Reputation and honour — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Reputation and honour
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores reputation and honour: Cassio's lost good name, Iago's talk of reputation, Othello's honour as soldier and husband, and how he asks to be remembered 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: 'Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation!', 'Reputation is an idle and most false imposition', 'Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, / Is the immediate jewel of their souls', 'Who steals my purse steals trash', 'But he that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him / And makes me poor indeed', 'Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars, / That make ambition virtue!', 'Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate / Call all in all sufficient?', 'An honourable murderer, if you will', 'For nought I did in hate, but all in honour'.
Iago's two speeches on reputation, one to Cassio and one to Othello, that say opposite things to suit his plot, and Othello's attempt to rescue his honour in his last speech.
Context that helps a reading: a soldier's good name, and a husband's honour staked on his wife's faithfulness.
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.
