How Shakespeare presents Mercutio, and how the character develops across the text: wit, Queen Mab, his mockery of love and Tybalt, and his curse on both houses.
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: 'If love be rough with you, be rough with love', 'I see Queen Mab hath been with you', 'O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!', 'Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?', 'A plague o' both your houses!', 'you shall find me a grave man', 'They have made worms' meat of me'.
Mercutio's prose and puns as a contrast to Romeo's romantic verse, and his death as the turning point.
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.
