AQA_2024: A-level English Literature A - Paper 1 Love Through the Ages. (Merged Question Paper and Marking Scheme)

AQA_2024: A-level English Literature A - Paper 1 Love Through the Ages. (Merged Question Paper and Marking Scheme) A-level ENGLISH LITERATURE A Paper 1 Love through the ages Friday 24 May 2024 Materials Morning Time allowed: 3 hours For this paper you must have:  an AQA 12-page answer book  a copy of each of the set texts you have studied for Section C. These texts must not be annotated and must not contain additional notes or materials. Instructions  Use black ink or black ball-point pen.  Write the information required on the front of your answer book. The Paper Reference is 7712/1.  In Section A you will answer one question about a Shakespeare play.  In Section B you will answer the one question about unseen poetry.  In Section C you will answer one question about two texts: one poetry text and one prose text, one of which must be written pre-1900.  Do all rough work in your answer book. Cross through any work you do not want to be marked. Information  The marks for questions are shown in brackets.  The maximum mark for this paper is 75.  You will be marked on your ability to: – use good English – organise information clearly – use specialist vocabulary where appropriate.  In your response you need to: – analyse carefully the writers’ methods – explore the contexts of the texts you are writing about – explore connections across the texts you have studied – explore different interpretations of your texts. For A-level English Literature A Paper 1: Love Through the Ages, focus on the following key areas: 1. Key Themes of Love:  Romantic Love: Idealized love in Romeo and Juliet contrasts with more mature, grounded love in Twelfth Night. Explore the tension between passion and reason.  Unrequited Love: Seen in Twelfth Night with Viola’s love for Orsino, and in The Great Gatsby with Gatsby’s obsession for Daisy.  Love as Tragic/Destructive: Romeo and Juliet showcases love’s destructive nature, while Wuthering Heights highlights how obsession distorts love.  Love and Social Expectations: In Pride and Prejudice, love is influenced by societal pressures and class, contrasting with the romantic ideal in Romeo and Juliet.  Marriage and Love: In Jane Eyre, marriage symbolizes equality and mutual respect, whereas in Pride and Prejudice, marriage is initially transactional before evolving into true love. 2. Key Texts:  Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare): The intensity of youthful love and its tragic consequences. Focus on the role of fate and family conflict.  Twelfth Night (Shakespeare): The theme of unrequited love, mistaken identities, and the complexities of desire.  Pride and Prejudice (Austen): A study of how love develops amidst class constraints and social expectations.  Jane Eyre (Brontë): Love as personal growth, with themes of independence and equality in marriage.  Wuthering Heights (Brontë): The destructive nature of obsessive love, contrasting with more rational relationships.  The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald): The unattainable ideal of love and its ties to materialism and the American Dream. 3. Literary Techniques:  Characterization: Study how love shapes characters’ development (e.g., Elizabeth Bennet’s evolving views of Darcy).  Symbolism: In The Great Gatsby, the green light symbolizes unattainable love.  Structure: Consider how the structure (e.g., in Twelfth Night) impacts the portrayal of love. 4. Exam Strategy:  Compare texts on how love is portrayed across different contexts and genres.  Focus on key passages that explore love’s complexities. IB/H/Jun24/G4006/E10 7712/1 2 Section A: Shakespeare Answer one question in this section. Either 0 1 Othello – William Shakespeare ‘In Othello, Iago’s skills make him a likeable anti-hero rather than a hateful villain.’ In the light of this view, discuss how Shakespeare presents Iago’s attitudes to love in this extract and elsewhere in the play. IAGO Come, come; good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used: exclaim no more against it. And, good Lieutenant, I think you think I love you. CASSIO I have well approved it, sir. I drunk! IAGO You or any man living may be drunk at a time, man. I’ll tell you what you shall do. Our General’s wife is now the General. I may say so in this respect, for that he hath devoted and given up himself to the contempla- tion, mark, and denotement of her parts and graces. Confess yourself freely to her; importune her help to put you in your place again. She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, that she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested. This broken joint between you and her husband, entreat her to splinter; and my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your love shall grow stronger than it was before. CASSIO You advise me well. IAGO I protest in the sincerity of love and honest kind- ness. CASSIO I think it freely; and betimes in the morning I will beseech the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me. I am desperate of my fortunes if they check me here. IAGO You are in the right. Good night, Lieutenant, I must to the watch. CASSIO Good night, honest Iago. IAGO And what’s he then that says I play the villain, When this advice is free I give, and honest, Probal to thinking, and indeed the course To win the Moor again? For ’tis most easy Th’inclining Desdemona to subdue In any honest suit. She’s framed as fruitful As the free elements; and then for her To win the Moor, were’t to renounce his baptism, All seals and symbols of redeemèd sin, His soul is so enfettered to her love, That she may make, unmake, do what she list, Exit [25 marks] IB/H/Jun24/7712/1 3 Even as her appetite shall play the god With his weak function. How am I then a villain To counsel Cassio to this parallel course Directly to his good? Divinity of hell! When devils will the blackest sins put on, They do suggest at first with heavenly shows As I do now. For whiles this honest fool Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor, I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear: That she repeals him for her body’s lust, And by how much she strives to do him good, She shall undo her credit with the Moor. So will I turn her virtue into pitch, And out of her own goodness make the net That shall enmesh them all. Turn over for the next question IB/H/Jun24/7712/1 (Act 2, Scene 3) Turn over ► 4 or 0 2 The Taming of the Shrew – William Shakespeare ‘Grumio and other servants are crucial to the development of the love stories in The Taming of the Shrew.’ In the light of this view, discuss how Shakespeare presents Grumio and other servants in this extract and elsewhere in the play. CURTIS I prithee, good Grumio, tell me how goes the world? He kindles a fire GRUMIO A cold world, Curtis, in every office but thine – and therefore fire. Do thy duty, and have thy duty, for my master and mistress are almost frozen to death. CURTIS There’s fire ready – and therefore, good Grumio, the news. GRUMIO Why, ‘Jack boy, ho boy!’ and as much news as wilt thou. CURTIS Come, you are so full of cony-catching. GRUMIO Why therefore fire, for I have caught extreme cold. Where’s the cook? Is supper ready, the house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept, the serving- men in their new fustian, their white stockings, and every officer his wedding-garment on? Be the Jacks fair within, the Jills fair without, the carpets laid, and everything in order? CURTIS All ready – and therefore, I pray thee, news. GRUMIO First know my horse is tired, my master and mistress fallen out. CURTIS How? GRUMIO Out of their saddles into the dirt, and thereby hangs a tale. CURTIS Let’s ha’t, good Grumio. GRUMIO Lend thine ear. CURTIS Here. GRUMIO There. He boxes Curtis’s ear CURTIS This ’tis to feel a tale, not to hear a tale. GRUMIO And therefore ’tis called a sensible tale; and this cuff was but to knock at your ear and beseech listening. Now I begin. Imprimis, we came down a foul hill, my master riding behind my mistress – CURTIS Both of one horse? GRUMIO What’s that to thee? CURTIS Why, a horse. GRUMIO Tell thou the tale. But hadst thou not crossed me, thou shouldst have heard how her horse fell, and she under her horse; thou shouldst have heard in how miry a place, how she was bemoiled, how he left her [25 marks] IB/H/Jun24/7712/1 5 with the horse upon her, how he beat me because her horse stumbled, how she waded through the dirt to pluck him off me, how he swore, how she prayed that never prayed before, how I cried, how the horses ran away, how her bridle was burst, how I lost my crupper – with many things of worthy memory, which now shall die in oblivion, and thou return unexperienced to thy grave. CURTIS By this reckoning he is more shrew than she. GRUMIO Ay, and that thou and the proudest of you all shall find when he comes home. But what talk I of this? Call forth Nathaniel, Joseph, Nicholas, Philip, Walter, Sugarsop, and the rest. Let their heads be slickly combed, their blue coats brushed, and their garters of an indifferent knit. Let them curtsy with their left legs, and not presume to touch a hair of my master’s horse-tail till they kiss their hands. Are they all ready? CURTIS They are. GRUMIO Call them forth. CURTIS Do you hear, ho? You must meet my master to countenance my mistress. Turn over for the next question (Act 4, Scene 1) IB/H/Jun24/7712/1 Turn over ► 6 or 0 3 Measure for Measure – William Shakespeare ‘An audience can only be appalled by Angelo’s abuses of power in leadership and love.’ In the light of this view, discuss how Shakespeare presents Angelo in this extract and elsewhere in the play. ISABELLA Must he needs die? ANGELO ISABELLA Maiden, no remedy. Yes, I do think that you might pardon him, And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy. ANGELO I will not do’t. ISABELLA ANGELO But can you if you would? Look what I will not, that I cannot do. ISABELLA But might you do’t, and do the world no wrong, If so your heart were touched with that remorse As mine is to him? ANGELO He’s sentenced; ’tis too late. LUCIO (aside to Isabella) ISABELLA Too late? Why, no. I that do speak a word May call it again. Well, believe this, No ceremony that to great ones longs, Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe, Become them with one half so good a grace As mercy does. If he had been as you, and you as he, You would have slipped like him; but he, like you, Would not have been so stern. ANGELO ISABELLA I would to heaven I had your potency, And you were Isabel; should it then be thus? No, I would tell what ’twere to be a judge, And what a prisoner. LUCIO (aside to Isabella) Ay, touch him; there’s the vein. ANGELO Your brother is a forfeit of the law, And you but waste your words. ISABELLA Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once, [25 marks] You are too cold. Pray you, be gone. Alas, alas; IB/H/Jun24/7712/1 7 And He that might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy. How would you be, If He, which is the top of judgement, should But judge you as you are? O think on that, And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made. ANGELO Be you content, fair maid, It is the law, not I, condemn your brother; Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son, It should be thus with him. He must die tomorrow. ISABELLA Tomorrow? O, that’s sudden; spare him, spare him. He’s not prepared for death. Even for our kitchens We kill the fowl of season. Shall we serve heaven With less respect than we do minister To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you: Who is it that hath died for this offence? There’s many have committed it. LUCIO (aside to Isabella) ANGELO Ay, well said. The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept. Those many had not dared to do that evil If the first that did th’edict infringe Had answered for his deed. Now ’tis awake, Takes note of what is done, and like a prophet Looks in a glass that shows what future evils, Either now, or by remissness, new-conceived, And so in progress to be hatched and born, Are now to have no successive degrees, But where they live, to end. ISABELLA ANGELO Yet show some pity. I show it most of all when I show justice