Cambridge International AS & A Level

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH 9695/11

Paper 1 Drama and Poetry October/November 2024

2 hours

You must answer on the enclosed answer booklet.

* 9 0 8 1 4 8 9 3 7 7 *

You will need: Answer booklet (enclosed)

INSTRUCTIONS
● Answer two questions in total:
Section A: answer one question.
Section B: answer one question.
● Follow the instructions on the front cover of the answer booklet. If you need additional answer paper,
ask the invigilator for a continuation booklet.
● Dictionaries are not allowed.

INFORMATION
● The total mark for this paper is 50.
● All questions are worth equal marks.

This document has 16 pages. Any blank pages are indicated.

DC (EV) 348328/1
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Section A: Drama

Answer one question from this section.

ERROL JOHN: Moon on a Rainbow Shawl

1 Either (a) In what ways, and with what dramatic effects, does John present different attitudes
to authority in Moon on a Rainbow Shawl?

Or (b) Paying close attention to dramatic methods, discuss John’s presentation of Old
Mack in the following extract from the play.

[OLD MACK and ROSA come into the backyard from the
street.]

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[A car starts up and drives away.]

(from Act 1, Scene 1)

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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Measure for Measure

2 Either (a) Lucio describes the Duke as ‘the old fantastical Duke of dark corners’.

Discuss Shakespeare’s dramatic presentation of the Duke in the light of this

comment.

Or (b) Comment closely on the following extract from the play, showing its significance to
the play’s meaning and effects. In your answer you should pay close attention to
Shakespeare’s dramatic methods.

[Enter ANGELO.]
Angelo: When I would pray and think, I think and pray
To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words,
Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel. Heaven in my mouth, 5
As if I did but only chew his name,
And in my heart the strong and swelling evil
Of my conception. The state whereon I studied
Is, like a good thing being often read,
Grown sere and tedious; yea, my gravity, 10
Wherein – let no man hear me – I take pride,
Could I with boot change for an idle plume
Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,
How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls 15
To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood.
Let’s write ‘good angel’ on the devil’s horn;
’Tis not the devil’s crest.
[Enter SERVANT.]
How now, who’s there? 20
Servant: One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.
Angelo: Teach her the way. [Exit SERVANT.] O heavens!
Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
Making both it unable for itself
And dispossessing all my other parts 25
Of necessary fitness?
So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons:
Come all to help him, and so stop the air
By which he should revive; and even so
The general subject to a well-wish’d king 30
Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
Must needs appear offence.
[Enter ISABELLA.]
How now, fair maid? 35
Isabella: I am come to know your pleasure.
Angelo: That you might know it would much better please me
Than to demand what ’tis. Your brother cannot live.
Isabella: Even so! Heaven keep your honour!
Angelo: Yet may he live awhile, and, it may be, 40
As long as you or I; yet he must die.
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Isabella: Under your sentence?

Angelo: Yea.
Isabella: When? I beseech you; that in his reprieve,
Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted 45
That his soul sicken not.
Angelo: Ha! Fie, these filthy vices! It were as good
To pardon him that hath from nature stol’n
A man already made, as to remit
Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven’s image 50
In stamps that are forbid; ’tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made
As to put metal in restrained means
To make a false one.
Isabella: ’Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth. 55
Angelo: Say you so? Then I shall pose you quickly.
Which had you rather – that the most just law
Now took your brother’s life; or, to redeem him,
Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness
As she that he hath stain’d? 60
Isabella: Sir, believe this:
I had rather give my body than my soul.

(from Act 2, Scene 4)

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JOHN WEBSTER: The Duchess of Malfi

3 Either (a) Discuss some of the dramatic effects created by Webster’s portrayal of the
relationship between the Duchess and Antonio in The Duchess of Malfi.

Or (b) Comment closely on Webster’s presentation of Ferdinand’s state of mind in the

following extract from the play. In your answer you should pay close attention to
dramatic methods and their effects.

[Enter PESCARA and a DOCTOR.]

Pescara: Now, doctor, may I visit your patient?
Doctor: If’t please your lordship; but he’s instantly
To take the air here in the gallery,
By my direction. 5
Pescara: Pray thee, what’s his disease?
Doctor: A very pestilent disease, my lord,
They call lycanthropia.
Pescara: What’s that?
I need a dictionary to’t. 10
Doctor: I’ll tell you:
In those that are possessed with’t there o’erflows
Such melancholy humour, they imagine
Themselves to be transformèd into wolves,
Steal forth to churchyards in the dead of night, 15
And dig dead bodies up; as two nights since
One met the Duke, ’bout midnight in a lane
Behind Saint Mark’s church, with the leg of a man
Upon his shoulder; and he howled fearfully;
Said he was a wolf, only the difference 20
Was a wolf’s skin was hairy on the outside,
His on the inside; bade them take their swords,
Rip up his flesh, and try. Straight I was sent for,
And having ministered to him, found his grace
Very well recoverèd. 25
Pescara: I am glad on’t.
Doctor: Yet not without some fear
Of a relapse. If he grow to his fit again
I’ll go a nearer way to work with him
Than ever Paracelsus dreamed of. If 30
They’ll give me leave, I’ll buffet his madness out of him.
[Enter FERDINAND, MALATESTE, and CARDINAL;
BOSOLA apart.]
Stand aside, he comes.
Ferdinand: Leave me. 35
Malateste: Why doth your lordship love this solitariness?
Ferdinand: Eagles commonly fly alone. They are crows, daws, and
starlings that flock together. Look, what’s that follows me?
Malateste: Nothing, my lord.
Ferdinand: Yes. 40
Malateste: ’Tis your shadow.
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Ferdinand: Stay it, let it not haunt me.

Malateste: Impossible, if you move, and the sun shine.
Ferdinand: I will throttle it.
[Throws himself upon his shadow.] 45
Malateste: O, my lord, you are angry with nothing.
Ferdinand: You are a fool. How is’t possible I should catch my shadow
unless I fall upon’t? When I go to hell, I mean to carry a
bribe; for look you, good gifts evermore make way for the
worst persons. 50
Pescara: Rise, good my lord.
Ferdinand: I am studying the art of patience.
Pescara: ’Tis a noble virtue.
Ferdinand: To drive six snails before me, from this town to Moscow;
neither use goad nor whip to them, but let them take their 55
own time (the patient’st man i’th’ world match me for an
experiment), and I’ll crawl after like a sheep-biter.
Cardinal: Force him up.
[They raise him.]
Ferdinand: Use me well, you were best. What I have done, I have 60
done; I’ll confess nothing.
Doctor: Now let me come to him. Are you mad, my lord? Are you
out of your princely wits?
Ferdinand: What’s he?
Pescara: Your doctor. 65
Ferdinand: Let me have his beard sawed off, and his eyebrows filed
more civil.

(from Act 5, Scene 2)

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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

4 Either (a) What, in your view, does the relationship between Brick and Big Daddy contribute to
the play’s meaning and effects?

Or (b) Discuss Williams’s portrayal of family tensions in the following extract. In your
answer you should pay close attention to dramatic methods and their effects.

Doctor Baugh: I never have seen a more thorough examination than

Big Daddy Pollitt was given in all my experience with the
Ochsner Clinic.

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Mae [as if terribly shocked]: That’s not TRUE!

(from Act 3)

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Section B: Poetry

Answer one question from this section.

MAYA ANGELOU: And Still I Rise

5 Either (a) In what ways, and with what effects, does Angelou present desire? In your answer
you should refer to two poems from the selection.

Or (b) Discuss Angelou’s presentation of the speaker’s feelings in the following poem.

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me

Shadows on the wall

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Life doesn’t frighten me at all.

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SIMON ARMITAGE: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

6 Either (a) In what ways, and with what effects, does Armitage explore honour in Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight?

Or (b) Analyse ways in which Armitage presents Sir Gawain in the following passage.

He remained all that day and in the morning he dressed,

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both clear and smoked, it seemed.

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WILLIAM BLAKE: Selected Poems from Songs of Innocence and of Experience

7 Either (a) Discuss some of the ways in which Blake presents relationships between adults
and children. In your answer you should refer to two poems from the selection.

Or (b) Comment closely on Blake’s presentation of the city in the following poem.

London

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,

Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man, 5

In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry

Every blackning Church appalls, 10
And the hapless Soldiers sigh,
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear 15
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

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Songs of Ourselves, Volume 2

8 Either (a) Discuss ways in which two poems explore loss and its effects.

Or (b) Comment closely on the following poem, analysing ways in which Nancy
Fotheringham Cato presents the journey.

The Road

I made the rising moon go back

behind the shouldering hill,
I raced along the eastern track
till time itself stood still.

The stars swarmed on behind the trees, 5

but I sped fast at they,
I could have made the sun arise,
and night turn back to day.

And like a long black carpet

behind the wheels, the night 10
unrolled across the countryside,
but all ahead was bright.

The fence-posts whizzed along wires

like days that fly too fast,
and telephone poles loomed up like years 15
and slipped into the past.

And light and movement, sky and road

and life and time were one,
while through the night I rushed and sped,
I drove towards the sun. 20

(Nancy Fotheringham Cato)

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