Conflict and violence — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Conflict and violence
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores the feud, honour, violence and the conflict between love and hate 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: 'Two households, both alike in dignity', 'I hate the word, / As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee', 'Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace', 'A plague o' both your houses!', 'fire-eyed fury be my conduct now', 'See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate'.
Conflict inside the Capulet family as well as between the houses, and the public brawls that frame the play.
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.
