Revenge and forgiveness — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Revenge and forgiveness
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores revenge, repentance and forgiveness, and whether the ending reconciles everyone 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: 'at my mercy all mine enemies', 'O, it is monstrous, monstrous!', 'nothing but heart-sorrow / And a clear life ensuing', 'mine enemies are all knit up / In their distractions', 'Mine would, sir, were I human', 'The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance', 'they being penitent, / The sole drift of my purpose doth extend / Not a frown further', 'I do forgive thee, / Unnatural though thou art', 'Most wicked sir, whom to call brother / Would even infect my mouth', 'Let us not burthen our remembrance with / A heaviness that's gone', 'As you from crimes would pardon'd be'.
Structure: revenge prepared from the first scene and given up in the last act, Alonso's repentance against Antonio's silence, and the Epilogue's request for the audience's pardon.
Context: forgiveness that depends on repentance, the Epilogue's language of prayer and mercy, and whether Prospero always meant to forgive or is moved by Ariel.
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.
