How Shakespeare presents Romeo, and how the character develops across the text: from Rosaline's lovesick admirer to Juliet's husband, Tybalt's killer and a tragic hero who defies the stars.
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: 'O brawling love! O loving hate!', 'O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!', 'It is the east, and Juliet is the sun', 'Thy beauty hath made me effeminate', 'fire-eyed fury be my conduct now', 'O, I am fortune's fool!', 'Then I defy you, stars!', 'Thus with a kiss I die'.
Context: the Petrarchan lover, and Romeo as a tragic hero whose haste is his flaw.
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.
