Quick questions on Writing about drama and context: integrating AO3 - Edexcel A-Level English Literature

"The dramatist stages the protagonist's first entrance above the other characters, on a raised level, and an audience familiar with the visual grammar of hierarchy on the early modern stage would read elevation as status before a line is spoken. The staging does AO2 work; the contextual convention is what lets it mean. When, later, the same figure is brought to the lower level while others stand above, the reversal of the spatial code dramatises the fall, and the meaning depends on the audience holding the original convention in mind."

"The play's closing marriage would have read to its first audience as the proper restoration of social order, the comic form delivering its promise. A modern audience, alert to the coercion behind the match, is more likely to read the same ending as troubling, and the dramatist's decision to give the bride no final line (a structural silence) supports that later reading even as it satisfied the earlier one. The gap between the two receptions is part of the play's meaning, not a distraction from it."

What is the difference between the context of production and the context of reception? [2 marks]

State the test for whether a contextual point belongs in your answer. [2 marks]

Explore how context shapes the meaning of an important moment in your play. In your answer you must consider relevant contextual factors. [20 marks]