How Shakespeare presents Juliet, and how the character develops across the text: from an obedient thirteen-year-old daughter to a wife who defies her family and chooses death.
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: 'It is an honour that I dream not of', 'My only love sprung from my only hate!', 'It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden', 'Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds', 'Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!', 'If all else fail, myself have power to die', 'What if this mixture do not work at all?', 'O happy dagger!'.
Context: a daughter's duty to obey her father, and Juliet's growing independence and courage.
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.
