Writer's methods — Twelfth Night — 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: romantic comedy and its festive setting, the double plot,
verse and prose, songs and music, disguise and dramatic irony, the letter and prison scenes as plays within the play, and imagery of the sea, food and appetite, and madness.
Verse for Orsino's court and the love scenes, prose for the revellers, the fool and Malvolio, and the moments when characters cross from one to the other.
Songs and music, from Orsino's 'If music be the food of love' to Feste's 'O mistress mine' and 'When that I was and a little tiny boy'.
Dramatic irony and plays within the play: the audience knows Cesario is Viola, the letter scene is watched by hidden onlookers, and Fabian says the trick would be condemned on a stage.
Structure: the double plot of the lovers and the gulling of Malvolio, the twins kept apart until Act 5, and a comic resolution that leaves Malvolio and Antonio outside it.
Imagery of the sea and shipwreck, music, food and appetite, and madness and darkness.
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.
