Shakespeare and the 19th-Century Novel (8702): Revision Notes

Condensed for the final weeks. For the full explanation, use the Shakespeare and the 19th-Century Novel study guide. This is one of two papers in AQA GCSE English Literature (8702), covering the Shakespeare play and 19th-century novel studied for the qualification.

Paper 1 at a glance

Section	Focus	Structure
A	Shakespeare play	Set extract, then whole-text essay
B	19th-century novel	Set extract, then whole-text essay

1 hour 45 minutes, closed book, 64 marks = 40% of the GCSE. (Paper 2: 2h15, 96 marks, 60%.) Both sections follow the same underlying pattern — a set extract, then a whole-text essay — once for the Shakespeare play and once for the novel.

Closed book means…

No text in the exam room — quotation banks must be memorised. Build a compact bank per text covering: 2-3 major characters, 2-3 central themes, and a handful of pivotal moments — rather than attempting to memorise the whole play or novel. A quotation bank built to serve multiple possible questions (character development, thematic argument, extract analysis) is far more efficient revision than memorising in response to one imagined question type only.

Shakespeare section

• Treat the play as drama, not prose: comment on staging, performance choices and how a line might be delivered, not just what it means on the page — this is worth building into your quotation bank directly, with a staging note alongside each memorised line.
• Both the extract and the whole-text question expect you to move fluently between the printed extract and your knowledge of the play as a whole — practise starting from the extract and reaching outward, rather than the extract and the whole-text discussion feeling like two disconnected halves of the same answer.

Novel section

• Track how a theme or character develops across the whole novel — a single-scene answer underperforms one that shows development, so a quotation bank organised chronologically across the novel, rather than by theme alone, makes it easier to trace and articulate this development.
• Integrate historical/social context into the analysis itself, not as a separate paragraph — AQA’s mark scheme explicitly credits this integration, so weave a brief contextual point directly into a sentence analysing a quotation, rather than reserving context for a standalone paragraph at the end of a response.

Why closed book changes everything about revision

Every other decision in this paper flows from one fact: no text is available in the exam room. This is why quotation banks must be built and memorised in advance, why apt and precisely chosen textual reference matters more than loose paraphrase, and why practising extract-based analysis on unfamiliar passages matters more here than on an open-book paper — a candidate cannot “look up” the answer under exam conditions the way an open-book paper would allow. Building this discipline early, rather than assuming quotation recall will simply happen naturally through general reading of the texts, is the single biggest lever available for improving Paper 1 performance specifically.

Paper 1 sits alongside Paper 2

Paper 1 (Shakespeare and the 19th-Century Novel, 64 marks, 40%) pairs with Paper 2 (Modern Texts and Poetry, 96 marks, 60%), which covers a modern prose or drama text, the poetry anthology, and two unseen poems. Because Paper 2 is worth 50% more and adds an unseen-poetry element that cannot be prepared through quotation memorisation the way the studied texts can, revision time should be weighted accordingly — Paper 1’s closed-book, studied-text demands are real but should not consume revision time disproportionate to its 40% share of the qualification.

Exam traps

• Treating Shakespeare purely as text, ignoring performance and staging.
• Writing “context paragraphs” that are disconnected from the actual argument.
• Spending equal time on Paper 1 and Paper 2 revision, when Paper 2 is worth 50% more (96 vs 64 marks).
• Attempting to memorise entire texts instead of a focused, well-chosen quotation bank.
• Under-practising unseen poetry technique because it feels less “revisable” than the closed-book studied texts.

Self-test

1. Why does “closed book” change how you should revise?
2. What two elements does each of Sections A and B contain?
3. Give one context-integration tip specific to Shakespeare.
4. How should Paper 1 revision time compare with Paper 2, given the mark split?

Answers: 1. Because no text is available in the exam, quotations must be memorised — making a focused, well-chosen quotation bank essential rather than optional. 2. A set extract question and a whole-text essay question, once for the Shakespeare play and once for the novel. 3. Keep performance and staging in view alongside language, since how a line is staged or spoken is often as significant as what it says. 4. Paper 1 (64 marks, 40%) should get proportionally less revision time than Paper 2 (96 marks, 60%), including dedicated unseen-poetry practice for Paper 2.

5. What does Paper 2 test that Paper 1’s quotation-bank approach cannot prepare a candidate for directly?
6. Why does being closed book affect how precisely a candidate should aim to recall quotations?

Answers (continued): 5. Unseen poetry — since the poems are unfamiliar on the day, no amount of memorising specific quotations in advance can substitute for genuine analytical skill practised under timed conditions. 6. Because there is no text available to check against in the exam room, an imprecisely recalled quotation cannot be corrected or verified on the spot — and a vague paraphrase is harder to make apt than a precisely chosen reference, which is what the mark scheme actually rewards, so precision is worth prioritising even though verbatim accuracy itself is not directly credited.