Much Ado about Nothing - High Ability - GCSE

A comprehensive scheme of work on Much Ado about Nothing for high-ability GCSE groups aiming for grades 6-9. There are 17 PowerPoints, one for each scene.

Each PowerPoint has discussion, analysis and exploration of at least three themes with very detailed notes under each slide for teachers.

There are further slides on each PowerPoint on Dramatic Comedy Genre; Shakespeare’s Method; and Context. Again, there are comprehensive notes relating to these areas so that you can teach with confidence.

You will find the following…

Themes:

• Love and War
• Gender and Identity
• Appearance and Reality (Constructive, Destructive & Self-Deception)
• Private Desire and Social Approval
• Legitimate and Illegitimate Behaviours
• Theatre of War and Domestic Sphere
• Miscommunication
• Transformation

Dramatic Comedy Genre:

• Metadrama
• Metalanguage
• Significance of Structure
• Pairs and Parallels
• Antithesis
• Low Comedy
• Comedy Endings

Shakespeare’s Method:

• Characterisation and conceptualisation
• Significance of Structure
• Significance of language inc. imagery, symbolism, classical references,
  self- reflexive language, malapropism, poetry, and prose
• Shakespeare’s use of stagecraft
• Shakespeare’s drawing attention to theatre as artifice

Context:

• Women, identity, sexual behaviour within the 16th Century
• The importance of reputation
• Ontological death
• Patriarchal Hegemony
• Elizabethan Fashion/Significance of Clothing
• The social significance of marriage in the 16th Century
• Chivalric Love
• Renaissance Humanism
• The role of the Church within the play and the 16th Century
• The importance of legitimacy and the ‘problem’ of illegitimacy
• 16th Century ‘Police Force’ (The Watch)
• Hierarchical structure of society