ENGLISH LITERATURE (SPECIFICATION A) LITA3

Please read this advice carefully before you turn to the material.

- Here are the materials taken from the prescribed area for study, Love Through the Ages. You will be using this material to answer the two questions on the page opposite.

- Read all four pieces (A, B, C and D) and their introductions several times

in the light of the questions set. Your reading should be close and careful.

The questions test your wider reading in the prescribed area for study, Love

different times by different writers.

Basing your answer on the drama extracts and, where appropriate, your wider reading in drama, compare the ways the two playwrights have used dramatic form, structure and language to express their thoughts and ideas.

(40 marks)

2 Write a comparison of the ways Christina Rossetti and Hanif Kureishi explore ideas

of love, loss and the relationship between love and memory.

You should consider:

- the ways the writers’ choices of form, structure and language shape

your responses to these extracts

- how your wider reading in the literature of love has contributed to your

understanding and interpretation of the extracts.

(40 marks)

The Reading

Extract A: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. In this extract from Twelfth Night Viola is dressed in male disguise, as Cesario. Orsino is in love with Olivia, but Olivia has mistakenly fallen in love with

Cesario (Viola in disguise as a male). Viola herself is in love with Orsino, but he thinks she is male and has employed her/him to woo Olivia for him. Viola attempts to communicate her love in code.

Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,

Hath for your love a great a pang of heart

As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her;

You tell her so; must she not then be answer'd?

DUKE ORSINO: There is no woman's sides

Can bide the beating of so strong a passion

As love doth give my heart; no woman's heart

So big, to hold so much; they lack retention

Alas, their love may be call'd appetite,

No motion of the liver, but the palate,

That suffer surfeit, cloyment and revolt;

But mine is all as hungry as the sea,

And can digest as much: make no compare

Between that love a woman can bear me

And that I owe Olivia.

VIOLA: Ay, but I know--

DUKE ORSINO: What dost thou know?

VIOLA: Too well what love women to men may owe:

In faith, they are as true of heart as we.

My father had a daughter loved a man,

As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,

I should your lordship.

DUKE ORSINO: And what's her history?

VIOLA: A blank, my lord. She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy

She sat like patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

We men may say more, swear more: but indeed

Our shows are more than will; for still we prove

Much in our vows, but little in our love.

Extract B

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

(1895)
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was an Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete. His parents were successful Dublin intellectuals, and from an early age he was tutored at home, where he showed his intelligence, becoming fluent in French and German. Reading Greats, Wilde proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin,

then at Oxford. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde was one of the most well-known personalities of his day. It was his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray – still widely read – that brought him more lasting recognition. The Importance of Being Earnest follows two young women, Cecily and Gwendolen, as they aim to stage manage their own proposals.

believe, Miss Fairfax, that you were not absolutely indifferent to me.

at all about marriage. The subject has not even been touched on.

possible disappointment, Mr. Worthing, I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly

before-hand that I am fully determined to accept you.

Jack. Gwendolen!

Gwendolen. Yes, Mr. Worthing, what have you got to say to me?

Jack. You know what I have got to say to you.

Gwendolen. Yes, but you don’t say it.

Jack. Gwendolen, will you marry me? [Goes on his knees.]

Gwendolen. Of course I will, darling. How long you have been about it! I am afraid

you have had very little experience in how to propose.

All my girl-friends tell me so. What wonderfully blue eyes you have, Ernest! They are

quite, quite, blue. I hope you will always look at me just like that, especially when

there are other people present.

was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. When the sonnet “Remember” first appeared in “Goblin Market” and Other Poems in 1862, it was both warmly and sadly received by readers. A mixture of happiness and depression tends to run throughout many of Christina Rossetti’s poems, and this one, which begins “Remember me when I am gone away,” implies immediately a loving, yet sad, request.

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann'd:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

This prose extract is taken from the conclusion of the short story ‘Remember This Moment, Remember Us’, from his collection of short stories, The Body (2002), by Hanif Kureishi. Anna and Rick decide to leave a tape message for their two-year-old son, Daniel, to be watched when he is Rick’s age – 45. Although they haven't decided what to say, they will go ahead with the filming certain that something will occur to them. This spontaneity may make their little dispatch to the future seem less portentous. Rick lugs the Christmas tree over towards the sofa where they will sit for the message and turns on the lights. He regards his wife through the camera. She has let down her hair.

‘How splendid you look!’

She asks, ‘Should I take my slippers off?’

‘Anna, your fluffies won’t be immortalised. I’ll frame it down to our waists.’

She gets up and looks at him through the eye piece, telling him he’s as fine as he’ll ever be. He switches on the camera and notices there is only about fifteen minutes of tape left. With the camera running, he hurries towards the sofa, being careful not to trip up. They will not be able to do this twice. Noticing a half-eaten sardine on the arm of the sofa, he drops it into his pocket. Rick sits down knowing this will be a sombre business, for he has been, in a sense, already dead for a while. The two of them will have fallen out on numerous occasions; Daniel might

love him bit will have disliked him, too, in the normal way. Daniel might love him but will have disliked him, too, in the normal way. Daniel could hardly have anything but a complicated idea of his past, but these words from eternity will serve as a simple reminder.

After all, it is the unloved who are the most dangerous people on earth.

The light on the top of the camera is flashing. As Anna and Rick turn their heads and look into the dark moon of the lens, neither of them speaks for what seems a long time. At last, Rick says, ‘Hello there,’ rather self-consciously, as though meeting a stranger for the first

time. On stage he is never anxious like this. Anna, also at a loss, copies him.

‘Hello, Daniel, my son,’ she says. ‘It’s your mummy.’

‘And daddy,’ Rick says.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Here we are!’

‘Your parents,’ he says. ‘Remember us? Do you remember this day?’ There is a silence; they wonder what to do.

Anna turns to Rick then, placing her hands on his face. She strokes his face as if painting it for the camera. She takes his hand and puts it to her fingers and cheeks. Rick leans over and takes her head between his hands and kisses her on the cheek and on the forehead and on the lips, and she caresses his hair and pulls him to her.

With their heads together, they begin to call out, ‘Hello, Dan, we hope you’re ok, we just wanted to say hello.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ chips in the other. ‘Hello!’

‘We hope you had a good forty-fifth birthday, Dan, with plenty of presents.’

‘Yes, and we hope you’re well, and your wife, or whoever it is you’re with.’

‘Yes, hello there...wife of Dan.’

‘And children of Dan,’ she adds.

‘Yes’, he says. ‘Children of Dan – however many of you there are, boys or girls or whatever – all the best! A good life to every single one of you!’

‘Yes, yes!’ she says. ‘All of that and more!’

‘More, more, more!’ Rick says.

After the kissing and stroking and cuddling and saying hello, and with a little time left, they are at a loss as to what to do, but right on cue, Dan has an idea. He clambers up from the floor and settles himself on both of them, and they kiss him and pass him between them and get him to wave at himself. When he has done this, he closes his eyes, his head falls into the crook of his mother’s arm, and he smacks his lips; and as the tape whirls towards its end, and the rain falls outside and time passes, they want him to be sure of at least this one thing, more than forty years from now, when he looks at these old-fashioned people in the past sitting on the sofa next to the Christmas tree, that on this night they loved him, and they loved each other.

‘Goodbye, Daniel,’ says Anna.

‘Goodbye,’ says Rick.

‘Goodbye, goodbye,’ they say together.

English Literature LITA3

! a 16-page answer book.

! 2 hours 30 minutes

! Use black ink or black ball-point pen.

! Write the information required on the front of your answer book. The Examining
Body for this paper is AQA. The Paper Reference is LITA3.

! Answer both questions.

! Do all rough work in your answer book. Cross through any work that you do not want to be marked.
Information

! The marks for questions are shown in brackets.

! The maximum mark for this paper is 80.

! Material from your wider reading may not be taken into the examination room.

! You will be marked on your ability to:

. use good English

. organise information clearly

. use specialist vocabulary where appropriate.

! This unit assesses your understanding of the relationships between different aspects of English Literature.

Please read this advice carefully before you turn to the material.

Reading

Here are the materials taken from the prescribed area for study, Love Through the Ages. You will be using this material to answer the two questions on the page opposite. Read all four items (A, B, C and D) and their introductions several times in the light of the questions set. Your reading should be close and careful.

Both questions test your wider reading in the prescribed area for study, Love Through the Ages. In your answers you should take every opportunity, where relevant, to refer to your wider reading.

Ensure that you write about a minimum of one wider reading text from each of the three genres of poetry, drama and prose.

Answer both questions.

In your answer you should consider the ways in which Shakespeare (in Item A) and MacNeice

(in Item B) use form, structure and language to present their thoughts and ideas; make relevant references to your wider reading in the poetry of love. (40 marks)
2 Read the two extracts (Item C and Item D) carefully, bearing in mind that they were written at different times by different writers and are open to different interpretations.

Write a comparison of the ways in which .forbidden love. is presented in these two extracts. In your answer you should consider the ways in which Stoppard (in Item C) and Hall (in Item D) use form, structure and language to express their thoughts and ideas; make relevant references to your wider reading. (40 marks)

William Shakespeare wrote a sequence of 154 sonnets in the 1590s. In common with most other poems written in this form, Shakespeare.s major theme is love.

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion.s paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger.s jaws,

And burn the long-liv.d phoenix in her blood;

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet.st,

And do whate.er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets.

But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:

O! carve not with thy hours my love.s fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;

Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty.s pattern to succeeding men.

Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,

My love shall in my verse ever live young.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Item B
Louis MacNeice (1907.1963) was born in Belfast, and was one of a group of prominent writers who published in the 1930s. His work is celebrated for the delicacy and power of its descriptions as well as its use of everyday experiences.
Item B cannot be reproduced here due to third-party copyright constraints.

Item C

The Invention of Love (1997) by Tom Stoppard dramatises events in the life of poet and classical scholar A.E. Housman (1859.1936) by imagining his reminiscences from beyond the grave. A.E. Housman.s one great love was for the sportsman, Moses Jackson, whom he met at Oxford; his love was unrequited.

In the following extract the recently dead 77 year-old A.E. Housman (referred to as .AEH.) speaks to his younger self, now an Oxford undergraduate (referred to as .Housman.). They discuss aspects of the love that existed between men in ancient Greece.

a bottle of the best to drink when your damnfool life is all but done: any more layingdowns we can think of? . oh, above all . above all . lay down your life like a pack on the roadside though your days of march are numbered and end with the grave. Love will not be deflected from its mischief by being called comradeship or anything else.

classical antiquity, a man copied out bits from old books for his young son, whose

name was Septimius; so we have one sentence from The Loves of Achilles. Love, said

Sophocles, is like the ice held in the hand by children. A piece of ice held fast in the

fist. I wish I could help you, but it.s not in my gift.

Housman Love it is, then, and I will make the best of it. I.m sorry that it made you unhappy, but it.s not my fault, and it can.t be made good by unhappiness in another. Will you shake hands?

AEH Gladly. (He shakes Housman.s offered hand.)
TOM STOPPARD


Item D

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (1880 .1943) was banned from its publication in 1928 until 1948. Named Stephen by her father who longed for a boy, the novel.s female protagonist grows up with a strong sense that she is .different to other girls.. Soon after the death of her father, and now a young adult, Stephen becomes attracted to Angela Crossby, a married woman. The following extract comprises the ending of Chapter Eighteen and the beginning of Chapter Nineteen.
Look,. said Stephen, and she pointed to the swan called Peter, who had come drifting past on his own white reflection. .Look,. she said, .this is Morton, all beauty and peace . it drifts like that swan does, on calm, deep water. And all this beauty and peace is for you, because now you’re a part of Morton.[1]

Angela said: .I.ve never known peace, it.s not in me . I don.t think I.d find it here, Stephen.. And as she spoke she released her hand, moving a little away from the girl.

But Stephen continued to talk on gently; her voice sounded almost like that of a dreamer: .Lovely, oh, lovely it is, our Morton. On evenings in winter these lakes are quite frozen, and the ice looks like slabs of gold in the sunset, when you and I come and stand here in the winter. And as we walk back we can smell the log fires long before we can see them, and we love that good smell because it means

home, and our home is Morton . and we’re happy, happy . we’re utterly contented and at peace, we’re filled with the peace of this place. Stephen . don.t!. We.re both filled with the old peace of Morton, because we love each other so deeply . and

because we.re perfect, a perfect thing, you and I . not two separate people but one. And our love has lit a great, comforting beacon, so that we need never be afraid of the dark any more . we can warm ourselves at our love, we can lie down together, and my arms will be round you .
1 Morton Hall is Stephen’s family’s large country house, which is set in its own parkland.

She broke off abruptly, and they stared at each other. Do you know what you.re saying?. Angela whispered. And Stephen answered: .I know that I love you, and that nothing else matters in the world. Then, perhaps because of that glamorous evening, with its spirit of queer, unearthly adventure, with its urge to strange, unendurable sweetness, Angela moved a step nearer to Stephen, then another, until their hands were touching. And all that she was, and all that she had been and would be again, perhaps even tomorrow, was fused at that moment into one mighty impulse, one imperative need, and that need was Stephen. Stephen.s need was now hers, by sheer force of its blind and uncomprehending will to appeasement. Then Stephen took Angela into her arms, and she kissed her full on the lips, as a lover.

Through the long years of life that followed after, bringing with them their dreams and disillusions, their joys and sorrows, their fulfilments and frustrations, Stephen was never to forget this summer when she fell quite simply and naturally in love, in accordance with the dictates of her nature. To her there seemed nothing strange or unholy in the love that she felt for Angela Crossby. To her it seemed an inevitable thing, as much a part of herself as her breathing; and yet it appeared transcendent of self, and she looked up and onwards towards her love . for the eyes of the young are drawn to the stars, and the spirit of youth is seldom earth-bound. She loved deeply, far more deeply than many a one who could fearlessly proclaim himself a lover. Since this is a hard and sad truth for the telling; those whom nature has sacrificed to her ends . her mysterious ends that often lie hidden . are sometimes endowed with a vast will to loving, with an endless capacity for suffering also, which must go hand in hand with their love. But at first Stephen.s eyes were drawn to the stars, and she saw only gleam upon gleam of glory.

Her physical passion for Angela Crossby had aroused a strange response in her spirit, so that side by side with every hot impulse that led her at times beyond her own understanding, there would come an impulse not of the body; a fine, selfless thing of great beauty and courage . she would gladly have given her body over to torment, have laid down her life if need be, for the sake of this woman whom she loved. And so blinded was she by those gleams of glory which the stars fling into the eyes of young lovers, that she saw perfection where none existed; saw a patient endurance that was purely fictitious, and conceived of a loyalty far beyond the limits of Angela.s nature.

Read the two poems (Extract A and B) carefully. They were written at different times

by different writers. Basing your answer on the poems and, where appropriate, your wider reading in the poetry of love, compare the ways the two poets have used poetic form, structure and language to express their thoughts and ideas.

(40 marks)
Question 2

Write a comparison of the ways Shakespeare and Hardy present the partings of

people who love each other.

You should consider:

- the ways the writers’ choices of form, structure and language shape your

responses to these extracts

- how your wider reading in the literature of love has contributed to your

understanding and interpretation of the extracts.

The poet, Michael Drayton (1563 – 1631), became a page to Sir Henry Goodeere of

Polesworth who ensured that he was educated. He fell in love with Sir Henry’s daughter who provided the inspiration for Idea, a sonnet sequence written in 1619. The following poem is taken from that sequence.
Idea in Sixtie Three Sonnets [61]

Since ther’s no helpe, Come let us kisse and part,

Nay, I have done: You get no more of Me,

And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,

That thus so cleanly I my Selfe can free:

Shake hands for ever, Cancell all our Vowes,

And when We meet at any time againe,

Be it not seene in either of our Browes,

That We one jot of former Love reteyne:

Now at the last gaspe of Love’s latest Breath,

When his Pulse fayling, Passion speechlesse lies,

When Faith is kneeling by his bed of Death,

And Innocence is closing up his eyes,

Now if thou would’st, when all have given him over,

From Death to Life thou might’st him yet recover.
MICHAEL DRAYTON


Extract B

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950) was an American lyrical poet and the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She was also known for her unconventional bohemian lifestyle and for her many love affairs with both men and women. She had a significant relationship with the poet, George Dillon, for whom this and many other sonnets were written.

That you were gone, not to return again –

Read from the back-page of a paper, say,

Held by a neighbor in a subway train,

How at the corner of this avenue

And such a street (so are the papers filled)

A hurrying man - who happened to be you -

At noon today had happened to be killed,

I could not cry aloud – I could not cry

Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place –

I should but watch the station lights rush by

With a more careful interest on my face,

Or raise my eyes and read with greater care

Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

This extract is taken from the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616). Unknown to their feuding families, Juliet and Romeo have married and spent the night together, but Romeo has been banished from Verona because he killed a member of Juliet’s family. So they must part.

It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;

Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree:

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
ROMEO It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

It is some meteor that the sun exhales

To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,

And light thee on thy way to Mantua.

Therefore stay yet. Thou need’st not to be gone.
ROMEO Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death;

I am content, so thou wilt have it so.

I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye,

’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow;

Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat

The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:

I have more care to stay than will to go.

Come, death, and welcome; Juliet wills it so.

How is’t, my soul? Let’s talk; It is not day.
JULIET It is, it is! Hie hence, be gone, away!

It is the lark that sings so out of tune,

Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.

Some say the lark makes sweet division;

This doth not so, for she divideth us.

Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes;

O now I would they had changed voices too,

Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,

Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day.

O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.

This extract is taken from The Woodlanders (1887) written by Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928). Melbury had promised his daughter Grace to Giles Winterborne, but she rejects him and marries the new doctor. A poor villager, Marty South, had always loved Giles but he did not reciprocate her feelings, although he was kind to her. When the doctor was unfaithful, Grace turned to Giles who let her sleep in his house during stormy weather. He slept outside, fell ill and died. In this extract, which is the end of the novel, Grace’s father has discovered that she has returned to her husband.

‘I think it was Marty South,’ said the hollow-tuner parenthetically.

‘I think ‘twas; ‘a was always a lonely maid,’ said Upjohn. And they passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more. It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been the particular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had been accustomed to privately deposit flowers on Giles’s grave, and this was the first occasion since his death eight months earlier on which Grace had failed to keep her appointment. Marty had waited in the road just outside Melbury’s, where her fellow-pilgrim had been wont to join her, till she was weary; and at last, thinking that

Grace had missed her, and gone on alone, she followed the way to the church, but saw no Grace in front of her. It got later, and Marty continued her walk till she reached the churchyard gate; but still no Grace. Yet her sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave alone, and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable she stood there with her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her feet chilled by the damp ground, till more than two hours had passed. She then heard the footsteps of Melbury’s men, who presently passed on their return from the search. In the silence of the night Marty could not help hearing fragments of their conversation, from which she acquired a general idea of what had occurred, and that Mrs Fitzpiers was by that time in the arms of another man than Giles.

Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the churchyard, going to a

secluded corner behind the bushes where rose the unadorned stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As this solitary and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a straight slim figure, clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible in her, the marks of poverty and toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched sublimity at points, and looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference the attribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism. She stooped down and cleared away the withered flowers that Grace and herself had laid there the previous week, and put her fresh ones in their place.

‘Now, my own, own love,’ she whispered, ‘you are mine, and only mine; for she has

forgot ’ee at last, although for her you died! But I – whenever I get up I’ll think of ’ee, and whenever I lie down I’ll think of ’ee again. Whenever I plant the young larches I’ll think that none can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a gad, and whenever I turn the cider wring, I’ll say none could do it like you. If ever I forget your name let me forget home and heaven!......But no, no, my love, I never can forget ’ee; for you was a good man, and did good