GCSE English Lit - Romeo & Juliet 2023-06

This resource provides a model answer to the 2023 exam question:

Read the following extract from Act 3 Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet and then answer the question that follows.
At this point in the play, Juliet reacts to the news that Romeo has killed her cousin Tybalt and so has been banished from Verona.

Starting with this speech, explore how Shakespeare presents Juliet’s feelings towards Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.
Write about:
• how Shakespeare presents Juliet’s feelings towards Romeo in this speech
• how Shakespeare presents Juliet’s feelings towards Romeo in the play as a whole.
[30 marks]

JULIET Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?
But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?
That villain cousin would have killed my husband.
Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring,
Your tributary drops belong to woe,
Which you mistaking offer up to joy.
My husband lives that Tybalt would have slain,
And Tybalt’s dead that would have slain my husband:
All this is comfort, wherefore weep I then?
Some word there was, worser than Tybalt’s death,
That murdered me; I would forget it fain,
But O, it presses to my memory,
Like damnèd guilty deeds to sinners’ minds:
‘Tybalt is dead, and Romeo banishèd.’
That ‘banishèd’, that one word ‘banishèd’,
Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt’s death
Was woe enough if it had ended there;
Or if sour woe delights in fellowship,
And needly will be ranked with other griefs,
Why followed not, when she said ‘Tybalt’s dead’,
‘Thy father’ or ‘thy mother’, nay, or both,
Which modern lamentation might have moved?
But with a rear-ward following Tybalt’s death,
‘Romeo is banishèd’: to speak that word,
Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
All slain, all dead. ‘Romeo is banishèd!’
There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
In that word’s death, no words can that woe sound.