Act 4 — Romeo and Juliet — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Act 4
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The Friar's plan and the potion, Juliet's pretended obedience, her soliloquy before drinking it, and the discovery of her 'death'.
Key quotations: 'O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris', 'Take thou this vial', 'What if this mixture do not work at all?', 'Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee', 'Death lies on her like an untimely frost', 'Death is my son-in-law'.
Dramatic irony: the audience knows Juliet is alive while her family mourns, and the wedding preparations turn into a funeral.
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.
