Your exam: four boards, one printed extract, four different jobs

Every board that sets this play prints an extract from it in front of you, and each one wants something different done with it. On one paper, the first part may use only the extract, and the second part must not touch it. On another, you can turn the extract down completely.

Everything else in this collection teaches the play itself; this one is about your paper, and the plot is in the Overview.

There are four shapes of question on this play, and you can tell yours by how it is laid out. The first shape is one question. It prints the extract, asks you to start with that moment, and then asks about the play as a whole, all in one answer. The second shape comes in two parts. Part a is close reading of the extract alone. Part b asks how an idea from it works elsewhere in the play. The third shape is two questions, and you answer both. One is on the extract and asks how an audience might respond, and the other is an essay on the play. The fourth shape is a choice of two questions. One gives you an extract to refer to, and the other has no extract at all. Say your paper is the two-part shape, and you are writing part b. Three things you could use: a line from the printed extract, a moment from another scene put in your own words, or nothing you cannot quote exactly. Which of those three belongs in part b? The second. Part b is marked on knowledge from elsewhere in the play, and putting it in your own words is allowed there. One examiner's report is direct about the printed lines: The extract should not be used in this part of the question. The habit, then: on that paper, part a lives inside the extract and part b travels away from it.

What each shape rewards differs too, and context is where they part company most. Context means the history and ideas around the play, like a family's honour, or a father's power over his daughter's marriage. On the one-question shape, the extract is a starting point. You travel out from it into the play, and context counts inside the same answer. On the two-part shape, part a pays for language, form and structure, and nothing else. Form is the kind of writing, and structure is the order things come in. One examiner's report puts it plainly: Context is not assessed in Part a. Part b is where your knowledge of the play and its context are marked. On the shape with two compulsory questions, context earns nothing at all, in either answer. Knowing the period still helps you understand the play, but it is not marked as context. On the choice-of-two shape, it is the reverse. This one Shakespeare question carries all of that paper's marks for context. A student facing the two compulsory questions spends a full paragraph on how fathers chose husbands in Shakespeare's time. Why is that paragraph a poor use of their time? Because context earns nothing on that paper. The minutes belong to the words, and to how an audience might respond. Whatever the shape, what lifts an answer is the same: a clear point about the play, carried by the words that prove it.

Every board rewards a precise, relevant reference, and where your point is about the words, the exact words have to be in your answer. One examiner's report sets out the rule. A slightly misquoted line is not penalised, as long as it can still be recognised and supports the argument. But analysing words Shakespeare never wrote cannot earn marks. A wrong word costs nothing while it is only a reference, and it costs the point once it is the word you analyse. Your point is that Capulet first wanted Juliet's agreement. Two versions of his line: My will to her consent is but a part, or, her scope of choice lies no further than my consent. Which version supports that point, and why does the other sink it? The opening version, his real words, where his wish is one share of the decision. The other is a misquotation named in an examiner's report, and it gives him the final say, the opposite point. Part b of the two-part shape is the one place a paraphrase is credited. One examiner's report says: Candidates can paraphrase quotations from memory. On the one-question shape, another report says: We do not require exactly recalled, rote-learned quotations for success on this paper. Rote-learned means learned by heart without understanding. The other two shapes ask for more. The two-question shape names quotations at every level of its marking, and the choice-of-two shape's top level asks for quotations that are precise, pertinent and skillfully interwoven, woven into your own sentences. So the habit for every paper is one habit: keep a short quotation exact wherever you analyse its words, and use your own words only for what happens.

Four questions about your own paper now, and the last one hands you a half-remembered line. On the two-part paper, what may part a draw on? Only the printed extract. The words are all in front of you, and context is not marked there. Next: on which shape does context earn nothing? Two compulsory questions, one on the extract and one essay. Now: when does a misquotation cost you the point? When the wrong word is the word you analyse. Try this: you half-remember Juliet calling the Paris match a hate meant as love. Where can that go? In part b of the two-part paper, as a paraphrase of what happens. To pick apart the hate itself, you need her exact line: hate that is meant love.

If you could explain your own paper's rules to a friend, you know your paper, so thumbs it up and move on. If it is still blurry, save it and hold it against one real past paper of your own, because seeing the layout makes it click.

Next in the chapter: From the printed extract to a finished argument.

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