Use it for

Timed essays, coursework drafts, exam practice

Works with

Any play or poem, any exam board

Time

10 minutes to plan, then write

1. Read the question properly

Most weak essays answer a question that was not asked. Before you plan anything, underline three things in the question: the command (what you must do), the focus (the character, theme or idea), and the scope (an extract, the whole text, or both).

Write the question’s key words here, in your own words:

2. Build a thesis

A thesis is a claim someone could disagree with. It names what Shakespeare does and why it matters. A useful frame is: Although [the obvious reading], Shakespeare [does something more interesting] in order to [effect on meaning or audience].

My thesis:

3. Plan the paragraphs

Plan three or four paragraphs. Each one makes a single step in your argument and proves it from the text. Order them so the argument develops: do not simply follow the plot.

4. A worked example

Question: How does Shakespeare present ambition in Macbeth?

Thesis: Shakespeare presents ambition as something Macbeth understands perfectly and chooses anyway, which is what makes it tragic and not merely criminal.

One paragraph: From the start, Macbeth’s ambition is bound up with concealment. Hearing that Malcolm is heir, he commands, Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires. The imperative addressed to the heavens shows a man who already knows his wish cannot bear to be seen, and the rhyme of “fires” and “desires” gives the couplet the click of a decision. Light in the play stands for moral order as well as sight, so in asking for darkness Macbeth asks to be hidden from judgement and from himself. He later admits he has no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition: the riding metaphor imagines ambition overleaping and falling. Shakespeare therefore lets Macbeth diagnose his own flaw before he acts on it. The full argument is in the Macbeth study guide.

5. Opening and closing

• Introduction: two or three sentences. Answer the question at once with your thesis. Do not retell the plot or give the author’s biography.
• Conclusion: do not repeat the introduction. Say what your argument adds up to: what the play finally suggests about the question’s focus, and how an audience is left.

6. Before you hand it in

• Every paragraph begins with a point about meaning, not an event in the plot.
• Every quotation is short, accurate and embedded in my own sentence.
• I name methods precisely and say what each one does.
• I write about Shakespeare making choices: “Shakespeare presents”, “the verse breaks”.
• Context appears only where it changes how a line reads.
• I have considered at least one other way of reading the evidence.
• My last sentence answers the question in its own words.

Need quotations to plan with? Each play’s quotation sheet gives a dozen with plain-English readings, and the close reading toolkit shows how to get from a line to an idea. For a short passage to practise on each morning, Daily Bard shows one a day with a plain-English reading on the back of the leaf.