Friar Laurence — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Friar Laurence
Characters
What you need to know
How Shakespeare presents Friar Laurence, and how the character develops across the text: counsellor, go-between and planner whose schemes go wrong.
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: 'Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!', 'Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast', 'To turn your households' rancour to pure love', 'These violent delights have violent ends', 'Take thou this vial', 'A greater power than we can contradict', 'I will be brief'.
His soliloquy on herbs that heal and poison, his rhyming couplets, and how far he is to blame.
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.
