Evaluate Key Quotations and Their Impact in 'Much Ado About Nothing'

In the exam, you will need to able to support your ideas with quotations from the exam extract and from the play as a whole.

You should try to build a bank of quotations for each character and theme and learn these so that you can use them readily in your exam response.

For a higher mark in the exam, you should try to analyse quotations closely and evaluate their impact and consider how they reflect the key contextual factors surrounding the play.

The diagram below shows how we can analyse quotations for the highest marks in the exam:

"O, she is fallen into a pit of ink"   Metaphor  Depicts the shame and disgust around the accusation of Hero's dishonour   Shakespeare reflects the gender expectation during Elizabethan period of women being pure and innocent before marriage and the cruel judgment and harsh treatment they faced.

So, for each quotation used, think about:

- what language or structural device has Shakespeare used and what effect do these have?

- how do the quotations reflect something about the key contextual factors surrounding the play?

In this activity, we will practise evaluating the impact of quotations in this way.

You should always refer to your own text when working through these examples. These quotations are for reference only.