Act 5 — The Merchant of Venice — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Act 5
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Lorenzo and Jessica at Belmont, the return of Portia and Nerissa, the quarrel over the rings, Antonio's ships restored, and a comic ending without Shylock.
Key quotations: 'The moon shines bright: in such a night as this', 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!', 'The man that hath no music in himself', 'How far that little candle throws his beams! / So shines a good deed in a naughty world', 'When the moon shone, we did not see the candle', 'If you did know to whom I gave the ring', 'Let not that doctor e'er come near my house', 'Nothing is good, I see, without respect', 'Sweet lady, you have given me life and living', 'There do I give to you and Jessica, / From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift'.
Structure: the moonlit, musical opening and the comic quarrel over the rings as a harmonious ending, and Shylock's absence from it.
Context: the play as a comedy that ends in marriages and music, and why some critics group it with Shakespeare's problem plays.
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.
