Act 4 — Much Ado About Nothing — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Act 4
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Claudio's denunciation of Hero at the wedding, Leonato's rage, the Friar's plan to report Hero dead, Beatrice and Benedick's declaration of love,
her demand that he kill Claudio, and the watch's examination of Borachio and Conrade.
Key quotations: 'There, Leonato, take her back again: / Give not this rotten orange to your friend', 'She's but the sign and semblance of her honour', 'She knows the heat of a luxurious bed; / Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty', 'Out on thee! Seeming!', 'I stand dishonour'd, that have gone about / To link my dear friend to a common stale', 'Hath no man's dagger here a point for me?', 'O, she is fallen / Into a pit of ink', 'There is some strange misprision in the princes', 'Come, lady, die to live', 'I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?', 'Kill Claudio', 'O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place', 'Enough, I am engaged; I will challenge him', 'O that I had been writ down an ass!'.
Structure: the church scene as the turning point where a comic wedding nearly becomes a tragedy, moving from public verse to the private prose of Beatrice and Benedick.
Context: the wedding service, and a bride's chastity as her father's honour.
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.
