Writer's methods — Othello — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Writer's methods
Writer's methods
What you need to know
How Shakespeare's form, structure and language create meaning: tragedy and the tragic hero, the move from Venice to Cyprus and the compressed time scheme,
Iago's soliloquies and asides and the dramatic irony they create, verse and prose and Othello's changing speech, the handkerchief, and imagery of animals, black and white, heaven and hell, poison and the sea.
Tragedy: Othello as a tragic hero brought down by his own flaw and another's plotting, and a tragedy that narrows from the affairs of the state to a bedchamber.
Structure: the move from Venice to Cyprus, the compressed time scheme, the temptation scene at the play's centre, and the handkerchief as the prop that drives the plot.
Iago's soliloquies and asides, which make the audience his confidants, and the dramatic irony of every character calling him honest.
Verse and prose: Othello's musical verse and its collapse into broken lines and prose in Act 4, Iago's ease in both, and the willow song.
Imagery of animals, black and white, heaven and hell, poison and medicine, and the sea, and how Othello takes up Iago's images as he falls.
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.
