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O-LevelLiterature in EnglishDramaOct/Nov 2022Paper 2 Q725 Marks

Read this passage carefully, and then answer the question that follows it: Sir Toby: No, faith, I’ll not stay a jot longer. Fabian: Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason. Sir Andrew: You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew. Fabian: Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the Count’s servingman than ever she bestow’d upon me; I saw’t i’ th’ orchard. Sir Toby: Did she see thee the while, old boy? Tell me that. Fabian: As plain as I see you now. Sir Andrew: This was a great argument of love in her toward you. Fabian: ’Slight! will you make an ass o’ me? Sir Toby: I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment and reason. Fabian: And they have been grand-jurymen since before Noah was a sailor. Sir Andrew: She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your heart and brimstone in your liver. You should then have accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should have bang’d the youth into dumbness. This was look’d for at your hand, and this was baulk’d. The double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sail’d into the north of my lady’s opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard, unless you do redeem it by some laudable attempt either of valour or policy. Sir Toby: An’t be any way, it must be with valour, for policy I hate; I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician. Fabian: Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of valour. Challenge me the Count’s youth to fight with him; hurt him in eleven places. My niece shall take note of it; and assure thyself there is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in man’s commendation with woman than report of valour. Sir Andrew: There is no way but this, Sir Andrew. Sir Toby: Will either of you bear me a challenge to him? Fabian: Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and full of invention. Taunt him with the license of ink; if thou thou’st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set ’em down; go about it. Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter. About it. Sir Andrew: Where shall I find you? Sir Toby: We’ll call thee at the cubiculo. Go. [Exit SIR ANDREW.] Fabian: This is a dear manakin to you, Sir Toby. Sir Toby: I have been dear to him, lad – some two thousand strong, or so. Fabian: We shall have a rare letter from him; but you’ll not deliver’t? Sir Toby: Never trust me then; and by all means stir on the youth to an answer. I think oxen and wainropes cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were open’d and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I’ll eat the rest of th’ anatomy. Fabian: And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great presage of cruelty. (from Act 3 Scene 2) Explore the ways in which Shakespeare makes this such an entertaining moment in the play.

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About This O-Level Literature in English Question

This structured question appeared in the Cambridge O-Level Literature in English (2010) Oct/Nov 2022 examination, Paper 2 Variant 2. It tests the topic of Drama and is worth 25 marks.

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