What the exam asks
In Paper 2 (1 hour 45 minutes, closed book), you choose one of four general questions and compare two literary works studied in your course. Under the 2026 criteria, Criterion B1 (5 marks) rewards how deeply you analyse and evaluate authorial choices (how Shakespeare uses structure, staging, form, or voice to create meaning), while Criterion B2 (5 marks) rewards how far your comparative analysis of similarities and/or differences sharpens your reading of both works. Exact quotations are not required, but precise references to scenes and choices are essential for Criterion A (5 marks).
In the Individual Oral (10 minutes prepared speech, 5 minutes teacher questions), you examine how a transnational global issue is presented through both content and form in a 40-line extract from The Merchant of Venice, in the play as a whole, and in a non-literary body of work.
Core ideas
Mapping the play to Paper 2 question types
Every Paper 2 question asks how two works present an idea or use a literary technique. Always build your argument around what Shakespeare does on stage (Criterion B1):
| General Paper 2 Question Type | Moments in The Merchant of Venice | Shakespeare’s Authorial Choices (B1) |
|---|---|---|
| Refusing an expected role | Portia turning the “unlesson’d girl” (3.2) into the judge Balthazar (4.1); Jessica fleeing the locked house (2.5–2.6); Shylock refusing the forgiving creditor (“I’ll have my bond”, 3.3). | Cross-dressed disguise; the casket test as a structural obstacle; repeated verbal refusals. |
| Concealing the truth | Portia disguised as Balthazar (4.1); Antonio’s unexplained sadness (1.1); Bassanio hiding the ring’s loss (5.1). | Disguise and dramatic irony; the stage aside; withholding a clear motive. |
| Characters set against each other | Shylock and Antonio across 1.3, 3.1, 3.3, and 4.1; Portia and Shylock in the courtroom (4.1). | Paired, clashing speeches in the trial; the drop into prose for 3.1 against the blank verse of the trial; two men left partnerless at the end. |
| Parents and children | Shylock and Jessica (2.3, 2.5, 2.8, 3.1); Portia bound by her dead father’s will (1.2, 3.2). | The locked house as physical setting; reported speech (Solanio mocking Shylock’s grief in 2.8); the three caskets acting as a father’s controlling voice after death. |
| Power, justice, and injustice | The flesh bond, Venice’s commercial charter, Portia’s strict legalism, and Shylock’s forced conversion (4.1). | Courtroom staging; dense legal diction; a dramatic reversal produced by reading the bond’s exact words, then by a law no one had mentioned. |
| The outsider | Shylock excluded throughout; Antonio left without a spouse in 5.1; Jessica falling silent in Belmont (5.1). | Who the fifth-act comic resolution excludes; spatial separation on stage. |
| Speaking out vs. what is left unsaid | Speaking out: Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes?” (3.1). Left unsaid: Antonio’s opening sadness (1.1); Shylock’s exit without a final soliloquy (4.1); Jessica’s last line (5.1). | Urgent prose, rhetorical questions, and repetition at the play’s centre vs. the withheld soliloquy and silent exit. |
| Place, motifs, title, and structure | Alternating between mercantile Venice and idealized Belmont; motifs of bonds, rings, flesh, and metals; the title naming Antonio (not Shylock or Portia); opening on sadness (1.1) and ending on a bawdy couplet (5.1). | Double setting contrasting two value systems; the ring plot of 5.1 replaying the 4.1 trial in miniature (oath, forfeit, accusation, pardon); the form of romantic comedy (obstacles, disguise, fifth-act marriage) strained because its defeated obstacle is a ruined human being. |