Year 10 Recreate Infamous Macbeth Potion

Year 10 English have been recreating an iconic scene from Macbeth by making their own magic potions.

The scene, which opens the fourth act of the play, features the infamous Weird sisters casting a spell using all manner of exotic ingredients like eye of newt, tongue of hound, toe of frog and wool of bat.

Despite their flowery names, the ingredients were aliases for common plants used by 17^th century herbalists. Eye of newt, for instance, was a nickname for mustard seeds and lizard’s leg is, in fact, ivy.

Instead of sourcing Elizabethan magic plants, our students instead used ingredients like edible gold leaf, food dye, vinegar and bicarb soda to achieve a potent brew fit for a witch’s curse.

“Macbeth covers timeless ideas like greed, ambition and manipulation,” explain Mrs Burton, “So we wanted to make the lesson hands on and fun to help the students engage with the themes of the play.”

Year 10 will continue to study Macbeth throughout the term.

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