1. Introduction
2. Section A: Shakespeare
3. Section B: Drama and Poetry
4. Exemplars
5. Conclusion

OCR say that all of the six questions on this paper can be answered by any possible combination of the texts – and that they spend a long time ensuring this is so. I’m not sure I necessarily agree – there was a question on ‘women’ a few years ago that I would have been interested to see a response to it using Dr Faustus and Paradise Lost Book 1 – containing, as they do, no women . . .
Thus, I would suggest...

1. Introduction
2. Section A: Shakespeare
3. Section B: Drama and Poetry
4. Exemplars
5. Conclusion

There’s a plethora of information out there about the individual texts that you may choose to study, so I don’t intend to spend too long here on the content of what you can teach.

However, there are some teaching ideas and strategies below that you may find useful when ensuring that you are meeting the demands of the examination.

AO3 and AO4 Critics and Contexts

All four of the assessment objectives are,...

1. Introduction
2. Section A: Shakespeare
3. Section B: Drama and Poetry
4. Exemplars
5. Conclusion

What does a good response to the Shakespeare question look like?

Here are two examples of introductions, with annotations, of work I have received from students this year. Obviously, these extracts are addressing Othello – but hopefully you can see how the particular approach I have outlined above works.

‘If the play were never to leave Venice, there would be no tragedy’. How far and to what extent do you find...

1. Studying For The Exam
2. Examples From Literature
3. About The Exam
4. Further Reading
5. The Examination

Othello

William Shakespeare 1565-1616

Othello is a very suitable play for the examination of several types of love. Because of the link with Lear, it would be a good idea to start an exploration of the different types of love dealt with in Lear by once more looking at the parent / child bond. Desdemona, a high class Venetian white woman has married, without her father’s knowledge, Othello, a black general of...

Associated Resources

A Guide to Teaching Othello

Click on the link below to download this resource.

Othello Guide Part 2 EnglishEdu.doc

Othello Guide Part 2 EnglishEdu.docx

Associated Resources

How to improve grades when writing for Othello

This EnglishEdu guide on Shakespeare’s popular A Level play, Othello, aims to supplement rather than replace other readily available Internet and printed material for the teaching of the play.

The guide explores the issues, themes and characters in the play that are particularly relevant to the current (2010) A Level Literature specifications. To add to the usefulness, and with an eye to the central AO requirement of close textual analysis of form, structure and...