Masculinity and gender — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Masculinity and gender
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores ideas of manhood and gender in the play 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: 'unsex me here', 'Come to my woman's breasts, / And take my milk for gall', 'When you durst do it, then you were a man', 'I dare do all that may become a man', 'Bring forth men-children only', 'Are you a man?', 'But I must also feel it as a man', 'you should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so'.
Context: Jacobean expectations of men and women, and boy actors playing the women's parts.
OCR's question on this play is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the play elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the play, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts as the play shows it, and 4 marks are for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4). An extract-based answer that never leaves the extract, or a discursive answer built on one moment, cannot go above Level 3. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the question it is for.
