Honour and reputation — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Honour and reputation
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores honour, female chastity and reputation, and the harm slander does across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'mine, and mine I loved and mine I praised / And mine that I was proud on', 'Death is the fairest cover for her shame / That may be wish'd for', 'Change slander to remorse', 'Shall be lamented, pitied and excused / Of every hearer', 'Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman?', 'Sweet Hero! She is wronged, she is slandered, she is undone', 'I'll prove it on his body, if he dare', 'In a false quarrel there is no true valour', 'She died, my lord, but whiles her slander lived'.
Context: a woman's chastity as the honour of her father and husband, men's honour defended by the challenge, and how slander kills Hero's good name.
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.
