A Level Literature in English 9695: Paper 3 Set-Text Essay and Passage Practice

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions, and they do not replicate the exam’s exact structure, question count or mark tariffs — examination boards hold copyright in their own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available free from your board.

Related: Paper 3 – Shakespeare and Drama study guide | Paper 3 revision notes | Paper 3 exam-format practice

These questions are written for Paper 3 Shakespeare and Drama of Cambridge International AS & A Level Literature in English (9695), syllabus for 2024, 2025 and 2026. Paper 3 is an A Level paper of 2 hours and 50 marks: candidates answer one question from Section A Shakespeare and one from Section B Drama, 25 marks each, choosing for each set text between an essay question and a passage-based question. The texts used here are set for 2025 and 2026 (Hamlet and Long Day’s Journey Into Night are also set for 2024); always check the set texts for your exam series in the syllabus, because they change. The exam-format page linked above covers the paper’s structure and assessment objectives; this page gives text-based questions with indicative content.

Using these questions for 2027. In the 9695 syllabus for 2027 and 2028, Hamlet and Long Day’s Journey Into Night are replaced by Henry IV, Part 1 and Our Country’s Good. If you sit Paper 3 in 2027, use the method here with your own 2027 set texts.

How should you use these questions?

Choose one Section A and one Section B question and write each in about an hour, as in the exam. Then compare your plan with the indicative content. Indicative content is not a model answer: any well-argued, well-evidenced response that addresses the question is creditworthy. At A Level, AO5 (discussing and evaluating varying opinions and interpretations) is assessed alongside close analysis.

Questions

Section A: Shakespeare

1. Hamlet (essay). “Hamlet’s tragedy is caused less by his hesitation than by the corrupt world of Denmark.” Discuss Shakespeare’s presentation of Hamlet in the light of this view. [25]

2. Hamlet (passage). Comment closely on the following passage from Act 1 Scene 2, considering what it reveals about Claudius and its significance in the play as a whole. [25]

KING: Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death The memory be green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe, Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature That we with wisest sorrow think on him Together with remembrance of ourselves. Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state, Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy, With an auspicious and a dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole, Taken to wife.

3. The Taming of the Shrew (essay). Discuss the dramatic effects of the Induction (the Christopher Sly scenes) on an audience’s response to the play. [25]

4. The Taming of the Shrew (essay). “Katherina’s final speech can be played as sincere, ironic or defeated.” Discuss the dramatic possibilities of Katherina’s role in the light of this comment. [25]

Section B: Drama

5. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (essay). Discuss O’Neill’s dramatic presentation of the past and its hold over the Tyrone family. [25]

6. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (essay). In what ways, and with what dramatic effects, does O’Neill use the fog and the foghorn in the play? [25]

7. Sweat (essay). Discuss Nottage’s dramatic presentation of the effects of economic change on friendship in the play. [25]

Answers

1. Indicative content:

• Hesitation: Hamlet’s soliloquies (for example “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” and “How all occasions do inform against me”) show him reproaching his delay; he spares Claudius at prayer in Act 3 Scene 3.
• Corrupt world: imagery of disease and rottenness (“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”, “an unweeded garden”); surveillance by Polonius, Claudius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; Claudius’s murder and usurpation.
• Weighing the view: the corruption gives Hamlet’s delay meaning (he must test the Ghost with The Mousetrap); but rash action (killing Polonius) also drives the tragedy, leading to Ophelia’s madness and Laertes’ revenge.
• AO5: different interpretations of Hamlet’s delay, for example as moral scruple, melancholy, or a response to an uncertain, deceptive court; performance choices that make him more decisive or more paralysed. High-level answers argue a clear position, analyse language and dramatic method closely, and evaluate alternative readings.

2. Indicative content:

• Rhetoric and balance: long, controlled sentence with subordinate clauses delays the main verb (“Taken to wife”), suggesting a politician managing awkward news; antithesis (“mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage”, “delight and dole”, “auspicious and a dropping eye”) balances grief and joy in a way that may sound smooth or insincere.
• Royal plural: “we”, “us”, “ourselves” assert kingly authority and fuse personal desire with the state’s interest.
• Euphemism: “sometime sister, now our queen” compresses the hasty, incestuous marriage that Hamlet condemns.
• “Discretion fought with nature”: presents remarriage as wise policy, contrasting with Hamlet’s grief-stricken “nature” in the same scene.
• Significance: the speech opens the court world of public performance and concealment; the audience later learns of the murder, so the measured rhetoric becomes ironic. AO5: Claudius can be played as a capable ruler or a smooth hypocrite.

3. Indicative content: the Induction frames the play as a performance staged for a drunken tinker tricked into believing he is a lord; it introduces ideas of transformation, disguise and role-play that mirror Katherina’s “taming” and the disguises of the Bianca plot; it can distance the audience, inviting them to see the taming as a theatrical fiction; Sly’s disappearance after Act 1 raises questions for directors (some productions return to him at the end, using material from the related play The Taming of a Shrew). AO5: productions that cut, keep or expand the Induction change how comic or troubling the play feels.

4. Indicative content: the speech’s length and placement give Katherina the last major voice of the play; its content (wives’ duty to husbands, “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper”) can be delivered as genuine conversion, as knowing irony shared with Petruchio or the audience, or as the words of a woman broken by starvation and sleep deprivation (Act 4); her earlier wit and violence (the wooing scene of Act 2 Scene 1) shape the audience’s reading; the reactions of Bianca, the Widow and the other men on stage matter. AO5: critical and theatrical traditions differ widely, and the strongest answers evaluate them against the text.

5. Indicative content: each character returns obsessively to the past: Mary to her convent girlhood and her hopes of being a nun or a pianist, and to the birth of Edmund, after which she was first given morphine; Tyrone to his poverty and the role that brought him fortune but limited his career; Jamie and Edmund to old resentments; repeated accusations and apologies show the family trapped in memory. Structure: the single day moving from morning to midnight, with Mary’s final speech as she drifts into the past (“I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time”). Dramatic methods: long confessional speeches, cycles of blame and forgiveness, stage directions describing appearance and movement. AO5: the play’s autobiographical background and readings of it as tragedy or as compassionate family portrait.

6. Indicative content: the fog, rising through the day, isolates the house and mirrors the characters’ withdrawal (Mary says she likes the fog because it hides her from the world); the foghorn’s repeated sound interrupts and unsettles, a reminder of reality; Edmund’s speech about losing himself in the fog and the sea connects the image to his longing to escape; lighting and sound effects make the atmosphere progressively darker and more enclosed. AO5: the fog as symbol of addiction, denial or the blurring of past and present.

7. Indicative content: the bar setting as a community space where friendships are formed and tested; the play’s structure moving between 2000 and 2008, so the audience knows the outcome before seeing its causes; Cynthia’s promotion to management, which divides her from Tracey and Jessie; the lockout at the plant and the anger directed at Oscar, who takes work there; the violence of Jason and Chris and its consequences for Stan; the scenes with Evan, the parole officer, which show the long-term damage. Dramatic methods: naturalistic dialogue, shifts in time, contrasts between early warmth and later bitterness. AO5: readings of the play as political drama about deindustrialisation and as a study of individual responsibility.

Where marks are usually lost

• Retelling the plot instead of answering the question’s terms.
• In passage questions, writing about the whole play and neglecting close analysis of the passage.
• Analysing language without considering the text as drama on stage.
• Naming critics or productions without evaluating their interpretation.
• Writing about a set text that is not on the list for your exam series.

Frequently asked questions

Must I quote critics to meet AO5? No. AO5 is about discussing and evaluating varying opinions and interpretations; these can be other readings, performance choices or alternative ways of seeing a scene, as well as published critics.

How long should each answer take? Paper 3 lasts 2 hours for two answers worth 25 marks each, so about an hour each, including planning.

Can I use the same text for both sections? No. Candidates answer one question on a Section A Shakespeare text and one on a Section B drama text.

Official syllabus

Cambridge International AS & A Level Literature in English (9695) syllabus for examination in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Paper 3 Shakespeare and Drama: 3.1 Section A Shakespeare and 3.2 Section B Drama, with the set text lists for each series, published by Cambridge International Education.