Writer's methods — The Tempest — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Writer's methods
Writer's methods
What you need to know
How Shakespeare's form, structure and language create meaning: the late romance and its comic ending, the unities of time and place,
verse and prose, songs and music, the masque, Prospero's long account of the past, parallel plots, and the Epilogue.
Genre: comedy, tragicomedy and late romance, and an ending of marriage, forgiveness and homecoming rather than death.
Structure: the unities of time and place, Prospero's long account of the past in Act 1, three parallel plots, the masque inside the play, and the Epilogue spoken to the audience.
Language: blank verse for the nobles and for Caliban, prose for Stephano and Trinculo, Ariel's songs such as 'Full fathom five', the masque's rhyming couplets, and imagery of the sea, sleep and dreams.
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.
