Aspects of comedy: sample question commentary

This resource explains how a question taken from the sample assessment material addresses the assessment objectives, with some suggestions of how the task might be approached. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every point that could be made but it gives teachers and students some guidance that will support their work on this paper. This resource is designed to support you in teaching the 'Aspects of comedy' component of A-level English Literature B.

Paper 1B, Section A

As this is a closed book exam students will need to know their texts very well and be able to recall specific details that can be used in their responses.

Sample question

Read the extract below and then answer the question.

Explore the significance of this extract in relation to the comedy of the play as a whole.

Remember to include in your answer relevant analysis of Shakespeare's dramatic methods.

How the question meets the Assessment Objectives

In this question, as throughout the paper, the assessment objectives are all assessed. The key words and phrases in the question are: explore, significance, comedy of the play as a whole, analysis and dramatic methods, and these are clearly connected to the assessment objectives.

AO1 will be tested through the ways the students organise their writing and express their ideas as they are exploring significance. AO2 is set up in the requirement for students to analyse Shakespeare's dramatic methods in the extract and to show how the methods open up meanings about comedy in Twelfth Night. The word 'significance' is an invitation for students to target AO3 and AO5, to show what is signified in terms of contexts and interpretations that arise from the comedy of the extract. AO3 will be addressed through the students' showing their understanding of both the dramatic and comedic contexts of Twelfth Night; and in the way they will elicit from the extract contextual ideas about when the text was written and how it might have been and is now received. AO5 will be addressed when students grapple with meanings that arise from their exploration of comedy in the extract and in relation to the whole play. Finally, in writing about and engaging with 'comedy', AO4 will be hit as students will be connecting implicitly with concepts of the comedy genre (and other comedic texts) through the 'aspects' which they are exploring.

It may be helpful for students to begin by briefly establishing an overview of the passage and identifying where it occurs within the play. For example: 'At this stage of the play, Viola has been shipwrecked and has found safety on the coast of Illyria. She has assumed the male guise of Cesario in order to find employment and has acquired a position as a servant in Orsino's court. Orsino believes himself in love with Olivia and in this passage demands that Cesario woos her on his behalf.'

Possible content

Students might explore the following dramatic methods: the use of disguise – Viola is dressed in man's attire; the entrance of the Duke; the language used to show the excessiveness of Orsino's love for Olivia; the use of dialogue to show the master/servant relationship; the language used to dramatise the intimacy of Orsino's and Viola's conversation; the foregrounding of the use of the go-between; the embedded report of Olivia's rebuttal of Orsino's love; the language used to reveal the ridiculousness of Orsino's demands for Cesario; the irony as Orsino describes Cesario's beauty as a woman; the use of foreshadowing – 'Prosper well in this/And thou shalt live as freely as thy lord,/To call his fortunes thine'; the dramatic surprise of Viola's confession of love in an aside and its placement at the end of the scene, etc.

Elements of comedy that might be explored

• the first appearance of Viola as Cesario
• the suggestion that Orsino might be capricious regarding love (language relating to this - his 'humour', 'question the continuance of his love', 'Is he inconstant ... in his favours')
• the terms of endearment from Orsino to Cesario (affectionate use of 'thee', 'good youth', 'it shall become thee well', 'dear lad', 'I know thy constellation is right apt')
• the focus on romantic love – or idolatry - and the use of religious imagery -'secret soul' - to show the apparent depth of Orsino's love for Olivia (though it is in fact shallow)
• comic excess – Orsino's use of excessive language – 'clamorous', 'leap all civil bounds', 'unfold the passion of my love'
• the focus on physical love evidenced by Orsino's comments on Cesario's lips and voice and the use of classical and romantic imagery
• the natural love of Viola shown through the simplicity of her statement of love for Orsino ('a barful strife! Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife') which contrasts with the elaborate declarations of his idealised love for Olivia
• the framing of Orsino and Cesario's dialogue with Viola's growing interest in Orsino as a love interest
• her final aside to end the scene to intensify the comedic aspect of love's being complicated
• the use of foreshadowing (there is every expectation that emotions will intensify as they do and that Viola will ultimately call her lord's fortunes hers), etc.

Significance

Students might develop any of the points mentioned above and suggest what meanings arise from the ideas they select.

Comments might be on:

• the developing love between Viola and the Duke
• the Duke's unconscious love perhaps
• his attraction for a seeming young man
• attitudes towards power and servitude
• the expectations of the Elizabethan court as represented in the play
• the ridiculousness of Orsino as a character (his excessiveness and self-indulgence, his lack of depth, his behaviour, his sentimentality, his luxuriating in his own excesses, the stupidity of his focusing on an object of love (Olivia) that is apparently unmoveable)
• Viola's good sense and the depth of her feelings
• the sincerity of her love being bestowed upon an unworthy object
• gender roles - how in Elizabethan society as set up in the play, women have to disguise themselves as men to have an active social role
• the nature of love itself and how it is shown to be disarming whether from an Elizabethan or 21st century context
• the nature of dramatic comedy where audiences need to suspend disbelief and enter into the chaotic world that is demanded by the genre, etc.

• This resource is part of the Aspects of comedy resource package.