Deception and madness — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Deception and madness
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores deception, mistaken identity and madness, from the forged letter and Malvolio's imprisonment to the confusion of the twins 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: 'I will plant you two, and let the fool make a third, where he shall find the letter', 'Observe him, for the love of mockery', 'Now is the woodcock near the gin', 'His very genius hath taken the infection of the device, man', 'More matter for a May morning', 'Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit Malvolio the lunatic', 'I am as mad as he, / If sad and merry madness equal be', 'Do I stand there? I never had a brother', 'This practice hath most shrewdly pass'd upon thee', 'Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee!'.
Deception for fun and for cruelty, mistaken identity that makes Sebastian and Olivia doubt their senses, and the line between festive madness and real suffering.
Context: darkness and confinement as the treatment for madness, and the trick on Malvolio as a play staged for watchers.
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.
