MAAN quotations + Context

Motifs 'Juicy' quotations

What to check for after exam

What to check for after exam

HAVE YOU ANSWERED THE QUESTION?

HAVE YOU PROVED YOUR IDEAS WITH RELEVANT QUOTATIONS?
HAVE YOU IDENTIFIED TECHNIQUES?

HAVE YOU EXPLORED AND EXPLAINED THE IMPACT ON THE READER?

HAVE YOU CONSIDERED SHAKESPEARE’S MESSAGE TO THE READER?

HAVE YOU LINKED YOUR IDEAS TO THE CONTEXT OF THE TIME?

How to answer literature exam question

1. Read the question, ‘look for hook’

2. Read the extract, underline most relevant quotations

3. Jot down any other relevant moments or quotations from the rest of the play

4. Jot down relevant context

5. Write down your 3 BEST IDEAS

Motifs

Food
Animals
Mythology

Love as sickness
Hunting/fishing

Claudio, Act 1- ‘Can the world buy such a jewel?’

Jewels look expensive and pretty and shiny but could be really bad quality, shows how superficial Claudio is  Buy - Elizabethan women were ‘brought’ from their fathers by their husbands

Claudio, Act 4 scene 1- ‘Give not this rotten orange to your friend’

Rotten orange - a fresh sweet orange has been turned rotten, connotes with loss of virginity .  Actresses would sell oranges after the theatre to show they were a prostitute.

Benedick, Act 1, scene 1-‘Thrust thy neck into the yoke’

Marriage is seen as burdensome and a weight on benedicks neck

Benedick, Act 2, scene 3-‘His words are a very fantastical banquet’

Metaphor - mocking Claudio for how his superficial love for Hero has changed him, and that he is now using the courtly love language. Shakespeare could be using Benedick to push his opinions about courtly love and the over-complicated “sprezzatura” way of speaking. Ironically, later on after Benedick is gulled about Beatrice being in love with him, he does the same and changes himself to a more romantic courtly version.

‘I will do myself the right to trust none; ... i will live a Bachelor’ - Benedick , act 1 scene 1

Shows Benedick’s pride about his reputation as a Bachelor and disdain for women

Going against Elizabethan standards - importance of marriage

Benedick, Act 1, scene 1‘You are a rare parrot-teacher’

Benedick thinks Beatrice talks too much.

Beatrice Act 1, scene 1 ‘You always end in a jade’s trick: I know you of old’

Infers that they know each other, maybe something happened in the past between them.

Don John, Act 1, scene 2 ‘I would rather be a canker in his hedge than a rose in his grace’

Canker - can be painful and lethal but small injuries that form over years 

Don John would rather wait and just be a small painful part of Don Pedro’s life then even try and be nice to him for one second. He would rather wait and cause him pain over time then try to be civil with Don Pedro

Leonato, Act 1, scene 1 ‘Merry war

War motif
Describing B + B’s relationship
Juxtaposition of merry and war, war is also relevant since the men just came back from war

Balthasar, Act 2, scene 3 “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever”

Balthasar: Ladies should stop sighing and stop being surprised when men cheat because that’s what they always do.
He is telling women to just get over that fact and learn that all mean are deceivers, cheaters and disloyal.

Leonato, Act 2, Scene 3 ‘she found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet’

Double meaning (paper + bed)

Act 2, Scene 3

Beatrice, ‘Against my will I am sent to bid you come in for dinner’
Benedick, ‘Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains’

Contrast: Benedick’s politeness and Beatrice’s rudeness

Act 2, Scene 3, Benedick ‘I will be horribly in love with her’

Oxymoron (opposites combined)

‘Horribly’ suggests he still feels reluctant or frightened to love
How will love change him?

Act 3, Scene 1, Beatrice ‘Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand’

Beatrice accepts that she will be ‘tamed’

We find this very uncomfortable whereas Elizabethans would’ve loved it

Act 3, Scene 2, Don Pedro ‘as to show a child his new coat and forbid him to wear it’

Inanimate object
Hero as a male’s possession
Idea of women being something men can wear and ‘show off’
Idea of it being hard for men to ‘resist’ women

Changes about Benedick

Attitude to love has changed

More serious and melancholy, sadder
Started wearing perfume, ‘civet’
Shaved his beard (looks younger)
Jesting spirt (funny) →’liking the lute’ (romantic)
New clothes ‘spaniard’
Starts wearing makeup

Act 3, scene 2, Claudio ‘where I should wed, there will I shame her’

Claudio immediately believes Don Jon
He wants to publicly humiliate Hero
He cares too much for his reputation!

Act 3, scene 4, Hero ‘My cousin’s a fool, and thou art another, I’ll wear none but this’

‘Fiesty’ Hero - No men are around
Shows Hero and Margaret’s close relationship

Act 3, Scene 4, Margaret ‘‘Twill be heavier soon by the weight of a man’

Sexual joke/word play
Margaret is lower status
She can say what she wants

Bawdy

Act 4, scene 1, Claudio ‘You seem to me as Dian in her orb, as chaste as is the bud ere it be blown: But you are more intemperate in your blood, Than Venus, or those pampered animals’

Claudio is alluding to Gods
Hero looks like Dian (beautiful) but inside she is like Venus
Venus was the love and sex god who was married to Vulcan and had an affair with Mars.

Hero is being humiliated

Setting in much ado

Urban setting - Messina, Sicily, Italy , contrary to what Shakespeare usually does

Strict

Don Pedro Act 3, scene 2 Leonato's Hero, your Hero, every man's Hero

-Women passed around like objects in the Elizabethan era

-Reference