How Shakespeare presents Claudio, and how the character develops across the text: a young count whose sudden love for Hero turns to public shaming, then to grief and penance.
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: 'Come thronging soft and delicate desires', 'That I love her, I feel', 'Farewell, therefore, Hero!', 'Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much', 'Behold how like a maid she blushes here!', 'You seem to me as Dian in her orb', 'For thee I'll lock up all the gates of love', 'I have drunk poison whiles he utter'd it', 'Impose me to what penance your invention / Can lay upon my sin', 'Which is the lady I must seize upon?'.
Form: his verse, from the language of courtly love to the public rhetoric of the accusation.
Context: the lover who idealises his lady from a distance, a match arranged through the Prince, and a man's honour in choosing a chaste bride.
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.
