1. Passage Analysis

2. What do you think a passage analysis might be
What do you think a passage analysis might be? How might it be different from a traditional essay?

3. The purpose of the passage analysis is to capture the heart of the passage. It is a close examination of language, and how that informs character and theme.

4. Ideally, a passage analysis should allow you to:
Reveal your familiarity of the play’s plot
Your in-depth understanding of the characters and their motivations
The key concerns and ideas that are central to the play
The language/literary devices used by Shakespeare to shape meaning and engage the audience.

5. A comprehensive response is one that demonstrates a thorough understanding of context (including historical context), characters, key concerns and Shakespeare’s use of language.
You should aim to write 4 detailed, complex paragraphs.

6. KNOW CONTENT: Be able to ‘frame’ the passage specifically by act and scene. What is the passage about? What is happening? What do we learn? No Fear Shakespeare.
KNOW MUSIC: Literary devices? Structural features? Quizlet terms.
KNOW SUBTEXT: Why is the passage significant? What do we learn about the character(s) and their interaction? What do we learn about human nature? How is this message, lesson or understanding delivered?

7. Content/Overview: This is your overview paragraph.
Where does the passage appear in the play (give a context for the passage and a brief statement about its significance)
What happens before or after? Demonstrate your familiarity with the entire play. Give examples from the passage
What is the passage about?
Introduce key concerns.
This should be your first paragraph.

8. Characterisation
This is the paragraph/s where you demonstrate your understanding of the characters.
What qualities of the characters are shown? What emotions are expressed?
What is their point of view?
How do they interact with other characters?
What developments are evident? Are there any obvious changes in a character’s mindset? What is their perspective/worldview?
Focus on language features that create character/s. Write about the way language informs us of the situation. Give examples from the passage.
This could be your second and/or third paragraph.

9. Themes/Ideas
Reference the key themes/ideas you mentioned in your first paragraph
Focus on language features that create ideas in the passage. How do these ideas or themes relate to the plot? This is where you return to the main ideas being communicated in the passages and how this is done.
Think about the key ideas, patterns, comments on human behavior and justify with examples: “I this a dagger I see before me?”…
What bigger idea is this alluding to?
This could be your third and/or fourth paragraph.

10. Literary / Poetic devices
These must be discussed THROUGHOUT the passage analysis, connecting language to your discussion of characterisation and ideas.
Now look at the actual words that make up the passage. Turn your focus to the language features of the passage:
Structure: Punctuation, meter, enjambment, caesura, rhyme scheme rhyming couplets. What is the rhythm? Think about the punctuation and how it contributes to the rhythm of Shakespeare’s language. 
Metalanguage: Oxymoron, metaphor, simile, repetition, puns, sound devices, visual imagery, dramatic irony, allusions, symbolism, contrast, juxtaposition etc.
Diction: Comment on things such as the vocabulary, the deliberate choice of words, the parts of speech (e.g. adjectives, adverbs, verbs…), connotation, tone (include examples from the passage)
Use your Macbeth Quizlets
Give examples from the passage.

11. In a nutshell…
What is the context of the passage? (What happens before or after)
What is the content of the passage?
Examine the reactions of the characters in the passage
What key concerns of the play are highlighted in this passage?
Comment on Shakespeare’s use of language.

12. Let’s look at a model response… Remember Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech from last year?

13. Queen Mab Speech (I.iv.50-102)
This is the content/context/overview paragraph.
Overview: give an overview to the scene, explaining where it takes place, and its significance.
Subtext: the reference to “Mercutio and Romeo’s various approaches to love” indicates that there will be a discussion on the characterisation of each differs, as well as a discussion about ”Queen Mab” represents.
Language: the language used is formal throughout (avoiding slang), with use of specific adjectives and reference to the mood.
This passage, which is taken from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, appears in Act 1 Scene 4. It is important because it conveys to the audience the direct contrast between Mercutio and Romeo’s various approaches to love. Romeo and Mercutio, along with Benvolio, have gathered before the great Capulet feast. All of them are masked and somewhat nervous. However, while Mercutio and Benvolio are excited and anticipate the event, Romeo continues to brood over his unrequited love for Rosaline. Mercutio skewers Romeo’s high-flown idealism with a speech about the mythic Queen Mab, which transforms from comedic to dark as the scene progresses.

14. The scene draws a stark contrast between Romeo’s melancholy and Mercutio’s playful cynicism. For Romeo, to love is to suffer intensely; he describes his love as a “heavy burden” that is “too rude, too boist’rous, and it pricks like thorn” (I.IV.26). Romeo describes love using the imagery of violence, as to “prick” and draw blood is a violent act; furthermore, “prick” is a plosive which has a harsh, shocking effect on an audience. The love between Romeo and Juliet is connected with violence, and Romeo’s words foreshadow Juliet’s fatal self-inflicted dagger wound at the end of the play. For Romeo, love is dangerous and leads to death; he describes himself as being “sore enpierced with his shaft” (I.IV.19). Mercutio, by contrast, mocks Romeo relentlessly for his idealised view of love, and describes love as silly, pointless and base. Mercutio is positioned as the master truth teller in the play, using comedy and wit to destroy the beliefs and pretensions of those around him. Romeo’s dreams, like Queen Mab, are “the children of an idle brain” (I.IV.98); in other words, worthless.
This is a characterisation paragraph.
Overview: the opening sentence tells us this will be a paragraph about characterisation.
Subtext: here, an explicit contrast is drawn between the perspectives Romeo and Mercutio.
Language: note again the adjective use (stark, playful, fatal) that is used to evoke each character.
Literary devices discussed include imagery, plosives and foreshadowing.

15. Mercutio uses the myth of Queen Mab to reveal the debased and degraded nature of love. Mercutio uses puns (playing on words) to demonstrate how apparently ideal love can have an unpleasant and ugly underside. “Queen Mab”, for instance, is a play on the words “quean” and “mab”, which was Elizabethan slang for prostitution. By making an apparent reference to love, but in fact referring to prostitution, Mercutio reveals a cynical and dark view of love: it is a loveless transaction of buying and selling. At first glance, the figure of Queen Mab is described as the “fairies’ midwife”, riding a fanciful chariot of “empty hazel-nut”, who brings dreams to men as they “life asleep” (I.IV.54 – 59). This childlike fairy tale, so apparently innocent, swiftly turns dark, as Mab punishes dreams of love: ladies dreaming of kisses are given “blisters plague” when they offend Queen Mab with their bad breath (I.IV.74 – 75). By the end of the speech, Mab is a “hag” who instructs women how to have sex. By playfully insulting Romeo’s pining over Rosaline, Mercutio illustrates the view that love is degrading, low and, ultimately, worth laughing at.
This is a themes/ideas paragraph.
Overview: this paragraph is about the idea of love. It states that the passage will explore the negative aspects of love.
Subtext: note how quotations from the passage. are embedded throughout the paragraph and used to justify arguments.
Note also references to historical context.
Language: this paragraph examines the use of puns in the passage, and connects that literary device with the concept of “degraded love”.