How Shakespeare presents Friar Laurence, and how the character develops across the text: counsellor, go-between and planner whose schemes go wrong.
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: 'Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!', 'Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast', 'To turn your households' rancour to pure love', 'These violent delights have violent ends', 'Take thou this vial', 'A greater power than we can contradict', 'I will be brief'.
His soliloquy on herbs that heal and poison, his rhyming couplets, and how far he is to blame.
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.
