How Shakespeare presents Benedick, and how the character develops across the text: from a mocking soldier who swears he will die a bachelor to a lover who challenges his friend for Beatrice's sake.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'I would my horse had the speed of your tongue', 'That a woman conceived me, I thank her', 'pluck off the bull's horns and set them in my forehead', 'Rich she shall be, that's certain; wise, or I'll none', 'I do spy some marks of love in her', 'the world must be peopled', 'I will be horribly in love with her', 'By this hand, I love thee', 'You have killed a sweet lady, and her death shall fall heavy on you', 'I was not born under a rhyming planet', 'Serve God, love me and mend'.
Structure: his soliloquies before and after the gulling, which show the change most plainly, and his choice of Beatrice over his friends in Act 4.
Context: the soldiers' world of male friendship, and the bachelor's fear of becoming a cuckold.
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.
