Act 5 — The Merchant of Venice — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Act 5
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Lorenzo and Jessica at Belmont, the return of Portia and Nerissa, the quarrel over the rings, Antonio's ships restored, and a comic ending without Shylock.
Key quotations: 'The moon shines bright: in such a night as this', 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!', 'The man that hath no music in himself', 'How far that little candle throws his beams! / So shines a good deed in a naughty world', 'When the moon shone, we did not see the candle', 'If you did know to whom I gave the ring', 'Let not that doctor e'er come near my house', 'Nothing is good, I see, without respect', 'Sweet lady, you have given me life and living', 'There do I give to you and Jessica, / From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift'.
Structure: the moonlit, musical opening and the comic quarrel over the rings as a harmonious ending, and Shylock's absence from it.
Context: the play as a comedy that ends in marriages and music, and why some critics group it with Shakespeare's problem plays.
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.
