gcse english literature much ado about nothing (aqa)

heyy, so i haven't studied much ado about nothing *but* i am an a level eng lit student so hopefully i can help a bit??? one of the texts we have to study in yr 13 is othello, and from the beginning i always felt like this was my weakest area of the subject, and i sort of felt like i didn't understand the text properly, even as we were reading it, so something i did was watch a bunch of productions of othello, which helped soooo much! it especially helps if the film / theatre adaptation that you watch is a modern day adaptation, because then you can kind of see how it'd be like in like our current day world with current day english, so it'd definitely be worth it seeing a production of much ado about nothing. also it might be worth looking at pinterest for some things on much ado about nothing because a few times before i have found pictures and screenshots of useful revision resources on there. also the website "maths made easy" has past papers for literally every subject on the planet, so id also recommend loking for past papers for your exam board on there and looking at the type of questions that typically come up, and also what the mark schemes say. ik the mark schemes for eng essays don't always say that much about the actual texts themselves, but even if you can atleast find out what assessment objectives you'll be assessed on, and then just look for those in the text. if you have your own copy of the text aswell then it'd be even better if you could like highlight or page tab every time one of the assessment objectives come up, so then when you're in the exam you can atleast have in your mind "i need to talk about x y and z to get the marks, so i remember seeing x highlighted in pink" or something like that.

thank u so much!! i’ll definitely check out pinterest, maths made easy, and i love the idea of putting tabs where i find an assessment objective! would u have any tips on how to analyse specific quotes because i feel i don’t understand how to break down the quotes and then comment on methods and their effect on the audience? im fine doing this for english language but when it comes to the shakespeare text i just can’t seem to do it.

I'm glad I could help

It might change slightly depending on your exam board but in general I'd say when you're looking at a quote think about the metre and any rhyming, because ik in othello and macbeth Shakespeare likes to show changes in a character through changes in their language, such as in macbeth, macbeth starts to speak more with more rhyming and more in the same metre as the witches, so this shows the witches' influence on macbeth. Also since all shakespeare's plays were written donkeys years ago its probably also worth talking about different audience reactions, as a jacobean audience would react differently to a 21st century audience. And for like breaking down quotes and commenting on them, I'd suggest looking for YouTube videos of teachers and examiners talking though like the ideal way of answering an exam question, because this really depends on your exam board and the assessment objectives. For my exam board at gcse (edexcel) we had to look at the rhyme and metre, and just like really linking it back to the point you're making, so like "in the play, character xyz says 'abc abc abc'. The use of iambic pentameter creates a contrast to previously in the play, when the character only spoke in freeverse. This allows the character to be portrayed as undergoing changes due to another character's influence on them. The phrase 'abc' is similar to 'hij', which is said by said other character, reiterating said character's influence over character xyz. This allows shakespeares message of [whatever] to be presented, as the audience can draw [this and that] from this scene."

hi guys, i have my gcses really soon and i do much ado, for english lit and i literally don't get it and i'm so stuck. i can't find much on the internet, and i'm usually a top grade student for english too, so i'm super stressed and would appreciate any points, help, resources, anything!!!
thank uu