Extract or Discursive? (Shakespeare)

Not a passage, a moment

The Shakespeare question offers you the same choice as the novel question: an extract-based question or a discursive one, and you pick. The decision is not the same decision, though, and treating it as the same is where students go wrong. A novel extract is a passage of prose that you read. A play extract is a moment in performance, and that changes what there is to say about it. Somebody walks on, or is already there and says nothing. Somebody overhears. Somebody turns aside and tells the audience something the other characters do not know. None of that is in the words alone; it is in what an audience sees and hears while the words are being spoken. So the extract question on a play rewards reading a moment as staged action. The discursive question is a different job again: on a play you track something across acts, and your evidence comes in scenes rather than chapters. Which of those you can actually do is what should decide your choice. One practical note: this is the second of the only two sections in the whole qualification assessed for technical accuracy, which the module on that topic covers in full.

Words for what happens on stage

Five terms about performance rather than about language. Each names something an audience experiences.

Match the device to its effect

What a play extract rewards

You have chosen the extract question on the Shakespeare paper. Beyond analysing the language, what does this question type particularly reward?

• Reading the moment as staged action: who is present, who hears what, and what the audience is being shown
• Retelling what happens in the extract so the examiner knows you have read it
• Explaining the whole plot of the play from the beginning
• Listing the historical beliefs of the period in a separate paragraph

A scene, or the shape of a play

Both questions are worth the same. They ask for different abilities, and the honest question is which of the two you can actually do under pressure.

The line doing staging work

Four lines invented for this exercise, from no real play. Select the ONE that is doing work the staging conditions made necessary, rather than only describing.

• I have known him since we were boys together.
• How thick the darkness lies upon this hour.
• Your father sent me here to speak with you.
• I will not go until the letter comes.

Why the text says it is dark

Here is the single most useful piece of context for this paper, and it is useful precisely because it is not a fact to recite. Shakespeare wrote for an outdoor theatre, performed in daylight, with no way to dim anything. So when a scene happens at night, the audience can see perfectly well, and the darkness has to be made somewhere else: in the language. A character says how dark it is, or gropes for a torch, or fails to recognise somebody standing near them. That means a line about darkness is not decoration and often not even description. It is doing a job the lighting could not do. The same logic runs through other conventions of the period: an audience close enough to be spoken to directly makes the aside possible, and the fact that women's parts were played by boys is worth knowing when a play makes something of disguise. Use context like this and it becomes part of your analysis rather than a paragraph sitting beside it, which is what the specification means by integrating it. Recite it as a list of facts about the period and it earns very little.

Which two follow from daylight

Shakespeare's plays were first performed outdoors in daylight. Select the TWO consequences for the writing.

• Night has to be established through what characters say and do
• A character can address the audience directly, because the audience is close and visible
• Scenes set at night could not be written at all
• Lighting changes were used to signal a change of time

The choice in a sentence

A play extract is not a passage but a moment in _____, so the extract question rewards noticing who is on stage, who _____, and what the audience is being shown. The discursive question ranges across the whole play, and its evidence comes in _____ rather than chapters. Because the plays were performed in _____, night has to be created in the language, which is why a line about darkness is doing _____ work.

Reading an extract as performance

Put these into the order that gets most out of a printed extract before you start writing.

• Work out who is on stage and who has just arrived or left
• Work out who can hear what, including anyone overhearing
• Ask what the audience knows that somebody on stage does not
• Look for lines doing work the staging could not do, such as establishing night
• Only now analyse the language, with all of that available to explain it

A scene, worked

Here is the method on an invented scene, so that nothing depends on which play your school teaches. Suppose two characters are talking in a courtyard, a third is present but silent, and one of the two speaks a line about how little can be seen at this hour. A weaker answer says the line creates a dark and threatening atmosphere and moves on. A stronger answer says this: the reference to darkness is doing work that the staging could not, since the play was performed outdoors in daylight, so the audience is being told what to imagine rather than shown it, and the effort the language has to make is itself part of the tension. It then adds that the silent third figure is visible to the audience throughout, so every line the other two speak is heard twice over, once as they mean it and once as somebody unseen by them receives it. That second point costs nothing to notice and is available only because this is a play. Two things to take from the model. The context is used inside the analysis rather than announced beside it. And the strongest observation came from asking who was on stage rather than from anything in the vocabulary.

Say what the audience sees

Assemble a sentence that reads a moment as performance rather than as text.

What counts as evidence in a play

You have chosen the discursive question and are tracking how a character changes. What is your evidence made of?

• Specific scenes at points across the acts, chosen because they show the change happening
• A summary of the plot from beginning to end
• As many quotations as you can remember, in any order
• Facts about the period in which the play was written

Choosing on the day for Shakespeare

You are in the exam with both Shakespeare questions in front of you. Take the decisions in order.

• You read the extract. What do you check first to see whether it suits you?
• The extract has a character present but silent throughout. What is that worth?
• You consider the discursive question instead. What do you need before choosing it?
• You want to use what you know about the theatre of the period. Where does it go?

Choose and justify for a play

Think about the Shakespeare play your school is studying. Decide which question type you would choose and explain why, using what this module has covered.

• Say which question type you would choose, and give the honest reason
• Explain what an extract question on a play rewards that a prose extract question does not
• Name one scene from your play where who is on stage matters to how the lines land, and explain why
• Explain what your evidence would be made of if you chose the discursive question instead
• Give one thing about the theatre of the period that changes how a line in your play should be read
• Explain where that piece of context belongs in an answer, and where it does not