Flashcards work because they force you to retrieve information rather than just reread it, and that effort is what builds memory. These Macbeth cards boil the play down to the essentials: one card per main character and one per major theme, each with a key quote. Test yourself against them, do not just read them.
How to use these flashcards
For each card, cover everything but the name and try to recall the character's arc or the theme's central idea and quote from memory. Then uncover and check. Anything you get wrong goes back into the pile for another go. Five minutes of this a day is worth more than an hour of highlighting. When the single cards are solid, start pulling two at random and linking them, which builds the analysis the exam rewards.
Character cards
Flaw: vaulting ambition.
Quote: "vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself".
Role: manipulates Macbeth into murder.
Quote: "unsex me here".
Fate: murdered; returns as a ghost.
Quote: "instruments of darkness tell us truths".
Idea: true, feeling masculinity.
Quote: "I must also feel it as a man".
Key scene: tests Macduff in England.
Quote: "this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen".
Trait: gracious but too trusting.
Quote: "There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face".
Theme cards
Quote: "vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself".
Quote: "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand".
Quote: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair".
Turn these cards into full answers with the key quotes page, the themes page and the character pages.