, what choice would be evil.
So, you can access the word "conscience" when you're trying to talk about the characters as individuals. Remember, the characters are always constructs in order to represent Shakespeare's ideas, but by portraying them as individuals with psychological reasons for doing what they're doing, you're jumping to the top of the mark scheme. By referring to the word "conscience," you're going to bring it back to the ideas of good and evil, the Christian values of the society that Shakespeare's writing about.
And for now, if you've listened to all of that, it will be quite easy for you to write down those 12 words, put them on a piece of paper, and just practice using them to write about quotes or events in the plays that you are studying.
By the way, these don't just work with Shakespeare. You can apply all but number six and number seven to every single text that you study. When you do that, you're not just going to get marks for using advanced vocabulary.
That's not where the marks are. You're going to get the marks because you link it to the author's ideas, and that is a minimum of grade seven.
Top tip: Grade nine essays always use these two words repeatedly to explain the author's ideas. In the video coming out now, I will show you how to use the top vocabulary for other texts.
Romeo and Juliet
With Romeo and Juliet, he's writing about patriarchal society and how male violence is ruining the lives of men and women, and that's what kills the Two Lovers.
Our second word is "patriarchal". A patriarchy is any society run by men in the interests of men.
In Romeo and Juliet, you have to decide who is the better citizen, the better role model. Is it Juliet or Romeo? It's much easier to argue for Juliet. Romeo is the one who gives into violence, who gives into vengeance, who causes the ultimate tragedy. Juliet tries to maintain the social order, which is why she won't have sex with Romeo before she's married to him.
On the flip side of that, you can say it's patriarchal society that forces them into this marriage, and therefore it's male control, masculinity, that leads to the tragedy.
Our fourth word is "power". Whenever you write about power in society, linking those two words together, you're linking it to what Shakespeare thinks about the power of the day, King James, and how that power should be exercised.
The problem of power in Romeo and Juliet is that the leaders of both families don't pursue peace but pursue the feud. This, of course, is male power, male vengeance, and male pride. It's the male sense of honor that's ruling this society and therefore destroying it.
Word number five is Machiavellian. Machiavelli was a writer famous in Shakespeare's time, and he wrote about politics and wrote a satire about how a prince, a ruler, should behave in order to maintain power. We use it today to mean any kind of political trickery, any kind of way to manipulate events or people.
In Romeo and Juliet, we can see the Machiavellian figure is, in fact, the Friar. He's the person who's going to try and manipulate a peace between the two families by marrying Romeo to Juliet, but presenting that as Machiavelli suggests that he's wrong, that this desire is corrupt. Easy to do in Shakespeare's time because the Friar is Catholic whereas the English are Protestant. They have rejected Catholicism, and so the Friar is a symbol of something to avoid.
Number six: the Great Chain of Being. The idea that everything is in its natural order with God at the top, followed by the angels, followed by who is appointed as king or queen, followed by the nobles, followed by the merchants, followed by the normal people at the bottom, and then animals, and blah blah blah.
This doesn't really fit Romeo and Juliet.
Number seven: Original Sin. This is the Catholic idea that we are all born with the sin of Adam and Eve when they defied God and started eating of the tree, the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. They were expelled from Eden as a punishment. Various other punishments followed and the idea is that ever since then, we are all carrying that punishment with us.
Because we all carry that original sin with us, in other words, we are born with a greater capacity for evil than for good. Which is why Christianity has to teach us to be good. Left to our own nature, we're not.
In Romeo and Juliet, you can see the same despite the fact that the lovers want peace, want to be united, their sinful nature, and in particular, Romeo means that he turns to vengeance and violence as soon as things start going wrong. We can argue the same about Juliet. She goes to the friar and blackmails him with the threat of killing herself. This, again, original sin, committing suicide, a huge sin against God. Only God can take a life.
Number eight is Fate. In Shakespeare's plays, characters are constantly wrestling with how far they can act on their own choices versus how far their fate is controlled, either by God or by society.
In "Romeo and Juliet," the lovers try to escape their fate by marrying, but that very thing, the marriage, leads to the destruction. The prologue tells us that this is from the fatal loins of their parents. They have caused this fate. But if we go back to the ball scene, Romeo has a vision that something terrible will happen if he goes to the ball. Does he listen to it? No, he says, "Let he who directs my sail direct my course." In other words, he just allows fate to carry on, even though he knows that fate is going to be awful.
But in "Romeo and Juliet," he indicates that characters shouldn't follow their fate, unless you read "Romeo and Juliet" as a way of fate stepping in to get rid of the feud. Yet it's unfortunate that the only way to do it is to kill the lovers, but actually, that saves society from an eternal circle of violence.
This idea of God sacrificing for humanity is what the resurrection story is all about. God sends his son down to earth so that he will be killed by man, and obviously, Jesus embodies God, so God himself is partly killed by man in order to save society. A radical idea for us now, but it's an idea that Shakespeare's audience would be familiar with.
At number nine, we have two opposing words: utopian and dystopian. With a utopia, you try and create a perfect world. A dystopia is a world that has fallen away from perfection and become damaged and damaging. You can easily write about the societies in all of those plays as either dystopian or utopian.
"Romeo and Juliet" deals with English society and says, "Look, are we becoming dystopian because we've given too much power to men?" After all, young men in England were allowed to walk around with daggers and swords. The act of killing in revenge or even, as happens with Mercutio and Tybalt, almost by accident, was common. Shakespeare was actually commenting on a famous duel and feud between two families of his day, and so the play appears to be a rejection of that culture.
Number ten: Justice. When you look at the end of each of the plays, it's really easy for you to say, "What is Shakespeare saying about a just society?" He always tries to restore the natural order, and when you examine the ending, you can see whether he wants a Christian society, what kind of ruler he wants to rule it.
Does he want the status quo, as he does in "Macbeth," or a completely different society that is much more sensitive, as in "Romeo and Juliet," or one that rejects absolute power, as in "The Tempest"?
At number eleven, we have the word Redemption. This is a Christian idea. We commit sins, but we can redeem ourselves through goodness. That's how we all get over original sin and get into heaven. Well, he doesn't have that moral journey precisely in his plays. Instead, he has the idea of how we can overcome the bad acts of our past.
In "Romeo and Juliet," Montague and Capulet try to redeem their sin of the feud by constructing these golden statues of Romeo and Juliet, not just to symbolize peace, but to bring about peace between the two families.
So, Shakespeare's writing at a really interesting time. Up until about 150 years before Shakespeare, writing plays, all plays are morality tales. The morality plays are written to exhibit good and evil, to deliver the messages of Christianity, and even retell biblical stories.
It's only when Shakespeare and his contemporaries start writing that they start inventing characters who think for themselves. Shakespeare dives into this idea of the soliloquy, characters speaking directly to the audience, not manipulating the audience, but delivering their innermost true thoughts.
All these plays are full of these soliloquies, and this is where we get the drama of characters trying to work out what decision they should make, what choice would be good, what choice would be evil.
So, you can access the word "conscience" when you're trying to talk about the characters as individuals. Remember, the characters are always constructs in order to represent Shakespeare's ideas, but by portraying them as individuals with psychological reasons for doing what they're doing, you're jumping to the top of the mark scheme. By referring to the word "conscience," you're going to bring it back to the ideas of good and evil, the Christian values of the society that Shakespeare's writing about.
And for now, if you've listened to all of that, it will be quite easy for you to write down those 12 words, put them on a piece of paper, and just practice using them to write about quotes or events in the plays that you are studying.
By the way, these don't just work with Shakespeare. You can apply all but number six and number seven to every single text that you study. When you do that, you're not just going to get marks for using advanced vocabulary.
That's not where the marks are. You're going to get the marks because you link it to the author's ideas, and that is a minimum of grade seven.
Top tip: Grade nine essays always use these two words repeatedly to explain the author's ideas. In the video coming out now, I will show you how to use the top vocabulary for other texts.
The Tempest
In The Tempest, he's writing about kingship and absolute power, and happiness is only achieved once Prospero relinquishes absolute power and hands over to a younger generation.
Our second word is "patriarchal". A patriarchy is any society run by men in the interests of men.
In The Tempest, you can clearly see that Prospero exerts patriarchal control over Miranda, raising questions about his role as a father.
In The Tempest, every single villain is male, apart from Caliban's mother Sycorax, who doesn't actually appear. But when we look at what she's done to Ariel, we could argue that female power is presented as evil, again much like in Macbeth.
Our fourth word is "power". Whenever you write about power in society, linking those two words together, you're linking it to what Shakespeare thinks about the power of the day, King James, and how that power should be exercised.
In The Tempest, you can see the final message is that society is more just when a single ruler relinquishes power. This is why Prospero breaks his magic staff and therefore allows Ferdinand and Miranda to set up a better form of rule when they return to Milan.
Word number five is Machiavellian. Machiavelli was a writer famous in Shakespeare's time, and he wrote about politics and wrote a satire about how a prince, a ruler, should behave in order to maintain power. We use it today to mean any kind of political trickery, any kind of way to manipulate events or people.
In "The Tempest," you can look at Prospero's control of Ariel in particular and his punishment of Caliban. How far is he a Machiavellian figure, pursuing power for his own means, versus a powerful figure who has the interests of his people at heart?
Number six: the Great Chain of Being. The idea that everything is in its natural order with God at the top, followed by the angels, followed by who is appointed as king or queen, followed by the nobles, followed by the merchants, followed by the normal people at the bottom, and then animals, and blah blah blah.
It will fit a discussion of "The Tempest" through the role of Caliban.
Where does he belong in that chain? Should he be the natural king of the island or should he be treated as an animal?
Number seven: Original Sin. This is the Catholic idea that we are all born with the sin of Adam and Eve when they defied God and started eating of the tree, the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. They were expelled from Eden as a punishment. Various other punishments followed and the idea is that ever since then, we are all carrying that punishment with us.
Because we all carry that original sin with us, in other words, we are born with a greater capacity for evil than for good. Which is why Christianity has to teach us to be good. Left to our own nature, we're not.
In "The Tempest," it's really interesting to look at Caliban and his feelings for Miranda. Does this show that he is absolutely sinful? He hasn't had Christian education and therefore will exercise his lust in an uncontrolled way. Or is Shakespeare arguing that the punishment he receives does not fit the crime? Education would have worked instead.
Number eight is Fate. In Shakespeare's plays, characters are constantly wrestling with how far they can act on their own choices versus how far their fate is controlled, either by God or by society.
Prospero completely ignores fate. He takes on the godly powers of trying to control everyone else's fate, but through Ariel's intervention, Prospero is able to step back and say, "I don't want this godlike power. There must be a fairer way to deal with people." And that fair way is Christian forgiveness.
At number nine, we have two opposing words: utopian and dystopian. With a utopia, you try and create a perfect world. A dystopia is a world that has fallen away from perfection and become damaged and damaging. You can easily write about the societies in all of those plays as either dystopian or utopian.
"The Tempest" is the one that most closely deals with what a utopia is like.
Number ten: Justice. When you look at the end of each of the plays, it's really easy for you to say, "What is Shakespeare saying about a just society?" He always tries to restore the natural order, and when you examine the ending, you can see whether he wants a Christian society, what kind of ruler he wants to rule it.
Does he want the status quo, as he does in "Macbeth," or a completely different society that is much more sensitive, as in "Romeo and Juliet," or one that rejects absolute power, as in "The Tempest"?
At number eleven, we have the word Redemption. This is a Christian idea. We commit sins, but we can redeem ourselves through goodness. That's how we all get over original sin and get into heaven. Well, he doesn't have that moral journey precisely in his plays. Instead, he has the idea of how we can overcome the bad acts of our past.
Prospero tries to redeem himself by giving up power and leaving the island to Caliban and the rule of Milan to Ferdinand and Miranda.
And number twelve: Conscience.
So, Shakespeare's writing at a really interesting time. Up until about 150 years before Shakespeare, writing plays, all plays are morality tales. The morality plays are written to exhibit good and evil, to deliver the messages of Christianity, and even retell biblical stories.
It's only when Shakespeare and his contemporaries start writing that they start inventing characters who think for themselves. Shakespeare dives into this idea of the soliloquy, characters speaking directly to the audience, not manipulating the audience, but delivering their innermost true thoughts.
All these plays are full of these soliloquies, and this is where we get the drama of characters trying to work out what decision they should make, what choice would be good, what choice would be evil.
Obviously, we see that with Macbeth all the way through the play. With Romeo and Juliet, we see it with the friar, where he makes the faithful choice to help the lovers marry in secret without their parents' knowledge. This is Shakespeare's way of saying the friar was wrong.
So, you can access the word "conscience" when you're trying to talk about the characters as individuals. Remember, the characters are always constructs in order to represent Shakespeare's ideas, but by portraying them as individuals with psychological reasons for doing what they're doing, you're jumping to the top of the mark scheme. By referring to the word "conscience," you're going to bring it back to the ideas of good and evil, the Christian values of the society that Shakespeare's writing about.
And for now, if you've listened to all of that, it will be quite easy for you to write down those 12 words, put them on a piece of paper, and just practice using them to write about quotes or events in the plays that you are studying.
By the way, these don't just work with Shakespeare. You can apply all but number six and number seven to every single text that you study. When you do that, you're not just going to get marks for using advanced vocabulary.
That's not where the marks are. You're going to get the marks because you link it to the author's ideas, and that is a minimum of grade seven.
Top tip: Grade nine essays always use these two words repeatedly to explain the author's ideas. In the video coming out now, I will show you how to use the top vocabulary for other texts.
I'll be using these words more often in my essays. Thank you! Could you do another one of these for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and An Inspector Calls?
Great post. Another useful word to use in combination with fate is agency