How Shakespeare presents Ariel, and how the character develops across the text: the spirit who serves Prospero for the promise of freedom, his obedience, songs and disguises, and his pity for the prisoners.
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: 'All hail, great master! grave sir, hail!', 'I flamed amazement', 'Is there more toil?', 'Remember I have done thee worthy service', 'Thou wast a spirit too delicate / To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands', 'Full fathom five thy father lies', 'You are three men of sin', 'Do you love me, master? no?', 'Mine would, sir, were I human', 'Where the bee sucks, there suck I', 'to the elements / Be free, and fare thou well!'.
Ariel's songs, shape-changing and invisibility, and the obedience that wins his freedom.
Context: spirits in Jacobean belief, the actor who may also have played Ceres, and Ariel's place beside Caliban in readings of the play as a story of colonised servants.
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.
