1. Sneaking techniques and analysis into your essays.
Analyse how language features revealed the writer’s purpose in the written text(s). [2015]
Candidates who were assessed as Achieved with Merit
Commonly explained why language features were used
Analyse how language features were used to shape your reaction to one or more ideas in the written text(s). Note: “Ideas” may refer to character, theme, or setting. [2014]
As You Like It STYLE
Analyse how language features were used to stir readers’ emotions in the written text(s). [2013]
Sneaking techniques and analysis into your essays.
Analyse how the language used intensified the message of the written text(s). [2012]

2. Contrast & / or blurring
Court and country
Men and women
Public and private
Literal and figurative
Realistic and imaginative
Frederick and Senior
Pastoral and satire
Otium and negotium
“There’s no news at the court, sir, but the old news.” Charles

3. Duke Senior’s speech
1. Inclusive nouns and informal language to establish familiarity and fraternity.
3. Alliteration and imagery: Artificiality of court and obsession with appearance.
4. Personification: (see 6-8).
5. Christian Allusion: return to Arden /Eden is worth the physical labour.
6-8 personification: highlight extent of nature’s cruelty incomparable with the human cruelty of the politicking, hierarchy and jealousy at court.
13-14; simile and fairytale allusion: highlights the transformative power of adversity.
16-17: figurative language / metaphor: educative powers of the forest and the natural world which may be preferable to those of so called civilized society.
Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
'This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.'
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
I would not change it.
Focusing on this speech provides you with the opportunity to offer deep language analysis like you would if we had studied poetry.

4. Structural Elements of the play
Anti-climatic structure.
Progression to stasis / deliberate slowing down of the plot.
Court and country contrast but also Emma Smith’s discussion of blurring worlds
Dialogue (not really structural) but a creative force; Saying it makes it so; “This is the forest of Arden”
Songs, and staged philosophical speeches halts rather than advance the plot. The play is ‘relatively plot-less’ (Shapiro) and a ‘waste of time’ (Smith, 2012).

5. Genre and period Pastoral tradition & romantic comedy
- Shepherds, idealised life, romantic and associated with contemplative, reflective living.
Prolific period for Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Henry V and Hamlet.
Forest is simultaneously a literal place for the low characters and a metaphorical, morally restorative, transformative place for the high characters.
Satire / mock: through the contrast or juxtaposition of Orlando decorating the forest and the next scene talking about ewe felts.
- “Run, run, Orlando; carve on every tree The fair, the chaste and unexpressive she.” Orlando & then “Why, we are still handling our ewes, and their fells, you know, are greasy.” Corin

6. Imagery Violent imagery: to reflect turbulent world of court politics.
First encounters with love are explained with wrestling imagery: "O poor Orlando! Thou art overthrown“
Animal imagery: Adam is repeatedly called an “old dog” when in fact he is perhaps the most altruistic character.
- “Which is he that killed the deer?” – melancholy, mourning and loss
- “She-snakes and she-lions” – Danger of the female threat.
“If a hart do lack a hind, Let him seek out Rosalind. If the cat will after kind, So be sure will Rosalind.”  (Sexual allusion)
“Why, we are still handling our ewes, and their fells, you know, are greasy.” (used as contrast of courtly and country values.)

7. Symbols and motifs Symbols
Dead deer: loss of innocence & a source of Jacques; melancholy
Forest: Transformation, redemption and
moral regeneration. Recreation through recreation etc.
Ganymede: fluent sexuality
Motif
of time: ‘time’ appears 50 times in the play. E.g. [CNTRL + F] it.
“there’s no clock in the forest” – Orlando.
“I like this place. And willingly could waste my time in it” – Celia
“One man in his time plays many parts” Jacques.

8. Allusion
Christian / religious allusion: Eden, Adam, “the tree yields bad fruit.”
-“She-snakes and she-lions” (snake & temptation)
Classical allusions:
- Ganymede
- "Arden" combines the names of Arcadia (an earthly paradise from classical Greek mythology) and Eden (the Biblical paradise).
Fairytale / literary allusions:
And a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England: …and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.

9. Images of artificiality and appearance
Imagery of Senior: “Painted pomp”,
Jaques “The duke hath put on a religious life And thrown into neglect the pompous court?

10. Analysis & purpose Candidates who were assessed as Achieved with Merit
Commonly explained why language features were used

11. Describe and analyse
If you include language features and explain how they link to a theme, then you are probably still only describing.
In order to show the marker that you are analysing language, you need to explain how the technique contributes to our understanding of the idea you are discussing.

12. Purpose: show verbs Shows Explores Emphasises Develops Reveals
The motif of time helps to show the contrast between the literal forest that the low characters live in and the metaphorical forest that acts as an educative, transformative force for the high characters. When Orlando says “there’s no clock in the forest”, it suggests that the rules of negotium that governed courtly life no longer exist in the forest of Arden. We come to realise that the courtiers exist in the forest ‘outside of time’, almost as if they belong to a fairytale, magical world. The low characters experience of time, however, is more realistic as Corin explains how the shepherds “are still handling our ewes, and their fells, you know, are greasy.”
Shows
Explores
Emphasises
Develops
Reveals
Enhances
Contrasts
Enables