Love and marriage — Much Ado About Nothing — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Love and marriage
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores love, courtship and marriage through two contrasting couples 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: 'Lady, as you are mine, I am yours', 'O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad', 'Speak, count, 'tis your cue', 'Love me! why, it must be requited', 'I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest', 'Why, no; no more than reason', 'by this light, I take thee for pity', 'How dost thou, Benedick, the married man?'.
Two couples: Claudio and Hero's quick match arranged through the Prince against Beatrice and Benedick's slow, witty courtship, and marriage as the comedy's ending.
Context: marriage as a family arrangement of wealth and status, and romantic comedy's young lovers.
Eduqas's Shakespeare questions don't mark context: the extract question (15 marks) and the whole-play essay (20 marks, plus 5 for spelling, punctuation, vocabulary and sentence structures) both mark response and analysis of language, form and structure (AO1 and AO2). Use context only in a phrase that supports an interpretation, and say which question each worked paragraph practises.
