How Shakespeare presents Antonio and Sebastian, and how the character develops across the text: the brother who usurped Prospero and the brother who plots to kill Alonso, and Antonio's silence at the end.
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: 'My brother and thy uncle, call'd Antonio', 'The government I cast upon my brother', 'he needs will be / Absolute Milan', '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', 'Thy case, dear friend, / Shall be my precedent', 'The devil speaks in him', 'Most wicked sir, whom to call brother / Would even infect my mouth', 'Very like; one of them / Is a plain fish, and, no doubt, marketable'.
Their mocking wit at Gonzalo's expense, their readiness to kill, and Antonio's silence when Prospero forgives him.
Context: usurpation as a sin against the divine right of kings, and Sebastian's plot as a repeat of Antonio's crime against Prospero.
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.
