I’ve never marked an essay really so I won’t give you a score, but I have to say I think it’s very good, especially for a year 10. I think your understanding is good but in the first half of the essay, I think you could have developed on your points a bit more. Since I have done Macbeth when I was doing my gcse’s, I understood what you were trying to say but always keep this tip in mind: pretend the examiner has never heard of Macbeth before. I thought your second part was excellent, you were 100% on the right path to talk about historical content, and you have some very good and what I would say unique ideas in this essay, definitely what separates the grade 6+ students from the grade 5 and below students. Touching on the idea that Shakespeare may have intended to write Macbeth as a dislikable character so that the jacobean audience wouldn’t feel sympathetic at his downfall was just perfect to me, and also touching on the idea that the moral of Macbeth really is to be wary of oneself and those around them. People who egg each other on and encourage each other to do bad things will both fall.
But yeah I’m terms of developing the first half of your essay more. You are right to say that lady Macbeth emasculates Macbeth when she calls him a coward. But how? How is that quote emasculating? The answer is it emasculates Macbeth as he has his masculinity questioned. During the Jacobean time, men were supposed to be courageous and posses traditionally masculine characteristics, and so for lady Macbeth to not only question her husbands masculine but also display masculine characteristics herself, emasculates and de-powers Macbeth as it leaves him questioning his own position and abilities as a man during his time. You really need to just hammer in everything you say. You’ve probably heard of PEE for structuring paragraphs, I prefer to think of it as PEE for structure a sentence. If you make a point and use a quote, then explain and then expand before you make your next point etc. I just find it flows better. This is coming from someone who got an 8 in English lit and Lang, very close to a 9 as they wanted to remark my paper but I said no.
Good luck and I thought this was really good for the stage your at so far. Keep it up and you’ll no doubt get a great grade when you do your real gcse.