How Shakespeare presents Olivia, and how the character develops across the text: the countess who shuts herself away to mourn her brother, then falls headlong for Cesario and marries Sebastian.
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: 'Take the fool away', 'Look you, sir, such a one I was this present', ''Tis in grain, sir; 'twill endure wind and weather', 'I will give out divers schedules of my beauty', 'Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love him', 'Methinks I feel this youth's perfections / With an invisible and subtle stealth / To creep in at mine eyes', 'To one of your receiving / Enough is shown: a cypress, not a bosom, / Hideth my heart', 'O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful / In the contempt and anger of his lip!', 'I have said too much unto a heart of stone', 'Would thou'ldst be ruled by me!', 'Hast thou forgot thyself?'.
Her prose sparring with Cesario, her move into verse as she falls in love, and her soliloquies of surprise at her own feelings.
Context: a woman of rank in charge of her household and her own marriage, mourning for a brother, and readings of Olivia as foolish in love or as one who acts on her desire.
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.
