Youth and age — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Youth and age
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores the haste of the young and the caution, or failure, of the old 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: 'Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast', 'Young men's love then lies / Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes', 'Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel', 'old folks, many feign as they were dead', 'My will to her consent is but a part'.
The haste of the young against the caution of the old, and the older generation's failure to protect their children.
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.
