Cassio and Bianca — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Cassio and Bianca
Characters
What you need to know
How Shakespeare presents Cassio and Bianca, and how the character develops across the text: Othello's lieutenant, whose drunken fight costs him his place and whose innocent friendship with Desdemona Iago turns into false proof, and Bianca, the woman Cassio keeps at a distance and mocks.
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: 'One Michael Cassio, a Florentine', 'a great arithmetician', 'I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial', 'I never knew / A Florentine more kind and honest', 'What, keep a week away? seven days and nights?', 'This is some token from a newer friend', 'This is the monkey's own giving out', ''Tis such another fitchew!', 'I am no strumpet; but of life as honest / As you that thus abuse me', 'For he was great of heart'.
Cassio's courtly manners with Desdemona, his shame after the brawl, and the way he speaks of Bianca behind her back while Othello watches.
Context that helps a reading: an officer promoted over a soldier with more experience in the field, and a woman the men of the garrison treat with contempt.
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.
