Fate and free will — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Fate and free will
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores fate, the stars and chance against the characters' own choices 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: 'A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life', 'Some consequence yet hanging in the stars', 'O, I am fortune's fool!', 'I have an ill-divining soul', 'Then I defy you, stars!', 'A greater power than we can contradict'.
Chance, haste and choice: the plague that stops the Friar's letter, and the characters' own decisions.
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.
