In what ways do you think Shakespeare makes Queen Margaret and Lady Anne memorable characters in the play? Support your ideas with details from the play.

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2010). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. [25] One cannot pretend that the women characters in the play are sharply defined and differentiated.
2. [25] They, at times very poignantly, remind the audience of a kinder and more moral world than is evident in the male world of power politics around them.
3. [25] They have little protection against that world and this is exemplified by the series of disasters which afflict Margaret and Anne before and in the play.
4. [25] Their response is such that they at times resemble a Greek chorus, bewailing their respective fates and in Margaret's case gloating over Elizabeth's and Anne's in the manner of one of the Furies.
5. [25] This really is the principal purpose of Margaret in whom are lodged all the woes of the Wars of the Roses.
6. [25] Some candidates may also note something of a misogynist streak in the drama.
7. [25] Female inconstancy and naiveté, to Richard's delighted contempt, is highlighted in Anne, some might think to the point of dramatic absurdity when she succumbs and marries her husband's hunch-backed slayer.
8. [25] Of course, she receives her just reward when she is cast aside as surplus to requirements.
9. [25] Range of reference and ideas will in the main help to differentiate.
10. [25] Refer to the band descriptors in arriving at your mark.