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Poetry -
Poetry AO1 video transcript
Cambridge IGCSE Literature in English asks you to study texts across the three genres of Poetry, Prose and Drama. Often it is poetry which learners worry about most. With prose and drama, there is a clear story, and narrative content to learn. Poetry is more abstract, requiring the reader to interpret a text in the same way as they might an artwork in a museum.
Consider this painting by Albrecht Dürer. You need to know the horsemen are an allegory, which means they are personifications or images rather than people.
The print was made at the end of the sixteenth century, in a period of increasing war and religious turmoil in Europe, and is based on a Biblical prophecy of how the world will end. Poetry works in a similar way: it gives us an image which is not realistic but needs to be interpreted.
When writing about poems for this examination, the assessment will be based around four objectives: knowledge, understanding, language and personal response.
What you need to know about a poem is often misunderstood.
Some think it is important to know a lot about the poet’s life before writing about the poems.
But assessment objective 1 is not about that kind of knowledge. It is about demonstrating a knowledge of the poem’s content through reference to specific sections of the text.
For now, we need only concern ourselves with the poem, not the poet.
As an example, let’s look at ‘Because I could not stop for Death’ by Emily Dickinson.
The poem is an allegory. All those capital letters throughout the text indicate this. Lots of poems have a central, extended metaphor or idea. It is important to understand this right away.
The other character in the poem is ‘I’. Poems have a voice, but that speaker is not necessarily the poet her or himself.
Death stops and takes the speaker on a carriage ride, so we already know that the poem will describe a journey. By making textual references we can show the different stages of that journey.
We might want to think about the speaker’s relationship with Death:
his kindness and civility;
her light, fashionable clothes,
or the fact that ‘The Carriage held but just Ourselves’.
A good dictionary will help you understand key words and phrases in the text.
We could also consider the way the poem explores the passage of time. Although the journey is apparently a slow one, time seems to go fast in this stanza, which may be the point, as a life seems to just flash past.
From youthful images of childish games in school, to the idea of grain waiting to be harvested at the end of the summer, to the end of the day: all these images suggest the passage of time.
As we read through the poem for the first time, questions may arise that cannot easily be answered. Make a note of such questions and carry on. In AO1, the key is to figure out WHAT is going on in terms of content, structure and word choice, and not so much HOW or WHY.
We need a clear set of images in our head before trying too hard to interpret them. -
Poetry AO2 video transcript
Assessment objective 2 is about contexts. Plural not singular. There is no single meaning or context which is the correct one.
It is important when addressing AO2 to go beyond surface meaning and story, and to look at underlying ideas and attitudes. Not just the poet’s, but our own.
A second reading leads us to ask ‘Why?’ rather than ‘What?’ and these questions might have more than one answer.
Why does he open the door of the carriage so ‘kindly’? Is this sarcastic?
Why won’t the speaker ‘stop for Death’? Is she in too much of a hurry to get on with her life?
Is ‘Eternity’ the grave? Or is it a suggestion that Death is not the end of the journey, and that there is life beyond the grave?
Dickinson’s beliefs, like those of many poets, were religious but not orthodox. In other words, she is asking us to think rather than giving us answers.
A lot of the meaning of this poem is a matter of tone, and whether we read lines literally or with irony (that idea that lines can mean two different things at the same time).
Another context to bring in at this point is the role of women at the time the poem was written.
Given the limitations of education for women at the time, how well equipped were they to answer big philosophical questions about life?
Dickinson herself was highly educated and an independent thinker, so the deeper awareness of ideas and attitudes would confront these larger questions about life and death – or mortality.
In nineteenth-century Puritan America. Such free thinking was unusual, especially for women. Dickinson’s poems were unknown and unpublished in her own time, but mean more to us today.
Once you have explored the deeper meanings of a text, you can begin to form your own personal response. -
Poetry AO3 video transcript
Assessment objective 3 requires learners to ‘recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects’. Note the word ‘appreciate’, which implies critical engagement and evaluation of how the text works.
AO3 does not ask you to look at language, structure and form in isolation. It is the commentary on how language contributes to ‘meanings and effects’ which counts here.
How does the poet’s use of language, structure and form lead us towards particular thoughts or feelings?
‘Meanings and effects’ suggests that there is more than one meaning for a text, and the language, structure and form of the poem make that meaning.
The word ‘effects’ does not just mean listing the literary effects which writers use. ‘Effects’ implies that words have an effect on the reader, so AO3 is closely related to AO4 (personal response).
Let’s look at ‘The Caged Skylark’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins as an example.
The title tells you this poem is about a caged songbird, but this is not to be understood literally. You can’t put a skylark in a cage, so this is a metaphor, or possibly an allegory, for something which is trapped and should be free.
This poem needs to be heard as well as read, as it depends just as much on its music - its various sound effects - as its images or pictures.
There are a couple of things to notice.
Firstly, the poem is 14 lines long, so it is a sonnet, and is divided into eight lines - the octave - and six lines - the sestet.
Secondly, there is rhyme. Only four rhymes which reinforce that division into octave and sestet, and make it clear that the poem changes direction after line eight.
There is a lot of alliteration. Often more than one word in the same line begins with the same letter and so has a similar sound.
When you pay attention to rhymes, sound effects, line endings and the stress of the poem, you have its rhythm.
As in most poems, rhythm is an important part of the effect, which is why it needs to be heard and read aloud.
It is usually a good idea to consider the structure and patterns of a poem before writing about its language. You need to appreciate this before considering the details of the poem.
How does language ‘create and shape’ a powerful opening here?
Notice the contrast between ‘dare-gale’ which sounds so exciting and ‘dull cage’. How does the alliteration reinforce that?
What about ‘skylark scanted’? What does that suggest has happened to the bird if we imagine it caged? The word ‘scanted’ suggests something is missing. Notice the difference in rhythm between the first half of the line, and the bare monosyllables at the end.
And what about the word ‘as’? It suggests the whole line is a simile, so we need to look out for a comparison.
This tells us the skylark resembles the human spirit.
If the human spirit is the skylark, the ‘bone-house’ is the ‘dull cage’.
Here is another contrast, sometimes called a juxtaposition.
The spirit is ‘mounting’, so like the bird it wants to climb and soar.
A bone-house sounds like a tomb, and a ‘mean house’ like a slum, but in contrast to the spirit, here the poet must be describing the body.
Think about the effect of talking about the body in this way.
Does it remind us of our own mortality?
And what are the things about having a body which can make the spirit mean?
In Hopkins’ poetry, it isn’t just imagery which makes an impact on the reader.
He also uses rhythm, based on what we call ‘stress’. In particular, Hopkins used a technique called ‘sprung rhythm’. Instead of the iambic rhythms familiar from English poetry such as Shakespeare’s plays, he would put strong stresses together.
‘This in drudgery, day- labouring-out life’s age’
When you say this line, you stress the syllables in bold. Notice how the line begins iambic, alternating weak and strong stresses, and he then puts strong stresses next to each other, by using long vowel sounds (‘a’ and ‘i’) which you have to put an emphasis on. Notice the stress on ‘day labour’ and ‘life’s age’.
Think about what this makes you feel about everyday human life, trapped in the material body instead of in the freedom of the spirit.
It provides further illustration of that comparison to a songbird trapped in a cage, and shows how we can sometimes feel trapped in our everyday lives.
In ‘The Caged Skylark’, Hopkins is clearly not just writing about a bird, but about human feelings. He describes a spirit which feels trapped in the material world, and the human body, and wants to be free to express itself and find its own ‘wild nest’.
A very strict verse form – the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet originally used for love poetry – may be an appropriate way to express a feeling of being trapped. But look at how Hopkins tries to escape from tight forms by breaking the rules, using alliteration and sprung rhythm, and notice the enjambment (run-on lines) in the final lines and the lack of punctuation.
There is a clear change of mood, as well as rhyme in the sestet. This is called a volta or turn, and it is stressed by repeated negation: ‘not’, ‘no rest’, ‘no prison’, ‘not distressed’, ‘nor he’.
Finally ‘risen’ is rhymed with ‘no prison’ to suggest an alternative to the images of being trapped or caged yet longing to sing.
Freedom and a ‘risen’ spirit are strongly linked. The allusions are to nature as well as religion to suggest a spiritual alternative for you, as the reader, to interpret to fit your emotions and beliefs. -
Poetry AO4 video transcript
To explore assessment objective 4 – ‘Personal Response’ - we will be looking at Tennyson’s poem ‘Song: Tears, Idle Tears’
Tennyson himself tells us that this poem came to him one Autumn on a visit to Tintern Abbey.
Personal response is not just about your own memories or experiences. Even if you had been to Tintern Abbey, it would not influence your critical reaction to Tenyson’s poem.
AO4 communicate a sensitive and informed personal response.
‘Communicate’ suggests that a personal response involves writing as well as reading skills. You need to shape your writing in a way which communicates your sensitive engagement with the text.
AO4 asks for your appreciation and evaluation of the poem.
This requires at least two readings. An initial overview identifies the overall emotions communicated by the poem, but a deeper appreciation of the mood it creates in the reader, depends on analysing the tone of the writing.
A personal response begins with an overview of the poem. The poem is called a song which tells you this poem is someone speaking or singing directly to you: a lyric.
They are singing about a feeling of sadness or nostalgia for the past, which they can’t quite pinpoint or define.
In stanza 1 where are the emotive words, which appeal to your emotions and call out for a personal response?
The image of tears rising in the heart makes no sense literally or scientifically, but it appeals to us emotionally because we metaphorically see the heart as the source of emotions. Stanza 2 is based around contrasting images of sails and sun: the ‘fresh’ image of arrival and the ‘sad’ image of the sinking sun and of departure.
Does the painting here illustrate an arrival or a departure? What do these contrasting ideas have in common? The emotive heart of stanza 2 is obvious: ‘friends’ and ‘all we love’.
Notice how the images are coloured by golds and reds, and by contrasting rising and falling vocabulary and rhythms.
We can also see that stanza 2 has a refrain, a repeated phrase from the end of the first stanza which is repeated in later stanzas: ‘the days that are no more’.
We now feel the poem is provoking a complex set of emotions in response to memories of the past, with images of both joy and sadness.
The patterns of the poem suggest that it is full of comparisons, and the poet chooses similes to compare this experience to other experiences and perhaps encourages you to think of similar experiences of your own, whether in real life or in your reading.
Stanza 3 appears to be an extended metaphor and seems to tell a particular story or memory. The poem is full of patterns of repetition and small variations - compare ‘so strange’ here with ‘so fresh’ in the previous stanza.
In stanza 4 we have moved back from a particular idea to a series of more general similes. All of these comparisons try to define the ‘tears’ and link them to experiences, and finally we have a mysterious final line -’ ‘O Death in Life, the days that are not more’ - in which the abstract ideas of life and death are personified in order for you to picture what the speaker is weeping over.
The days that have passed are a reminder of death in life, and an indication of mortality.
The poem seems to be a memento mori, in other words a reminder of our own mortality.
This is very gloomy subject and a first personal response might be that the poem is morbid, or depressing.
However, poets use images and sounds in more complex ways than this, and the poem makes its sad and dark images appealing and not just gloomy. For example, the image of autumn could be seen as beautiful and happy rather than sad and depressing.
We have so far focused on the ‘sensitive’ more than the informed part of AO4.
We are sensitive to imagery and sound, and informed by the words of the texts. Is any other information needed for an ‘informed personal response?
How helpful is it to know what a poet said his poem was about?
How helpful is it to know that:
Tennyson told friends that the poem was about feelings he often had as a young boy and it was not about ‘real woe’.
Tennyson’s poem ‘In Memoriam’, responded to the death of his friend who was buried south of Tintern.
The song was set to music many times, and was a ‘hit’ in Victorian times.
By the time the poem was published, Tennyson was an established poet and Poet Laureate.
All this information is interesting, but it does not replace your own personal response, and it shows you that the mood of the reader is more significant than the mood of the writer.
Comments and information about their lives might help to reinforce your own interpretation, but they don’t replace it.
AO4 teaches us to trust our instincts, informed by the language and imagery of the text.
You should think your own response is valid as long as it is firmly grounded in analysis and interpretation of the text.
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Prose -
Prose AO1 video transcript
The assessment objectives AO1 to AO4 remain the same across all papers. Therefore, to be successful, you must explain and analyse how the writers have conveyed their meanings through a wide range of different language and structure devices. You must do this in conjunction with relevant evidence, selected from the texts.
An easy way to interpret and communicate the importance of the assessment objectives is to think about them in the following way:
- When you use selected quotations, and develop explanations of meaning, significance and context in your paragraphs then you are addressing AO1 and AO2
- When you use these same quotations to analyse the range of effects created by the writer’s use of language and structure devices, then you are meeting AO3
- AO4 relates to the entirety of a candidate’s response, but it can be explicitly addressed and reinforced in a well-developed conclusion.
Each paper (or text studied) presents different opportunities for you to satisfy all four assessment objectives.
The examiner expects candidates to include slightly different things in their responses to Prose, Poetry, Drama and Unseen texts. This is because Prose, Poetry and Drama are written very differently, and communicate layers of meanings in different ways.
- In poetry you have a wide range of structural devices to draw upon which are absent in Prose
- In drama you can consider and discuss the use of stagecraft in your responses
- In Prose, the narrative style is an important element that can be different from techniques used in Drama and Poetry texts
You must be aware of this to investigate and practise how to comment upon the writers’ use of different devices to create a variety of effects across the set texts you are studying.
Let’s focus on AO1 more explicitly and think about what counts and what does not count as ‘detailed knowledge of the content of literary texts’ in Prose.
Perhaps it would be helpful to begin with what does not count. This will help ensure that you avoid any slips, trips or falls in your responses!
As a general rule, always remember that you are studying Literature, and writing Literature essays – not historical, scientific or geographical ones.
Lengthy personal interpretations of how the themes and messages of the text that are apparent in our modern world (or in the past) should also be avoided.
These ideas do not match the assessment objectives, and are not included in the mark scheme. If you include such comments then you are wasting words, and time in the examination.
Many candidates make the mistake of including a biographical account of the writer in their essay, or a lengthy account of what it was like to live in the period that the text was written.
Details of events or circumstances in a writer’s life that are directly significant to the text can be briefly included in the introduction and conclusion, but only when the text revolves around such a highly personal and specific event. Often this is more applicable in poetry than prose.
So what counts as ‘detailed knowledge of the content of literary texts’ in Prose?
In your responses, you should show an in-depth knowledge of the text by explaining meanings and their significance, in relation to this list.
‘contexts’ from AO2 should also be remembered. This list should be commented upon in terms of the context of the question in other words, what the question is asking the learners to focus on, and the context of where they come in the novel itself.
Which part of the text is being considered?, and
How that part relates to the whole of the story?
The word contexts is also important as it reminds you that you must respond to the text by showing an awareness of the writer’s intended meanings. You should also have a detailed knowledge of the messages and ideas the writer is conveying in relation to the text as a whole, and in relation to the different parts of it, too.
So, how can you satisfy AO1 in your essay responses, while observing a relevant focus that will also meet AO2? It sounds difficult but it really isn’t.
You can do this in a number of ways starting with the introduction of your response. Here is how you can make an introduction effective:
Firstly, ensure that it is not too long. You should use your introductions to show that you have a good understanding of the text (and the passage being analysed if it is a passage-based question that you are responding to). Therefore, three to four lines will be sufficient.
In these three to four lines, it is a good idea to try and develop a brief summary of the events and themes of the text
Ok, let’s look at 1984 by George Orwell.
Here is what an introduction to an answer on a passage-based question could look like.
The passage is taken from Chapter 1 of the novel. The question is:
Explore how Orwell conveys feelings of chaos and fear in the following passage.
Have a look at the example answer.
Let’s think about how you can satisfy AO1 in the main body of an essay response.
It is important that you maintain a high quality of explanations throughout your responses, and support your ideas with relevant evidence to exemplify and support your ideas. After all, the full AO1 includes ‘supported by reference to the text.’
However, selecting relevant evidence can often be difficult. To help you achieve this, let’s look at these questions and use them as a checklist.
Do you understand what the quotation means?
Does the quotation help you answer the question?
How does the quotation help you to explain something about character, events, themes, setting and/or atmosphere in relation to the question?
Does the quotation contain interesting vocabulary choices and/or imagery that will help to explore the different effects the writer has created?
You have 45 minutes to respond to the Prose question and you should aim to use at least six or seven quotations form the whole text to answer the essay question. Make sure these are phrases or sentences rather than words.
You have selected evidence to answer the essay question, so what does a supported explanation of meaning and content look like?
Here is an example. It is in response to the same passage and question you considered for the introduction.
To what extent do you think this response satisfies AO1 and AO2?
Can you spot where the candidate has responded to the surface meaning, but then elaborated on them to explore the hidden and figurative meanings contained in the quotation?
Pause the video to allow some thought about these questions. You could look at the mark scheme and consider what mark this paragraph should get, and why?
If you refer to the mark scheme you will note that this paragraph merits a Level 8 mark as it:
This response incorporates well-selected reference to the text skilfully (AO1). The quotation contains what seem like a straightforward description, but in actual fact you know that these images metaphorically to how Winston feels at the start of the text. It also demonstrates detailed knowledge of the text.
Sustains a critical understanding of the text showing individuality and insight (AO2). The candidate shows an understanding of the surface and hidden/ figurative meanings of the quotation by explaining the significance of events and setting.
Responds sensitively and in considerable detail to the way the writer achieves his effects (AO3). The candidate explores how the writer’s use of language creates effects on the reader by discussing character, setting and atmosphere.
Sustains personal and evaluative engagement with the task and text (AO4). The candidate evaluates ideas in relation to the essay question and supports ideas with detailed reasons.
Using example paragraphs like this in conjunction with the mark scheme can be a very useful activity. You can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of responses so that you know how to demonstrate a ‘detailed knowledge’ and support ideas with references from the text. It can also help you to understand how to meet the other assessment objectives.
For example, if you can understand the difference between a Level 4, a Level 6 and a Level 8 response (and explain why) then you will have a good understanding of what you must do. -
Prose AO2 video transcript
‘Son Coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitot qu’on le touche il résonne.’
Wow! I thought I was taking Literature in ENGLISH! This is from the start of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher.
And there is a complexity of meanings.
In fact, all of the Prose texts on the Set Text list for Cambridge IGCSE Literature in English, Paper 1, communicate meanings
on different levels
in different ways, and
at different stages of your narratives.
This is more obvious in Poe’s opening epigraph, than it is in any of the other texts. It means that you must translate the meaning from another language.
But, no matter what text you have chosen, the problem of how to unpack the layers of meaning in a manageable and understandable way is often an ongoing battle.
However, it is a battle you must win as assessment objective 2 requires that you to:
‘Understand the meanings (plural!) of literary texts and their contexts, and explore texts beyond surface meanings to show deeper awareness of ideas and attitudes.’
Perhaps a good way of thinking about surface meanings and other meanings is to recall Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland. Before Alice goes through the rabbit hole and discovers a world of reality and meaning she never imagined existed, all she knew was the regular, everyday surface meaning of her existence. Her eyes and mind were never exposed to the layers of hidden meaning that existed beyond this.
It is like Alice (before she plunges through the rabbit hole), when you read a text for the first time as your mind tends to focus on the narrative events, the surface meanings, rather than the writer’s hidden, implied and figurative meanings.
So, what does this require you to do in your essay responses? The assessment objective AO2 mentions surface meaning.
Therefore, it is important that the you
know what it is
understand what other types of meaning there are, and
know how to comment upon the effects that they create.
A good starting point in this would be to explore the word meanings.
How can there be more than one meaning to a text?
What is the ‘surface meaning of a text’?
What other types of meanings are there (for example, hidden, implied, and figurative)?
How is a text able to communicate more than one meaning?
Here’s a way of looking at the two layers of meaning to help consolidate ideas.
For surface meanings think about narrative, how the characters think and behave, the relationships between characters, the themes of the text and the settings.
For hidden, implied and figurative meanings – explore the effects of dramatic irony, narrative style, red herrings, foreshadowing, symbolism, allegory, imagery, use of flashback.
What makes up the surface meanings of a text constitute your literal understandings of the events, characters and how you understand the writer’s messages. Yet, the surface meanings are the tip of the iceberg, not the hidden bulk below.
The hidden, implied and figurative (or allegorical) meanings need to be explored and unpacked carefully as these contain the writer’s key ideas. They aid us in grasping a more secure and in-depth ownership of both the events, and the writer’s messages. If you like, these other meanings are what give the text its buoyancy.
Therefore, a careful consideration of more hidden and complicated meanings enables you to develop explanations and analysis that maximises your chances of achieving higher marks in the exam.
But remember to support your ideas with detailed reasons, and link your ideas to the focus of the essay question.
Ok, let’s go back to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, and look at the narrator’s first observations of the House of Usher.
Look at the first five paragraphs of the text ending with the line ‘…lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.’
A way to unpack the surface meaning here would be to consider what descriptions of the setting add to the sense of atmosphere at the start of the story and how these descriptions help create a strong feeling of tension and suspense. Then explore how these descriptions convey ideas about the narrator’s apprehension and fear of entering the place.
To help explore the figurative, implied and hidden meanings explore the symbolism contained in these descriptions. Think about, how the descriptions of the House of Usher helps to communicate meanings about Roderick, his sister and the Usher family.
An obvious example would be the ‘fissure’ that runs down the building as he arrives.
How does this structural crack represent similarities in the Usher family and in the character of Roderick?
Explore how these descriptions give clues about subsequent events and how they foreshadow later parts of the story?
Here are some other activities to help secure your knowledge and understandings of a text’s meanings.
AO1 is an important part of any investigation of meanings as you must always be able to illustrate your ideas by referring to evidence from the text. Any explanation of meaning must be rooted in evidence from the text (whether it is a passage-based question or a question about the whole text). In other words, if you were to make a claim about the text (surface or figurative) this must be supported with a quotation, an explanation and analysis in line with the writer’s intended meanings, themes and messages.
So how can you make use of these layers of meaning in your examination responses?
Well, there are a number ways of utilising your knowledge of the surface and hidden meanings of a text. It is important to look at the layers of meaning.
Use these sentence starters to help form explanations and analysis of quotations to discuss both the surface and figurative meanings of a text, in an examination response.
‘His heart is a tightened lute;
As soon as one touches it, it echoes.’
The Epigraph of Poe’s Gothic short story offers much in terms of preparing the reader for the surface meaning of the text, and signalling the important meanings relating to the character of Roderick (and perhaps, the narrator) as well as the story’s events.
After the first reading, this is the entrance to the rabbit hole! -
Prose AO3 video transcript
The aim of this video is to give you and your learners a breakdown of how Assessment Objective 3 is assessed. However, remember that for each candidate answer, all four assessment objectives are considered by the examiner. The best candidate responses will consider all four when answering the question.
AO3: Recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects.
Think of a movie you know and enjoy, perhaps one you have watched more than once. Now, think of a part in that movie that makes you feel happy, or sad, or frightened. Now think about how and why that scene makes you feel happy, sad or frightened.- What is it about that part of the movie that makes you feel this way?
- What has the director done to evoke that emotion in you?
So, what has all this got to do with responding to prose texts? Well, when we read a text, the writer manipulates our emotions and thoughts in relation to the events that are unfolding. Instead of using the audio and visual tools, writers use a range of language and structural devices to create effects upon us. The effects of these language and structure devices affect how we feel towards, and understand, the meanings of a text, the significance of settings, the senses of atmosphere created and the development of characters and their relationships.
In terms of the mark scheme, we need to fulfil Assessment Objective 3 (along with AO1, AO2 and AO4). That means we must recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects. What does it mean really? Basically, to satisfy this assessment objective, we must focus on analysing how the writer’s use of language and structure devices makes the reader feel about events, characters, relationships between characters, settings and the senses of atmosphere created.
Here is a list of some of the language and structure devices writers use in order to affect our feelings and thoughts as they tell their stories. In order to maximise our marks, we should always try to select quotations that allow us to discuss the effects of these things when responding to the examination questions. If we use quotations which contain relevant and effective language devices, then our explanations and analysis of them should also be relevant and effective. Language devices- Interesting adjectives
- Powerful adverbs
- Simile
- Metaphor
- Personification
- Alliteration
- Oxymoron
- Repetition
- Hyperbole
- Reported speech
- Sentence structures
- Paragraph length
- Use of flashback
- Narrative voice (i.e. first or third perspective)
- Dramatic irony
- Foreshadowing
Let’s look at how Brontë creates effects upon the reader through her use of language. There is not much opportunity here to discuss the use of structural devices. However, the fact that Brontë chose to begin the story when Jane was young and mistreated by her cousins and her Aunt, Mrs. Reed, is significant. The story would have a different effect and so would our feelings of empathy with Jane, had the story begun when Jane was in her twenties. Therefore, how Brontë begins the story in Jane’s youth to secure a deep emotional bond between the reader and this character is worthy of a brief structural point, perhaps in a short paragraph after your introduction. Let’s see if we can include that a bit later on when we consider how we can go about developing our written responses to this passage-based question.
Let’s try and select quotations from this passage that will help us answer this question. What to think about when selecting quotations from the text:- Do I understand what the quotation means?
- Does the quotation help me answer the question?
- How does the quotation help me to explain something about character, events, themes, settings and/or atmosphere in relation to the question?
- Does the quotation contain interesting vocabulary choices and/or imagery that will help me explore the different effects the writer has created?
Remember you do not get any marks for retelling the story. Some of these quotations are quite large, and too long to include in an essay. After all, we don’t want to waste words in the 45 minutes we have to respond to the essay question during the examination.
So instead of quoting each long sentence you could choose to use parts of the quotation. For example, you could just use the phrases highlighted in bold. ‘My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated; endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort.’ In this way, we will be able to keep our writing very specific, and focus in on commenting upon the effects created by Brontë’s use of language. However, what would this paragraph look like?
Here is an example of what such a response could look like. Take a moment to read this carefully (with your mark schemes).
Here is an example of what such a response could look like. Take a moment to read this carefully (with your mark schemes). The isolation and fear that Jane feels in the red-room climaxes when she sees the light from the lantern. ‘My heart beat thick, my head grew hot;’ emphasises the pure terror that she endures as she imagines that it is her dead uncle’s spirit visiting her. It conveys her absolute fear as she is deeply distressed and alone; thus, creating great sympathy for her. ‘I was oppressed, suffocated;’ emphasises her isolation as the pronouns ‘my’ and ‘I’ remind us she is alone and vulnerable. Also, she is physically suffering here as she cannot breathe; emphasising her panic and helplessness. ‘rushed’ reinforces these feelings of terror as she acts in a sudden and uncontrolled way. ‘shook the lock in desperate effort.’ also highlights her fear as she has lost control and battles to open the door even though she knows it is securely locked. The contrasting long vowel sounds and harder consonant sounds convey her loneliness and fear as they add a soft, but urgent helplessness to her tone. This long sentence, with its sudden pauses of punctuation, adds a jerky tension and breathlessness that helps convey her fear too. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this paragraph? Try to use a mixture of your own comments and comments from the mark scheme as you answer this question. Not all of your paragraphs have to be this long. The length of your paragraphs will always depend on the length of the quotation you are using. This is an example of a way you could respond to satisfy our assessment objectives in detail but remain concise and focused without wasting words.
So how does this response satisfy Assessment Objective 3? Let’s take a look at these highlighted parts.
In these parts you can see that the candidate has:- in yellow, recognised ways in which the writer has used language to create and shape meanings and effects
- in green, appreciated how the writer has used language to create and shape meanings and effects
- in pink, recognised ways in which the writer has used structure to create and shape meanings and effects
- in blue, appreciated how the writer has used structure to create and shape meanings and effects.
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Prose AO4 video transcript
The aim of this video is to give you and your learners a breakdown of how Assessment Objective 4 is assessed. However, remember that for each candidate answer, all four assessment objectives are considered by the examiner. The best candidate responses will consider all four when answering a question.
AO4: Communicate a sensitive and informed personal response to literary texts.
A ‘sensitive personal response’. You need to have a secure and considered knowledge and understanding of the text, and the writer’s intended meanings and messages. Assessment Objective 4 requires you to reflect on and incorporate the ideas you have expressed in relation to Assessment Objectives 1, 2 and 3.
Assessment Objective 4 states that you must respond in a ‘personal’ way. However, this does not mean that you should freely express any ideas, opinions or value judgements that you have about the text and the writer. You should definitely avoid this when answering the exam question. You should not comment on:- how well a writer has written a text
- how well they have conveyed a theme
- how they could have improved the text
- how they should have ended the novel
- why we thought the text was ‘boring’.
So, how should you structure and communicate an effective and sensitive personal response that fulfils Assessment Objective 4? Think back to what you have considered about AO1, AO2 and AO3.- What should you look out for when selecting your quotations?
- What are the key things to respond to when you are developing explanations of quotations (AO1 and AO2)?
- What aspects of the text did you identify that you had to respond to when developing your analysis of quotations?
Here are some lists to remind you of what we identified in your responses to Assessment Objectives 1, 2 and 3.
How to select quotations
How does the quotation help to explain something about: character, events, themes, setting and/or atmosphere in relation to the question?
Aspects of the text to focus on when explaining the meaning and context of our quotations:
- Narrative/events- How characters think and behave
- Relationships between characters
- Themes
- Settings
- Sense of atmosphere
Language devices to focus on when analysing how the reader is made to feel about events, characters, themes and settings:
- Dramatic irony- Narrative style
- Red herrings
- Foreshadowing
- Symbolism
- Allegory
- Imagery
- Flashback
Now that you have reminded yourself about what you must do to cover Assessment Objectives 1, 2 and 3, what do you think the areas of our ‘sensitive personal response’ should be? What aspects of the text do you respond to in order to express your Assessment Objective 4 personal response?
So, what have we concluded? Hopefully, this list reflects some of the focus of your discussions:
- Character behaviour and actions
- Character relationships
- Themes
- Settings
- Events
- Atmosphere
These are the aspects of the text that you are most concerned about in relation to all of our assessment objectives.- You should select quotations that are to do with these things (AO1).
- You should develop explanations about these things (AO1 and AO2).
- You should analyse how the writer’s use of language and structure makes the reader feel about these things (AO3).
So, what have we concluded?
Hopefully, this list reflects some of the focus of your discussions:- Character behaviour and actions
- Character relationships
- Themes
- Settings
- Events
- Atmosphere
These are the aspects of the text that you are most concerned about in relation to all of our assessment objectives.- You should select quotations that are to do with these things (AO1).
- You should develop explanations about these things (AO1 and AO2).
- You should analyse how the writer’s use of language and structure makes the reader feel about these things (AO3).
What constitutes a sensitive personal response is actually your whole response:- It is your response to the writer’s ideas and messages.
- It is your response to how the writer has created effects through his/her (use of) language devices and structure devices.
- It is how you develop your response and answer the essay question.
- Character behaviour and actions
- Character relationships
- Themes
- Settings
- Events
- Atmosphere
- works as a conclusion?
- satisfies Assessment Objective 4?
- satisfies the other assessment objectives?
- The first sentence summarises the sensitive personal response expressed in the main body of the essay. These two sentences also directly answer the essay question.
- The personal response in sentences 3, 4 and 5 identifies key themes of the passage that are relevant to the essay question.
- The personal response relates the key themes and the writer’s messages to how the candidate views contemporary global events.
- The ideas in the candidate’s personal response relate to the ideas in the essay question.
Context matters!!! Don’t be the camera, see the whole picture!
Respond to what you know about the writer’s intended meanings and messages. It is very important to remember that you must show an appreciation and evaluation of the writer’s intended meanings in your essay responses. You must not just make up your own ideas and apply them to the text. Every explanation or point of analysis that you offer should be identifiable in the quotation you have used. All of your ideas must be linked to the text, and evidenced there. Do not make things up. Rely on what you have learnt in lessons about the meanings of the text and the writer’s messages.
Remember to link your ideas to the focus of the essay question.
Let’s look at the conclusion of your essay.
What is the purpose of a conclusion?
To begin with, your conclusions should not simply be a repetition of the ideas you have presented in the main body of your essay. You can use your conclusion to express an explicit ‘sensitive personal response’ to the key messages and themes conveyed in the passage (or the whole text) that we are analysing.
You must develop a personal response in relation to one or more of the things on this list:
Try to use your personal response in your conclusion to relate the ideas of the text to your own personal experiences and how you understand such messages in relation to how you see the world. This will help show ownership of the writer’s messages and themes and satisfy AO4 in an effective way.
Let’s look at an example of a conclusion.
In conclusion, Orwell conveys feelings of chaos and fear through Winston’s observations of how hostile London is under Party rule. He emphasises the bleak weather and how the towering Party buildings and their slogans dominate the city and everyone’s lives. Orwell’s ideas of a government watching and controlling its people’s private lives through fear is becoming more and more real in today’s world; especially after 9/11. For example, many governments now have laws that enable them to arrest and detain people without charge, and closely watch people’s activity on social media. This makes the text haunting as it acts like a warning to us of what our world might become.
This is a response to the passage and essay question we looked at in our video on Assessment Objective 1 taken from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Here is a reminder of the question that was attached to that passage-based question: Explore how Orwell conveys feelings of chaos and fear in the following passage.
Read this conclusion carefully. To what extent do you think it:
Here is why we think it is an effective conclusion:
It could have been improved if it had been shorter.
Remember, in this paper you are not given marks for creating effects in your use of language. Instead, you gain marks for discussing the range of effects created by the writers’ uses of language and structure.
Avoid repetition of ideas you expressed in the main body of your essay
Keep your personal opinion focused and related to the focus of the essay question.
Your conclusion should be 5–6 lines long in total.
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Drama -
Drama AO1 video transcript
Knowing the text in detail is key to unlocking its meanings. Using quotations correctly demonstrates that we know the text and makes our points clear. In this video we will look at some useful tips for demonstrating knowledge of the text in a concise way, and then look at textual elements in greater detail.
To do this we are going to look at two of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. Assessment objective 1 requires candidates to show detailed knowledge of their text and support it with appropriate references.
Knowledge of the content of the text is relatively easy to demonstrate; what often trips candidates up is the way they demonstrate that knowledge. Quotations must be relevant and concise, and it is crucial not to re-tell plot points as it wastes valuable time and energy in exams.
The details and quotations used to demonstrate knowledge of the text in work parallel with the context, language, form and structure of the play found in assessment objective 2 and assessment objective 3 to create the sensitive and informed response required by assessment objective 4.
Let us begin with Romeo and Juliet as our text. We will start by thinking about good use of quotations and links between separate areas of the play. One way to easily refer to different sections of the play is to use Freytag’s Pyramid of dramatic structure. The structure falls in to five sections.
The exposition sets the scene. The rising action is where things begin to create complications. The climax is the turning point of the story. The falling action is a series of events which lead to the denouement. And the denouement is the result of everything which has happened since the exposition.
This is the dramatic structure of Romeo and Juliet. As you can see everything centres around the killing of Tybalt and Mercutio in Act 3 Scene 1.
Throughout the exposition and rising action there is a lot of comedy provided by Mercutio. The comedy dies at the climax when he dies and puts “a plague” on both houses. Our AO3 knowledge of context tells us that one of the most famous plagues is from the bible. According to the bible God sent a plague which killed every first born son in Egypt. In Romeo and Juliet we see the death of both first born children – Romeo, and Juliet, and the Capulet heir apparent Tybalt. This means that we could consider Mercutio as foreshadowing the deaths of these three characters.
Romeo’s response to the death of Mercutio also foreshadows the events which lead up to the denouement and his death. The idea that “others must” end the woe demonstrates the idea that Romeo is not in control of his own destiny. This is accurate in two ways.
Firstly it is “others” who control his “black fate” during the falling action; he is “exile[d]” by the Prince, made part of Juliet and Friar Laurence’s plans without being told about them, the victim of Balthazar’s enthusiasm to keep him informed, and the victim of a quarantined house in Mantua. Secondly, the modal auxiliary “must” refers to the level of need. Without intervention Romeo will die.
Now we shall look at the dramatic structure of Macbeth the play and the character development of Macbeth the character.
Similar to Romeo and Juliet the Climax of Macbeth is a death. In this case Banquo’s in Act 3 Scene 3. The final moments before the climax are a conversation between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth which ends with Macbeth. Here we will apply a little of our AO3 knowledge of language, form and structure. Macbeth’s speech is written mainly in blank verse and ends with two couplets and a line of prose. It contains multiple references to vision, “eye”, “invisible”, “light”, and a lexical set, or semantic field, of violence and death, “bloody”, “tear to pieces”, “night’s black agents”, “crow”, “prey”.
The concept of vision is a recurring motif in Macbeth and reflects the themes of prophecy, and secrets. The semantic field of violence links to the recurring symbol of blood throughout the play, and to the themes of violence and betrayal
Earlier in the rising action we also see him make reference to vision and violence through his “black and deep desires” which he must not let “light see”. Again the speech is structured. This time it is rhymed iambic pentameter. We can therefore say that these types of reference and a metered speech rhythm are typical of Macbeth during the rising action and demonstrate his focused ambition.
However, once we pass the climax and enter the falling action Macbeth’s speech patterns begin to change. Macbeth is quite literally haunted by his actions. Not only does he see Banquo’s ghost but he is also being driven mad by his guilt. Here we again apply our knowledge of AO3 language, form and structure and find Macbeth is now speaking in prose rather than blank verse. One of the reasons Shakespeare used prose was to demonstrate insanity. Straight prose is quite jagged and has no rhythm which reflects the disordered state of mind associated with insanity.
The witches further prophecies from Act 4 Scene 1 make Macbeth paranoid, obsessive, and, in many ways, foolhardy. He fears Macduff but feels invincible as the only conditions by which he can be “vanquish’d” involve unlikely events such as “Great Birnham wood” moving location, and fighting a man not “of woman born”. This fear and invincibility leads him to react with greater violence throughout the falling action.
By the time we reach the denouement of the play and Macbeth’s final battle with Macduff the “brave Macbeth” from the first act who murdered the “rebel” Macdonwald has been replaced by the “tyrant” Macbeth who has committed regicide and multiple murders.
As we enter this final showdown Macbeth is still using more of a prose structure. Not only does this reflect his disordered mental state, it also allows Shakespeare to structure the dialogue to mirror the fight. Each final line has a different length giving it impact.
“To one of woman born” POW!
“Untimely ripp’d” THWACK! and so forth.
Macbeth’s final couplet returns him, in death to his original character. As he is using a poetic structure we can say his mind is clearer and his challenge to “Lay on, Macduff”, combined with his willingness to face his probable death as prophesied by the witches is reminiscent of the first description of “brave Macbeth”, “valour’s minion”, a man who deserved that name.
As you can see from these two examples good quotes are easy to embed. A good quote does not need to be long. Personally I would say that if a quote is longer than six words then it better be the greatest quote ever. In most cases, as you saw, one or two words is enough.
Short quotes are easier to remember with accuracy.
Unless you have an eidetic memory you will never memorise every line of the play and nothing is worse than having long, inaccurate or paraphrased quotes. Mercutio’s earlier “plague” quote is often misquoted as “a plague ON both your houses”.
By embedding the quote as we did earlier we both avoid inaccuracy and create a nicer, more precise and concise writing style.
Quotes also give us opportunity to demonstrate our knowledge of language, form and structure. By keeping our quotes short we can perform single word level analysis as demonstrated with “others” and “must”. -
Drama AO2 video transcript
Unlocking the deeper meanings in Shakespeare requires both knowledge of different contexts and an ability to connect the text with the world around it. To fully explore how to find these deeper meanings we will look at two of Shakespeare’s tragedies: Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. To demonstrate how the assessment objectives work together, we will use these two plays for all of the assessment objectives: AO1, AO2, AO3 and AO4.
Assessment Objective 2 requires you to understand, and then explore not one, but the many contexts and meanings found in Shakespeare’s works. You are also required to look beyond the surface meaning of the text to show a deeper awareness of ideas and attitudes. Understanding these contexts helps us understand both the surface meaning (AO1) and develop our deeper awareness of attitudes and ideas, needed for AO2.
The understanding of characters, relationships, situations and themes needed to succeed in looking beyond surface meaning and demonstrating deeper awareness goes further than the knowledge of the text found in AO1. Assessment Objective 2 is essentially all about the question ‘Why?’ To find the answers, we need to look at two main areas of context: the context of production and the context of reception. We shall begin by looking at the context of production and what we expect from a Shakespearean tragedy.
Macbeth is a typical Shakespearean tragedy. Our knowledge of the text tells us that Macbeth and, in many ways, Lady Macbeth are tragic heroes. They both have the fatal flaw of ambition. They reach dizzying heights of power which is ripped from them by the manipulation of the witches and a series of strange, supernatural events.
However, our knowledge of Romeo and Juliet shows it does not conform with these common features. Neither Romeo nor Juliet are noblepersons – they are the children. They gain no power or wealth. If anything they lose power during the play. There are external pressures which lead to their downfall but they are not really created by fate, or evil spirits, or even a manipulative character.
Romeo and Juliet’s downfalls come about through love, circumstance, and youthful, passionate inexperience. So Romeo and Juliet does conform in all but one way with the common features of Shakespearean comedy. We have young lovers separated by their parents’ ‘ancient grudge’. They are separated and reunited. They are masked when they meet and their identities are ‘known too late’. The nurse and Friar Lawrence are both examples of clever servants. The plot is fairly complex and there are a lot of comic scenes in the rising action.
Therefore, Romeo and Juliet is a comedy even though it hasn’t got a happy ending.
This is the context of production. We understand Shakespeare deliberately produced the play using what most people who go to plays would understand to be features of comedy.
But why would Shakespeare use comic features for his tragedy? Here we need to think about the context of reception.
Shakespeare wrote more comedies than histories or tragedies, and he wrote three comedies in the same year as Romeo and Juliet. The fact that his comic structures are usually used to create a happy ending filled with love and reconciliation makes the audience feel like Juliet will wake up and stop Romeo drinking the poison. The fact that she wakes up after this moment would have been emotional and shocking to a Shakespearean audience. By understanding this context of reception, we understand the context of production.
When thinking about the audience, and this is crucial to Assessment Objective 4 (creating a sensitive and informed response), it is important to remember who the audience is.
You are one audience: you are modern, you study the subject and therefore look at it critically, you are looking at the play with ‘work’ eyes and not with ‘relaxing trip to the theatre’ eyes.
However, as you are not the only audience, understanding different audiences will help your response to Assessment Objective 2.
The original audience would have been at the theatre for pleasure, understood every joke and political reference, and been cheering and booing.
A very patriarchal audience would probably not publicly appreciate Juliet’s rebellion as much as a less patriarchal one.
Similarly, a very feminist audience might not appreciate Romeo and Juliet at all, as it mainly conforms to traditional male and female stereotypes.
Another context to consider is masculinity and femininity. Shakespeare loved to play with gender and identity.
Lady Macbeth is an excellent example of how Shakespeare manipulates gender and identity. Here we will need to apply our Assessment Objective 3 (language, form and structure) knowledge.
The part of Lady Macbeth is given equal status in the structure up until Act 2 Scene 3. She has an equal share of the dialogue and is presented on equal terms with the male characters.
The audience’s first encounter with Lady Macbeth in Act 1 Scene 5 instantly presents her with traditionally male characteristics, with levels of ambition and violence equal to or even greater than Macbeth. Her concern that Macbeth is ‘too full o’ the milk of human kindness’ implies that she considers Macbeth is too feminine, and he lacks the brutality to do what he ‘must do’. Shakespeare’s choice to have ‘milk’ as the substance of the ‘human kindness’ Lady Macbeth spurns has connotations of motherhood, a sacredly female role.
Act 1 Scene 5
Lady Macbeth
…….Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way:
Lady Macbeth refers to milk and motherhood again later in the scene, but this time in relation to herself. She demands the spirits ‘unsex’ her, and fill her full of ‘direst cruelty’, the opposite of the ‘milk of human kindness’ which her husband possesses. She asks that they ‘Stop up’ her reproductive system and prevent the menstrual ‘visitings of nature’ and the milk from her ‘woman’s breasts’ is to become ‘gall’ or poison.
It’s worth considering how masculine Lady Macbeth really is, as she never demands to be male, just free from the restrictions of being female.
As soon as Macbeth assumes the ‘man’s role’ and commits the murder, all her masculinity vanishes, and to some extent so does she. Her fainting can be seen as a very ladylike response and completely alien to the earlier bloodthirsty Lady Macbeth. Ironically, Macbeth becomes so fuelled by the masculinity and ambition she desired in him, that he has no time to even mourn her death.
Act 1 Scene 5
Lady Macbeth
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'
We have looked at how understanding different contexts helps us to open up and understand the text (AO1) more deeply (AO2). It also helps us to explore Shakespeare’s use of language and structure (AO3), helping us to inform a sensitive and personal response (AO4). -
Drama AO3 video transcript
Drama AO3The aim of this video is to give you and your learners a breakdown of how Assessment Objective 3 is assessed. However, remember that for each candidate’s answer, all four assessment objectives are considered by the examiner. The best candidate responses will consider all four when answering the question.
AO3: Recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects.
In order not to just recognise, but appreciate the ways in which Shakespeare used language, form and structure we are going to look at two of Shakespeare’s tragedies: Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth.
Assessment Objective 3 requires you to recognise, and then appreciate, not one, but the many ways Shakespeare used language, form and structure to create and shape the multiple meanings and effects in his work.
In order for you to achieve this, we need first to consider what is meant by recognise and appreciate.
Candidates will have to demonstrate an understanding of the writer’s intentions and methods, and how to respond to the writer’s use of language.
To recognise and appreciate, we must be able to understand Shakespeare’s methods, such as:
• What techniques has he used? • What effects are they creating? • Does this fit with our expectation?
We must also be able to understand Shakespeare’s intentions:
• Why did he do what he did? • How was he trying to shape the audience’s thoughts and feelings? • What impact was he trying to have on the audience?
To create a response to Shakespeare’s use of language we must look at his use of language in close detail and examine the nuances of words to decide why that word was chosen.
Let’s start by looking at the Prologue from Act 1 of Romeo and Juliet. We shall look at Shakespeare’s methods, starting with form and structure.
ACT I
PROLOGUE
Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
The opening of the play takes the form of a sonnet – a love poem.
It is 14 lines long.
It has the ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet.
It is written in iambic pentameter.
We know that sonnets are associated with love and death which are two of the major themes of the play, so Shakespeare is giving the audience a clue to the story.
Now we move on to language, which also reflects these themes. Through the sonnet, Shakespeare promises the audience ‘lovers’ that are ‘cross’d’ and ‘mark’d’ by forces as powerful as ‘death’ and the ‘star(s)’. He hints at a deadlocked battle between equals suddenly becoming unlocked by juxtaposing an ‘ancient grudge’ with ‘new mutiny’. He uses very obvious caesura in the first four lines to reinforce this sense of division. He promises political intrigue and murder through the play on words ‘civil blood makes civil hands unclean’. He even gives away the ending and still claims there is more to say.
Shakespeare’s intention was to tantalise the audience by offering them a truly juicy story: love and death are considered the two most common themes in literature. So by writing this prologue as a sonnet, making clever use of language, Shakespeare was putting his audience into the correct frame of mind for his play.
But why else does he feel the need to open his play in this way?
To answer we need to add in some of our knowledge from Assessment Objective 1 and Assessment Objective 2.
Our Assessment Objective 1 knowledge of the play, and Assessment Objective 2 knowledge of context of production, suggests that one reason could be because the opening scene (Act 1 Scene 1) of Romeo and Juliet is a comic scene.
Shakespeare is setting a serious and formal tone in the prologue by using a sonnet which has a strict and rigid form and structure. Act 1 Scene 1 is a comic scene. By starting his tragedy with a comic scene, Shakespeare would have given the wrong message to his audience.
SCENE 1. Verona. A public place. Enter SAMPSON and GREGORY, of the house of Capulet, armed with swords and bucklers SAMPSON Gregory, o' my word, we'll not carry coals. GREGORY No, for then we should be colliers. SAMPSON I mean, an we be in choler, we'll draw. GREGORY Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o' the collar. SAMPSON I strike quickly, being moved. GREGORY But thou art not quickly moved to strike. SAMPSON A dog of the house of Montague moves me. GREGORY To move is to stir; and to be valiant is to stand: therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn'st away.
Act 1 Scene 1 contains a series of puns, based on homonyms of ‘collier’, immature bravado from Sampson in the lines ‘we’ll draw’ and ‘I strike quickly’, and joking insults from Gregory, ‘if thou art moved, thou runn’st away.’
This scene is unlike most of the rest of Romeo and Juliet which is written in blank verse, as it is written in prose. This is because the lack of rhythmic structure allows for the freedom needed to make Sampson and Gregory’s exchange sharp and witty. This is also because the characters are from a lower class and Shakespeare often wrote the dialogue for his lower-class characters in prose. This was partly to show a lack of education and partly as another layer of character presentation, a literary type of costume to work with clothing, accent, walk, laugh, etc.
Let’s now look at the opening of Macbeth. Again we will look at Shakespeare’s method to try and work out his intentions.
ACT I SCENE I. A desert place. Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches First Witch When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? Second Witch When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won. Third Witch That will be ere the set of sun. First Witch Where the place? Second Witch Upon the heath. Third Witch There to meet with Macbeth. First Witch I come, Graymalkin! Second Witch Paddock calls. Third Witch Anon! ALL Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.
Starting with the methods.
The majority of Macbeth is written in blank verse. As Shakespeare wrote Macbeth near the end of his career, the blank verse is less rigid than in Romeo and Juliet but experts agree that it is still blank verse.
However, Shakespeare begins not with blank verse, but with something else entirely.
The witches speak in a rhyming style – AABBBCDDEFGHH – which opens and closes with a rhyming couplet.
The rhythm is also very different as it is a combination of trochaic (DUM de) and iambic (de DUM) rhythm. As normal speech is usually mainly iambic and does not rhyme, this separates the witches from normal people.
Why does Shakespeare begin the play with such a different rhyme and rhythm? Because the language of the witches separates them from normal people. This is reinforced when the first thing that we notice when we read the text is the pathetic fallacy in the stage direction ‘Thunder and lightning’. Although this is not a spoken element of the text it is still a part of the text and therefore important in creating and shaping meaning and effect. The witches are abnormal – or ‘unnatural’ – and this difference is reflected in both the language and the setting. Shakespeare continues to use pathetic fallacy to foreshadow the stormy future of Scotland’s monarchy and the evil nature of the witches. The witches are currently meeting in thunder and lightning, travel through ‘fog and filthy air’ and plan to meet in ‘thunder, lightning, or in rain’ showing they are associated with dangerous, powerful forces and deeds now and in the future. Shakespeare also gives the witches the power to know the future and that the battle will be over ‘ere the set of sun’. This foresight is also shown in the witches’ line ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ which foreshadows and pre-echoes Macbeth’s very first line in Act 1 Scene 3, ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’.
Shakespeare’s intentions here are clear. He is setting up the character of the witches by showing the audience the extent of their power and leading the audience to believe them and fear them. Awareness of how he uses language, form and structure helps us to see more deeply into his intentions.
Why else does he feel the need to open his play in this way? To answer we need to add in some of our knowledge from AO1 and AO2.
Our knowledge of the context of production of the play tells us that Macbeth was written as a tribute to King James I/VI. He is even mentioned in the play.
Macbeth is loosely based on the historical events of James’s family; Banquo is credited with being the founder of the Stuart line.
As Macbeth the play is quite different from Macbeth the reality, opening the play with the witches helps create a sense of separation from reality and a connection to it through their accurate prophecies. Also, King James was a great believer in witchcraft and very much against the practice of it on religious grounds. This led to the banning of Macbeth for five years as he feared the spells were real.
Our knowledge of the text also helps us to recognise that many of the main themes and elements of the play are referred to in the opening scene – witchcraft and the supernatural, Macbeth, prophecy, war and violence, deception and the idea that ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’.
We have looked at how understanding language, structure and form (AO3) helps us to open up and understand the text (AO1) more deeply (AO2), helping us to inform a sensitive and personal response (AO4). -
Drama AO4 video transcript
Drama AO4The aim of this video is to give you and your learners a breakdown of Assessment Objective 4 and how it is assessed. However, remember that for each candidate answer, all four assessment objectives are considered by the examiner. The best candidate responses will consider all four when answering a question.
Drama Assessment Objective 4
AO4: Communicate a sensitive and informed personal response to literary texts.
Creating a sensitive and informed response to a Shakespeare play can seem daunting. The language is complex. Shakespeare was a poet and he loved to play with language and to create new words (neologisms) whenever he found the word he wanted did not exist. And the meanings in his texts are multiple and deep, and his characters are crafted with care and attention to detail.
Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth are two of the most studied and performed of Shakespeare’s plays.
So how do you manage to create a response that is personal as well as sensitive and informed?
The informed element can be seen as the easiest element for candidates. An informed response will use the Assessment Objective 1 knowledge of the text in parallel with the Assessment Objective 3 understanding of language, form and structure, to relate the text to itself and its themes as we saw in the Assessment Objective 1 video example from Macbeth.
A sensitive response requires candidates to then link their informed response with their Assessment Objective 2 knowledge of context. A personal response is more difficult to achieve at a higher level.
Candidates will have to demonstrate a personal response sometimes directly (answering questions such as ‘What do you think?’, ‘What are your feelings about…?’) and sometimes by implication (answering questions such as ‘Explore the ways in which…’)
Act 1 Scene 4
Macbeth
[Aside] The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. One mistake candidates often make is losing an academic writing style to demonstrate their personal response: ‘I don’t like Macbeth because he is ambitious as we can see from the quote, “black and deep desires”’. Every time you perform a critical analysis you are giving a personal response. You have selected which quotes you believe are important to make your case. You have chosen which elements of the texts combine to further enhance your answer. ‘Macbeth is presented as an unlikable character because of his ambition. His “black and deep desires” create an image of a dark and ingrained evil that hungers for power.’
Although this response is a personal response it is not yet informed or sensitive. Now we need to add our understanding of Assessment Objective 3 language, form and structure.
‘The adjectives “black” and “deep” connote a malevolence that goes to the core of Macbeth’s being. This combined with the plural abstract noun “desires” reflects his emotional hunger for power.’
To develop this further, we add our Assessment Objective 1 knowledge of the text...
Act 3 Scene 2
Macbeth
Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day; And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale! Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood: Good things of day begin to droop and drowse; While night's black agents to their preys do rouse. Thou marvell'st at my words: but hold thee still; Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. So, prithee, go with me.
‘…The connection between darkness, evil and ambition is also seen in Act 3 Scene 2 when Macbeth refers to “night’s black agents”.’
Act 1 Scene 5
Lady Macbeth
The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry 'Hold, hold!'
‘…This connection is further emphasised by Lady Macbeth in Act 1 Scene 5 as she calls for “thick night” to create a “blanket of the dark”.’
Now we have a response that is personal and fairly well informed. All we need to do now is make it sensitive by adding some of our Assessment Objective 2 knowledge of context.
‘The connections between dark deeds and ambition could be seen to represent the political situation at the time Macbeth was written. King James I, for whom the play was written, had personal experience of the dangers of political ambition as both his parents were killed for political motives and he was the intended victim of the Gunpowder Plot. The fact that lexis such as “black” and “dark” is used by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, could be considered as associating them with witchcraft. Witchcraft, besides being a key theme of the play, was an area studied by James I and it is unsurprising that Shakespeare presented his main evil characters as in league with witches both literally and linguistically.’ ‘Although the modern western audience would not necessarily connect words such as black and dark with witchcraft, and the idea of witchcraft in the traditional sense is no longer accepted as real, the semantic association to bad deeds is still evident and the idea of malevolent beings is still scary’.
Now we shall run through an example without breaking down the assessment objectives.
Let’s imagine we have been asked who we think is the most important character in Romeo and Juliet.
Before we start, ask yourself who you think is most important.
Act 5 Scene 3
Capulet
O brother Montague, give me thy hand: This is my daughter's jointure, for no more Can I demand. Montague
But I can give thee more: For I will raise her statue in pure gold; That while Verona by that name is known, There shall no figure at such rate be set As that of true and faithful Juliet. Capulet
As rich shall Romeo's by his lady's lie; Poor sacrifices of our enmity! Prince
A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. Exeunt
‘The title of the play, Romeo and Juliet, suggests to the audience that Romeo is more important as his name comes first. However, when we look at the final moments of the final scene we learn that our story of woe was of “Juliet and her Romeo”. This combination of Juliet being named first and the use of the possessive pronoun “her” to refer to Romeo demonstrates her greater importance in the story. This is further highlighted by Montague’s offer to build a statue to “true and faithful Juliet” which emphasises her positive qualities, and Capulet’s offer to build one for Romeo which will “by his lady’s lie” implying possession and giving Juliet the higher-status title. The building of a sonnet structure during the final 15 lines creates a sense of coming together which ends with Juliet as the higher-status character and is a counterpoint to the prologue’s “Two households. Both alike in dignity”.
Furthermore, this is echoed in their death scenes.
Act 4 Scene 3
Juliet
Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, That almost freezes up the heat of life: I'll call them back again to comfort me: Nurse! What should she do here? My dismal scene I needs must act alone. Come, vial. What if this mixture do not work at all? Shall I be married then to-morrow morning? No, no: this shall forbid it: lie thou there. Laying down her dagger What if it be a poison, which the friar Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead, Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd, Because he married me before to Romeo? I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not, For he hath still been tried a holy man. How if, when I am laid into the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point! Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault, To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes? Or, if I live, is it not very like, The horrible conceit of death and night, Together with the terror of the place,-- As in a vault, an ancient receptacle, Where, for these many hundred years, the bones Of all my buried ancestors are packed: Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say, At some hours in the night spirits resort;-- Alack, alack, is it not like that I, So early waking, what with loathsome smells, And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth, That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:-- O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught, Environed with all these hideous fears? And madly play with my forefathers’ joints? And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud? And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone, As with a club, dash out my desperate brains? O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body Upon a rapier's point: stay, Tybalt, stay! Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee. She falls upon her bed, within the curtains
Act 5 Scene 3
Romeo
In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face. Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris! What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode? I think He told me Paris should have married Juliet: Said he not so? or did I dream it so? Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, To think it was so? O, give me thy hand, One writ with me in sour misfortune's book! I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave; A grave? O no! a lantern, slaughter'd youth, For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd. Laying PARIS in the tomb How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry! which their keepers call A lightning before death: O, how may I Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife! Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there. Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favour can I do to thee, Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain To sunder his that was thine enemy? Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? For fear of that, I still will stay with thee; And never from this palace of dim night Depart again: here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death! Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! Here's to my love! Drinks O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. Dies
Although Juliet’s death scene is less involved than Romeo’s, the fact that she dies by the blade implies that she is brave and determined, unlike Romeo who chooses the more simple and feminine method of poison. The parallel between Romeo’s drinking of the apothecary’s “quick” feminine poison in Act 5 Scene 3 despite having a masculine dagger, and Juliet’s pretend death by a non-fatal poison whilst prepared to use the masculine dagger in Act 4 Scene 3 also demonstrate Juliet as the braver and more grounded character. The contrast found within the series of rhetorical questions each character asks is also a stark one. While Romeo is focused on how Juliet can remain so “fair”, Juliet is considering the realities of her situation as she faces waking surrounded by “mangled Tybalt” and her “great kinsman’s bones”.
We have looked at how writing an informed, sensitive and personal response (AO4) combines understanding language, structure and form (AO3) to help us open up and understand the text (AO1) more deeply (AO2).
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