Family and marriage — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Family and marriage
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores parents and children, arranged marriage and a daughter's duty 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: 'My child is yet a stranger in the world', 'It is an honour that I dream not of', 'Deny thy father and refuse thy name', 'Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!', 'I would the fool were married to her grave!', 'Death is my son-in-law'.
Context: arranged marriage, daughters as property, and the Nurse as a substitute mother.
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.
