Social status — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Social status
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores rank and wealth in Messina, from the Prince of Aragon to the watch, and their part in the play's marriages 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: 'hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio', 'Hath Leonato any son, my lord?', 'No child but Hero; she's his only heir', 'he is of a noble strain, of approved valour and confirmed honesty', 'No, my lord, unless I might have another for working-days: your grace is too costly to wear every day', 'Good Lord, for alliance!', 'That young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow', 'Princes and counties! Surely, a princely testimony'.
Context: marriages that join families of rank and wealth, a prince's visit as an honour to a governor's house, the bastard brother with no inheritance, and the watch at the bottom of Messina's order.
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.
