Magic and illusion — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Magic and illusion
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores magic, illusion and theatre: Prospero's art, its limits and his decision to give it up 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: 'By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune', 'Hell is empty / And all the devils are here', 'Full fathom five thy father lies', 'sea-change / Into something rich and strange', 'Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises', 'You are three men of sin', 'Our revels now are ended', 'We are such stuff / As dreams are made on', 'Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves', 'this rough magic / I here abjure', 'deeper than did ever plummet sound / I'll drown my book', 'Now my charms are all o'erthrown'.
Context: Prospero's learned magic against Sycorax's witchcraft, James I's Daemonologie and the Witchcraft Act passed in 1604, and Prospero's books, staff and robe.
Magic as theatre: the storm, the banquet and the masque as shows Prospero stages, and the Epilogue, where the actor asks the audience to free him.
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.
