How Shakespeare presents Claudio, and how the character develops across the text: a young count whose sudden love for Hero turns to public shaming, then to grief and penance.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Come thronging soft and delicate desires', 'That I love her, I feel', 'Farewell, therefore, Hero!', 'Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much', 'Behold how like a maid she blushes here!', 'You seem to me as Dian in her orb', 'For thee I'll lock up all the gates of love', 'I have drunk poison whiles he utter'd it', 'Impose me to what penance your invention / Can lay upon my sin', 'Which is the lady I must seize upon?'.
Form: his verse, from the language of courtly love to the public rhetoric of the accusation.
Context: the Petrarchan lover who adores from a distance, a match arranged through the Prince, and a man's honour in choosing a chaste bride.
Edexcel's Shakespeare question has two parts: part (a) on the printed extract marks only language, form and structure (AO2), so context earns nothing there; part (b) on the play elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1, 15 marks) and context (AO3, 5 marks), not language analysis. Say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
