AS English
The Shakespeare Paper
- The paper might be broken down into three reasonably distinct categories of testing: Knowledge, Understanding, and Discipline.
- You must show knowledge of the whole play in your essays, that means you must quote from Acts Three, Four, and Five as well as Acts One and Two.
- You must quote accurately, frequently and relevantly.
- Quotation is no substitute for thought. Lengthy quotations convey to the examiner the impression that the candidate cannot select evidence.
- There is a difference between character and characterisation, be aware of it. All the language in the play is Shakespeare's and you must try to treat individual characters and their language as forms through which the dramatist shapes meaning.
- Words alone are not the only means that Shakespeare deploys to body forth his ruling idea. Look for the others.
Answers which typically display poor understanding are answers which:
- Summarise the plot,
- Simplify or 'translate' the text instead of discovering its complexity, and quote at great length or not at all,
- Write about fictional characters as if they were real people,
- Forget that the text is a play,
- Are shaped by the quotations and teacherly commentaries which the candidate can remember and not by any discernible argument of the candidate's own devising,
- Ignore or side-step the question.
- Read the questions very carefully. Do not assume that they are straightforward. There is a difference between a question which asks about a theme and a question which asks about a writer's treatment of a theme.
- It is the question that determines what is, and what is not, relevant in your essay. You may not ignore it, evade it, or mindlessly repeat it, with impunity. You must answer it.
- A weak candidate will twist the words of the question to fit what they have been told. A weaker candidate will ignore the question altogether. A strong candidate will answer the question.
My advice:
- Imagine that the question has been spoken to you. Reply with equal immediacy in the terms of the question.
- Your best paragraph should be your first paragraph, and your final paragraph should run a very close second.
- All your intervening paragraphs should be clearly sign-posted, that is, you must state what relation of question and play you are about to deal with.
- Remember, somebody else has to read your script. Do not make your examiner work for you. Write legibly, in paragraphs (paragraphs which are more than merely cosmetic) responding directly to the question.
- Make sure that your argument stands free and clear from the evidence you adduce in support of it. Leave the examiner in no doubt as to what you think.
- Be ruthless. Do not attempt to make points which you remember but which are not relevant. Crab-like stepping is obvious and just gets in the way of disciplined response.
from an Examiners' Report:
Weaker answers 'relied as much on thought as on memory', candidates merely 'organised prepared material in order to show off knowledge. Quotation was often rather long and tended to impede rather than to assist in the development of an argument.'
Outstanding essays were, 'penetrating and original, answering the question with considerable subtlety'. These answers were 'very concise, demonstrating their substance through the concentrated intelligence of their ideas and the felicity of their phrasing. Quotation tended to be brief but apposite and to be woven effectively into the line of argument.'