Act 2 — The Tempest — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Act 2
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Alonso's grief for Ferdinand, Gonzalo's ideal commonwealth, Antonio persuading Sebastian to kill Alonso, and Caliban meeting Trinculo and Stephano.
Key quotations: 'what strange fish / Hath made his meal on thee?', 'Had I plantation of this isle, my lord', 'I would by contraries / Execute all things', 'Yet he would be king on't', 'What's past is prologue', 'My strong imagination sees a crown / Dropping upon thy head', 'Here lies your brother, / No better than the earth he lies upon', 'I feel not / This deity in my bosom', 'All the infections that the sun sucks up', 'What have we here? a man or a fish?', 'they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian', 'Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows', 'That's a brave god and bears celestial liquor', ''Ban, 'Ban, Cacaliban / Has a new master: get a new man'.
Structure: two scenes that mirror each other, the lords plotting murder for a crown and Caliban finding a new master, with Ariel stepping in to save Alonso.
Context: Gonzalo's commonwealth and Montaigne's essay on the peoples of the Americas, and the plot against a king as a sin under the divine right of kings.
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.
