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EnglandEnglish LiteratureQuick questions
Component 01: Drama and poetry pre-1900
Quick questions on The Shakespeare passage question: close analysis of dramatic method - OCR A-Level English Literature
7short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is move from feature to effect?Show answer
The single habit that separates bands is the move from feature to effect. Naming a device ("there is a metaphor here") earns little; explaining what the device does to meaning and to the audience earns AO2. Write "Shakespeare presents" rather than naming a character trait, because it keeps your focus on craft. Each point should name the method, quote briefly, and read the effect.
What is work through the passage with an argument?Show answer
An answer that tours the passage line by line drifts; an answer built on an argument coheres. Find the shape of the extract, where it turns, intensifies or breaks, and let that shape organise the response. This delivers AO1: a coherent, controlled reading rather than a sequence of disconnected observations.
What is a model AO2 paragraph?Show answer
"Shakespeare stages the speaker's loss of control through the collapse of the verse. The opening lines hold a regular iambic line, the public register of composure, but as the thought turns inward the metre fractures into a run of monosyllables and a mid-line caesura, so the form enacts a mind breaking from its own poise. The audience, granted this private moment alone on stage, watches the gap open between the controlled public voice heard earlier and the disordered private one here, and Shakespeare makes the verse itself the instrument of that exposure."
What is a weak paragraph upgraded?Show answer
A feature-spotting answer might write "There is a metaphor of disease here, and the lines are in blank verse." Upgraded, it becomes analytical: the disease imagery, recurring across the extract, presents corruption as something spreading and internal, and the steady blank verse that carries it lets the calm surface mask the rot it describes, so the audience hears the threat before the characters name it.
What is q1?Show answer
Which assessment objectives does part (a) assess, and which is dominant? [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
Why should you not bring context into a part (a) answer? [2 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
Discuss a printed extract from your Shakespeare play, exploring Shakespeare's use of language and dramatic effects. [15 marks]
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