AQA 7711-1 ENGLISH LITERATURE A LEVEL PAPER 1 MAY23-Paper 1 Love through the ages: Shakespeare and poetry

0 1 Othello – William Shakespeare Read the extract from Othello, provided below, and respond to the following: • How does Shakespeare present aspects of love in this extract? • Examine the view that, in this extract and elsewhere in the play, Shakespeare presents Iago as a character whose intelligence makes us like him rather than condemn him. [25 marks] IAGO Come on, come on: you are pictures out of doors, bells in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens, saints in your injuries, devils being offended, players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds. DESDEMONA O, fie upon thee, slanderer! IAGO Nay, it is true, or else I am a Turk: You rise to play and go to bed to work. EMILIA You shall not write my praise. IAGO No, let me not. DESDEMONA What wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst praise me? IAGO O, gentle lady, do not put me to’t, For I am nothing if not critical. DESDEMONA Come on, assay. There’s one gone to the harbour? IAGO Ay, madam. DESDEMONA (aside) I am not merry, but I do beguile The thing I am by seeming otherwise. Come, how wouldst thou praise me? IAGO I am about it, but indeed my invention Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze – It plucks out brains and all. But my muse labours, And thus she is delivered. If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit, The one’s for use, the other useth it. DESDEMONA Well praised! How if she be black and witty? 3 IB/H/Jun23/7711/1 Turn over ► IAGO If she be black, and thereto have a wit, She’ll find a white that shall her blackness fit. DESDEMONA Worse and worse. EMILIA How if fair and foolish? IAGO She never yet was foolish that was fair, For even her folly helped her to an heir. DESDEMONA These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i’th’alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for her that’s foul and foolish? IAGO There’s none so foul and foolish thereunto, But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do. DESDEMONA O heavy ignorance! Thou praisest the worst best. But what praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving woman indeed? One that in the authority of her merit did justly put on the vouch of very malice itself? IAGO She that was ever fair and never proud, Had tongue at will, and yet was never loud; Never lacked gold, and yet went never gay; Fled from her wish, and yet said ‘Now I may’; She that being angered, her revenge being nigh, Bade her wrong stay, and her displeasure fly; She that in wisdom never was so frail To change the cod’s head for the salmon’s tail; She that could think and ne’er disclose her mind: See suitors following and not look behind: She was a wight, if ever such wight were – DESDEMONA To do what? IAGO To suckle fools and chronicle small beer. DESDEMONA O, most lame and impotent conclusion! Do not learn of him, Emilia, though he be thy husband. How say you, Cassio, is he not a most profane and liberal counsellor? CASSIO He speaks home, madam; you may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar