Back to the full dot-point answer
EnglandEnglish LiteratureQuick questions
Component 01: Drama and poetry pre-1900
Quick questions on The Shakespeare whole-play essay: responding to a critical view - OCR A-Level English Literature
6short 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 treat the critical view as contestable?Show answer
The printed view is deliberately arguable. OCR designs it so that a thoughtful reader can both find support for it and push back against it. The high-mark move is to do both: show where the play bears the view out, where it complicates or resists it, and what your own considered position is. This is AO5, the exploration of different interpretations, and it is half the marks.
What is a model AO5 paragraph?Show answer
"The view that order is always restored understates how heavily Shakespeare weights the cost. It is true that the closing scene re-establishes legitimate rule, and the restored verse rhythms and the language of healing seem to endorse the view. Yet the play has just staged a death it pointedly refuses to redeem, and an audience leaves holding that loss against the formal restoration.
What is a weak paragraph upgraded?Show answer
A flat-agreement answer might write "I agree that order is restored at a cost; many characters have died." Upgraded, it becomes interpretive: the play does restore order, but the insistence with which it stages the cost invites the reader to question whether restoration is worth the price, and a competing reading that sees the ending as clean repair is named and tested.
What is q1?Show answer
What does "In the light of this view" require you to do? [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
How should a part (b) essay be organised? [2 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
In the light of a printed critical view, explore Shakespeare's presentation of a theme or character across your play. [15 marks]
Have a question we have not covered?
This dot-point answer is short enough that we have not extracted many short questions yet. Read the full dot-point answer or ask Mo, our study assistant, in the chat for follow ups.