by melaniewp | Jun 3, 2013 | GCSE, IGCSE, Shakespeare, Sonnet 129, Sonnets, Whoso List to Hunt, Wyatt
Shakespeare wrote many famous love poems. Here’s one he wrote about lust, and Wyatt’s poem below, which may have inspired some of the imagery.The sonnet is below, with a translation.SONNET 129William ShakespeareThe expense of spirit in a waste of shameIs...
by melaniewp | Jun 2, 2013 | GCSE, IGCSE, Petrarch, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, Wyatt
Are you a Petrarchan lover? Do you drip, swoon and melt at the sight of your lady who kills you with a look?A Petrarchan lover is melodramatic, self-consciously suffering and has given himself up to the power of his mistress. At the start of Romeo and Juliet, this is...
by melaniewp | Jun 1, 2013 | GCSE, IGCSE, Model Essays, Of Mice and Men, OMAM Essays, Ranch Community
Steinbeck presents the ranch community with a startling degree of realism, dramatising a condition created by the Great Depression of migrant labourers, forced into work communities, with no families. This is summarized in the key quotation at the start of the novel...
by melaniewp | Jun 1, 2013 | Carpe Diem Poetry, GCSE, Go Lovely Rose, IGCSE, Romeo and Juliet, To His Coy Mistress
Romeo and Juliet is a play of love – specifically young love, of haste, rushing headlong. Their ‘violent delights’ have ‘violent ends’, as bright, and brief as ‘lightning’. To their parents, they are still children, full...
by melaniewp | May 31, 2013 | AQA, English Language Exam, GCSE, How Do Writers Use Language?, IGCSE
If you have your GCSE Language Exam or mock coming up, you need to read this. The language question is the one that students do worst on. So what can you do to improve?1. Quote – focus on the key words that create the strongest effects on the reader. The skill...
by melaniewp | May 31, 2013 | GCSE, IGCSE, Love, Model Essays, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare
The love affair of Romeo and Juliet is at the centre of the play against a background of hate, which dominates the Prologue. In this, the ‘star-crossed lovers’ seem tiny and rapidly extinguised in the ‘fearful passage of their death-marked love’. This is young love of...
