English I Notes | B.A. LL.B. (Five Year Course) Semester 1 | Mumbai University | munotes

The other paper on the same texts, and how it differs

Note. Added by the past paper check, because it changes how you should revise.

On the same afternoon in February 2026 a second paper was set on the same prescribed texts under code 75901, running two hours for 60 marks. It is the paper the older five year form sits, and by 2025 and 2026 it is being set on this syllabus's text list rather than on the list it once used.

What follows for a reader of this book. Everything in Modules I to III serves both papers. In Module IV, a candidate on the 75 mark paper must be ready for the precis and the speech, and a candidate on the 60 mark paper must be ready for the short essay; the letters are set on both. Prepare all of them, since the two papers exchange these items from year to year.

One more thing the papers show. A third code, 75904, runs a two hour 60 mark paper for the older 60:40 form, and its question 1 has sometimes mixed quotations from this syllabus's texts with quotations from an older prescribed list that this course no longer sets. If a quotation on your paper belongs to no text you have read, leave it and answer another: every question 1 gives a choice, and no paper we hold has required more than four of the five or six offered.

Skill one: reference to context

What it is. The examiner prints a few lines from one of the prescribed texts and asks you to identify them. The word "context" means the surrounding situation: who is speaking, to whom, and about what.

The method, in four steps. First, name the text and its author. Second, name the speaker, and the person spoken to if the lines are addressed to somebody. Third, say in one clause what is happening at that moment in the story. Fourth, answer the specific question the examiner has attached, because there is almost always one.

A worked example. The paper of February 2026 printed this and asked the candidate to identify the speaker and say what the word "ducat" means in the context.

If every ducat in six thousand ducats

Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,

I would not draw them, I would have my bond.

The answer, in the two sentences the paper allows. These lines are spoken by Shylock in the trial scene of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Act IV Scene i, when Bassanio offers him twice the loan in open court and he refuses it. A ducat is a gold coin used in Venice, and Shylock's point is that no multiple of the money will buy him off, because he wants the forfeiture in the bond and not the debt.

Notice what the answer does not do. It does not summarise the play, it does not say the lines are beautiful, and it does not explain who Bassanio is. Two sentences is two sentences.

Skill two: the character sketch

What it is. A short essay describing one person in the text: what they are like, what they do, why they do it, and how the writer makes you see them.

The method. Open with one sentence placing the person, for example "Lomax Harder is the murderer in Arnold Bennett's story Murder!, and a man who kills carefully and is never suspected." Then take three or four qualities in turn, and prove each from something the person says or does. Close with a judgment: what the character is for, in the design of the whole text.

The commonest failure is to retell the plot with the character's name in every sentence. A sketch is an argument about a person, supported by incidents. It is not a list of the incidents in order.

Prove every quality. "Portia is intelligent" is worth nothing on its own. "Portia is intelligent, and the proof is that she does not attack the bond at all: she admits it is good in law, lets Shylock refuse the money three times, and only then reads the words 'a pound of flesh' back at him" is worth a mark.

Skill three: critical analysis

MU's own note under topic 3.1 says students should be "exposed to a critical analysis of the text with respect to its themes, character analysis and language". Those three words are the whole method.

Theme is what the text is about underneath the story. Justice and mercy is a theme; a trial is not, a trial is an event. State the theme in a sentence, then show the two or three places the text works on it, then say what position the text ends up taking, if it takes one.

Character is dealt with as above, but inside an analysis you use characters as evidence for the theme rather than describing them for their own sake.

Language is how the writing is done. For a law student the useful questions are small and answerable: is the sentence long or short, is the word ordinary or grand, is the tone serious or mocking, and is the writer using irony. Irony means saying one thing and meaning another, or an outcome that is the opposite of what a person intended, and it is the single most useful term in this paper because O. Henry, Twain, Dickens and Bennett all work by it.

Skill four: the thirteen-mark essay

What it is. A question like "Critically examine the trial between Bardell and Pickwick", answered in two to three pages, with the instruction "illustrate your answer with reference to the text".

The shape that scores. One paragraph placing the question and stating your answer to it. Then three or four paragraphs, each making one point and proving it from an incident. Then a paragraph on the other side, because an examiner rewards a candidate who has noticed the difficulty. Then a short conclusion that answers the question asked, in its own words.

"With reference to the text" is an instruction, not a decoration. It means name the scene, the chapter or the speech you are relying on. You do not need to quote at length, and a wrong quotation is worse than none, but a specific reference to Act IV Scene i or to the Fleet Prison chapters shows you have read the book.

A worked example of the essay opening

Question: "Write an essay on the antisemitic attitude given to Shylock in the trial scene."

Opening paragraph. The trial scene of The Merchant of Venice, Act IV Scene i, is a scene in which a Jewish moneylender is defeated in a Christian court, stripped of his property and made to change his religion, and every person who speaks to him in it calls him something other than his name. This essay argues that the antisemitism is not only in the characters, who could be excused as men of their time, but in the structure of the scene itself, which gives Shylock a legal victory and then takes it away by a rule about aliens that could only ever apply to him.

That paragraph does three things a good opening always does: it locates the scene, it states a position, and it tells the examiner what the rest of the essay will prove.

What beginners get wrong

They write the story. A summary of the plot answers no question on this paper. If your answer could have been written by somebody who read only the back cover, it will not score.

They praise instead of arguing. "Shakespeare has beautifully portrayed the character of Portia" is not a sentence about Portia. Delete every sentence you could put into an essay about any other book.

They quote wrongly. A misquoted line is evidence you did not read the text. If you are not sure of the words, refer to the passage instead: "in the speech beginning with the quality of mercy".

They ignore the instruction. "In two sentences only" means two. "Any three" means three, and a fourth answer earns nothing while costing you the time the third needed.

They leave the law out. These are law students writing on texts chosen for their legal themes. An essay on Bardell against Pickwick that never mentions what a breach of promise action was is answering half the question.

Quick revision

Four question types: reference to context, character sketch, critical analysis, long essay.

Reference to context in four steps: text and author, speaker and addressee, what is happening, then the specific question. Two sentences.

Character sketch: place the person, prove three or four qualities from incidents, judge what the character is for. Never a plot summary.

Critical analysis: theme, character, language. Irony is the term you will need most often.

Essay: state your position first, one point to a paragraph proved from the text, deal with the other side, conclude in the words of the question.

"With reference to the text" means name the scene or chapter you rely on.

Test yourself

1. A quotation is printed and you do not recognise it at all. What do you do? Look for the internal evidence. Names decide it: Soapy is O. Henry, Adams is Fielding, Roxy is Twain, Buzfuz is Dickens, Hetty is George Eliot. Failing a name, look at the language, because the two Elizabethan and eighteenth-century texts do not sound like the modern ones. Then answer the attached question as fully as you can, since it usually carries the mark.

2. What is the difference between a theme and an incident? An incident is something that happens, such as the trial or the elopement. A theme is an idea the text keeps returning to, such as justice against mercy, or appearance against reality. An examiner asking for a theme wants the idea, proved by incidents.

3. Why is "with reference to the text" worth marks? Because it separates a candidate who has read the book from one who has read a guide. Naming Act IV Scene i, or chapter 34, or the Fleet Prison chapters, costs one clause and proves the reading.

4. Define irony in a sentence a first-year student can use. Irony is a gap between what is said and what is meant, or between what a person intends and what actually happens, and the writer creates the gap on purpose so that the reader sees it.

5. You have twenty minutes left and two essays to write. What is the best use of the time? Ten minutes each, both answered in the shape above, rather than one full essay and one blank. An unanswered question scores nothing, and the first half of an essay carries most of its marks.

The play also stands beside Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, an earlier play with a monstrous Jewish villain. Shakespeare's Shylock is written after it, and is a great deal harder to hate.

Venice, and why the setting is doing work

Venice in the play is a trading republic. Its wealth arrives by sea in ships called argosies, and its merchants stand at the Rialto, the exchange, hearing news of which ships have come home. Two features of that city are load-bearing in the plot.

First, a trading city lives on credit. Antonio's money is not in his house, it is at sea, so a rich man can be unable to raise three thousand ducats in cash. That single fact is what sends Bassanio to a moneylender.

Second, a trading city lives on the certainty of its contracts. Foreign merchants will only deal in a place where the courts enforce what was agreed. Shylock says this himself in the trial, and it is why the Duke cannot simply tear up the bond. The play makes the reader feel the pressure of a rule that is unjust in this case and necessary in general, which is a lawyer's problem exactly.

The people, in the order you will meet them

The vocabulary you need before Act I

Bond. A written agreement under seal by which one person becomes liable to another. In this play it is a document sealed before a notary, a public officer who authenticates documents, and the parties call it a "single bond".

Ducat. A gold coin of Venice. The loan is three thousand of them, and the sum matters only in that it is large enough that Antonio cannot pay it in cash.

Usance and usury. Usance is the lending of money at interest. Usury today means excessive interest, but in the play it means interest of any kind, which Antonio treats as sinful and Shylock treats as his trade.

Forfeiture. What a person loses when a condition is broken. Here the forfeit is a pound of Antonio's flesh.

Penalty. A sum or a thing promised on breach that is out of all proportion to the actual loss. The pound of flesh is a penalty, and that is the legal heart of the play.

Argosy. A large merchant ship.

Alien. A person who is not a citizen. Venice has a separate law for aliens, and in Act IV it decides the case.

Why this play is on a law syllabus, in one paragraph you could write out

Because it is the clearest story in English about the gap between the letter of an agreement and justice. Shylock's bond is valid. He gave value, the terms were plain, Antonio read them and sealed willingly, and the day passed without payment. Every rule of contract says he should get his remedy. What the court does instead is to hold him to his own words so exactly that the remedy becomes impossible, and then to turn a criminal statute on him. A law student who can explain why that is satisfying and troubling at the same time has understood both the play and something about law.

What beginners get wrong

They call it a tragedy. It is a comedy, and the trial is its crisis, not its ending.

They think Shylock loses because he is wrong in law. He is not wrong in law. He loses on the construction of his own document and then on a statute about aliens. Saying he had no case is the commonest error in answers on this text.

They forget the fifth act. Two thirds of candidates write as though the play ends at the trial. It does not, and questions are set on the rings.

They treat Portia as a real lawyer. She is not admitted to any bar. She appears on a letter of introduction from a doctor of laws named Bellario, in disguise, and the play never suggests this is regular.

A worked answer

Question. "In two sentences, say what The Merchant of Venice is about."

A weak answer. It is a play by Shakespeare about a Jewish moneylender who is very cruel and is punished at the end by a clever lady.

Why it is weak. It gives no plot, no legal content, and a judgment the play does not support. Nothing in it could not have been written by somebody who had read the back cover.

A strong answer. The Merchant of Venice is a comedy in which the merchant Antonio borrows three thousand ducats from the moneylender Shylock for his friend Bassanio, on a bond forfeiting a pound of Antonio's flesh if the money is not repaid on the day, and, the ships being lost, Shylock sues in the ducal court for the forfeiture. The suit is defeated by Portia, disguised as a doctor of laws, who upholds the bond and then holds Shylock to its exact words, that it grants flesh and no blood, before invoking a Venetian statute against aliens who seek a citizen's life.

What the strong answer does. It names the parties, the sum, the term, the forfeit, the court, and the two grounds of decision, in the order they happen. Everything in it can be checked against the text.

Quick revision

A comedy by Shakespeare, written about 1596 to 1597, first printed 1600.

Two plots joined by three thousand ducats: the bond plot in Venice, the casket plot in Belmont.

Five acts, twenty scenes. The trial is Act IV Scene i and is the longest scene in the play.

Sources: Il Pecorone for the bond, the Gesta Romanorum for the caskets.

Key words: bond, ducat, usance, forfeiture, penalty, alien, argosy.

The legal question of the play: what a court should do with an agreement that is valid and monstrous.

Test yourself

1. In one sentence, what is the bond plot? Antonio borrows three thousand ducats from Shylock for three months on behalf of Bassanio, on condition that if the money is not repaid on the day Shylock may take a pound of Antonio's flesh, and when Antonio's ships are reported lost Shylock sues for the forfeiture.

2. Why can a rich merchant not raise three thousand ducats? Because his wealth is in cargo at sea and not in cash. He says so in Act I Scene i, and it is what makes the loan necessary.

3. What is the difference between usury as the play uses the word and usury today? In the play it means lending at interest at all. Today it means charging interest that is excessive or unlawful.

4. Name the two source stories. Il Pecorone by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino for the flesh bond, and the Gesta Romanorum for the three caskets.

5. Why does the play insist that the Duke cannot simply cancel the bond? Because Venice lives on foreign trade, and traders will not come to a city whose courts refuse to enforce agreements. The play makes commercial certainty the reason the unjust bond has to be taken seriously.

Act I Scene ii: Belmont, a room in Portia's house

What happens. Portia tells Nerissa that her little body is aweary of this great world. Nerissa answers that people are as sick who have too much as those who have nothing, and that happiness lies in the mean, and Portia agrees that good advice is easier to give than to follow.

Then comes her real complaint. Her dead father's will forbids her to choose or refuse a husband for herself.

I may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike, so is the will of a living daughter curb'd by the will of a dead father.

Nerissa explains the mechanism: her father devised a lottery of three chests, of gold, silver and lead, and whoever chooses the chest that holds his meaning wins her. The two women then run through the suitors already at Belmont, and Portia dismisses each with a joke: the Neapolitan prince who talks only of his horse, the County Palatine who never smiles, the French lord who is every man in no man, the young English baron who speaks no language she speaks, the Scottish lord, and the German who is drunk in the afternoon. Nerissa remembers a Venetian scholar and soldier who once came to Belmont, and Portia remembers him too: Bassanio. Word arrives that the Prince of Morocco is on his way.

Why it matters. The scene is funny and it is also the second cage in the play. Antonio is caught by his own generosity, and Portia by a dead man's document. The pun in the line above is deliberate: the word "will" means both what her father wanted and the legal instrument that says so. A woman of great fortune and greater intelligence is bound by a piece of writing she had no part in making, which is the same problem Antonio is about to create for himself.

A distinction worth having ready. Portia never breaks the will. She hints, she delays, she has music played while Bassanio chooses, but she keeps the terms. That matters when you come to judge what she does to Shylock's document in Act IV, because the play's heroine is a woman who obeys the letter of an instrument she dislikes.

Act I Scene iii: Venice, a public place, and the making of the bond

This is the scene the whole play stands on, and it is worth knowing in stages.

Stage one, the terms. Bassanio and Shylock are already in conversation, and the first eight lines settle the deal in commercial form: three thousand ducats, for three months, and Antonio shall be bound. "Bound" means made legally liable, and Antonio is the surety, the person who answers for another's debt.

Stage two, the credit check. Shylock is not sentimental about it. Antonio, he says, is "a good man", and immediately explains that he means only that he is sufficient, that is, good for the money. He then lists the risks: an argosy to Tripolis, another to the Indies, a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and the perils of waters, winds and rocks. This is a working moneylender assessing security, and it is also the play telling the audience, early and clearly, that ships are lost.

Stage three, the grudge. Antonio arrives, and Shylock says in an aside what he will not say to his face.

I hate him for he is a Christian,

But more for that in low simplicity

He lends out money gratis, and brings down

The rate of usance here with us in Venice.

Read that carefully, because examiners set it. Shylock gives two reasons and says the second is the stronger: Antonio lends without interest and so undercuts him. Religion and business are tangled together, and the play does not let you separate them.

Stage four, the argument about interest. Shylock tells the story of Jacob grazing Laban's sheep, and how Jacob arranged that the parti-coloured lambs should be born and fall to him as his hire, ending with a proverb: "thrift is blessing if men steal it not." Antonio's reply is that Jacob's gain was a venture that heaven decided, not interest, and then he says the line that is quoted about Shylock more than any other.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

Stage five, the reproach. Shylock stops arguing and speaks about how he has been treated. He has been rated on the Rialto about his moneys and his usances, called misbeliever and cut-throat dog, spat upon, and had his Jewish gaberdine, his cloak, fouled. And now Antonio wants money from him. Should he answer, he asks, in a bondman's key, with bated breath and whispering humbleness?

Antonio's answer is not an apology.

I am as like to call thee so again,

To spet on thee again, to spurn thee too.

If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not

As to thy friends, for when did friendship take

A breed for barren metal of his friend?

But lend it rather to thine enemy,

Who if he break, thou mayst with better face

Exact the penalty.

Stage six, the merry bond. Shylock offers friendship instead. He will take no interest at all. He asks only that they go to a notary and seal a single bond, and that, in a merry sport, if the money is not repaid on the day and at the place named, the forfeit be an equal pound of Antonio's fair flesh, to be cut off and taken in whatever part of his body pleases Shylock.

Antonio accepts at once: "Content, in faith, I'll seal to such a bond, and say there is much kindness in the Jew." Bassanio objects, and says he would rather stay poor. Antonio overrules him, on a fact the audience will remember for four acts: his ships will return a full month before the bond falls due.

Stage seven, the exit. Shylock asks what he would gain by exacting the forfeiture, since a pound of man's flesh is not so profitable as flesh of muttons, beefs or goats. He leaves to fetch the money. Antonio calls him a gentle Jew and says this Hebrew will turn Christian, he grows kind. Bassanio's last line of the act is the correct reading.

I like not fair terms and a villain's mind.

The bond, read as a lawyer would read it

Set out as a document, the agreement has these parts.

Two observations to carry into the trial chapter. First, everything about this bond is regular except the forfeit: it is in writing, sealed, before a public officer, for value received, with the terms read aloud in front of witnesses. Second, the forfeit is a penalty, meaning a consequence of breach fixed in advance that bears no relation to the loss suffered. Shylock says himself that a pound of flesh is worth less to him than mutton. A modern court would refuse to enforce it for exactly that reason, and this is dealt with fully in the chapter on the bond as a contract.

What beginners get wrong in this act

They say Shylock tricked Antonio. He did not. He stated the forfeit plainly, in front of Bassanio, who understood it well enough to object. Antonio accepted with his eyes open and called it kindness.

They say Antonio is innocent. He admits, in the scene itself, that he has spat on Shylock and will do it again. The play puts that admission immediately before the bond is proposed, and the order is not accidental.

They treat "merry sport" as proof of a trap. It may be, and the ending suggests it is, but at this point in the play it is a form of words that makes a monstrous term sound like a joke, and both Christians accept it as one.

A worked answer

Question. Reference to context: "Content, in faith, I'll seal to such a bond, and say there is much kindness in the Jew."

The answer, in the two sentences the paper allows. These words are spoken by Antonio in Act I Scene iii of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, accepting Shylock's proposal that the forfeit for non-payment be an equal pound of his flesh, cut off in a part of the body Shylock chooses. He calls the term a kindness because Shylock has waived all interest, and because he expects his ships home a month before the bond falls due, so he does not believe the forfeiture can ever arise.

Why the second sentence matters. The examiner's question will usually be why Antonio agreed. The answer is not stupidity: it is the waiver of interest plus his own calculation of the shipping, and both are in the scene.

Quick revision

Scene i: Antonio is sad, his wealth is all at sea, Bassanio asks for a loan to court Portia, Antonio sends him to try his credit in Venice.

Scene ii: Portia is bound by her father's will and the lottery of the gold, silver and lead caskets; she mocks six suitors and remembers Bassanio.

Scene iii: three thousand ducats, three months, Antonio bound. Shylock's aside about hating Antonio for lending gratis. The Jacob and Laban argument. Antonio's refusal to apologise. The bond, with a pound of flesh as the forfeit, sealed before a notary.

Two lines you should be able to place: "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose", Antonio in I.iii; "I like not fair terms and a villain's mind", Bassanio, the last line of the act.

The bond is valid in form and monstrous in content. That combination is the play.

Test yourself

1. Why does Antonio have to borrow at all? Because his wealth is in cargo at sea and he has neither money nor commodity to raise a present sum. He says so in Act I Scene i.

2. What exactly does Shylock mean by calling Antonio "a good man"? Not that he is virtuous. He explains at once that he means Antonio is sufficient, that is, good enough security for three thousand ducats, and he then lists the risks to Antonio's ships.

3. State the two reasons Shylock gives for hating Antonio, in his own order. That he is a Christian, and, more strongly, that he lends money without interest and so brings down the rate of usance in Venice.

4. Is the bond a valid agreement on its face? On its face, yes. There is value given, a fixed time, a named place of payment, a condition, and a sealed instrument before a notary. The defect is not in the making of it but in the nature of the forfeit, which is a penalty out of all proportion to the debt.

5. What does Portia's complaint in Act I Scene ii have in common with Antonio's position? Both are bound by a document. She cannot choose or refuse a husband because of her dead father's will, and he cannot escape a term he agreed to. The play sets a person against a piece of writing twice before the trial ever begins.

Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum

And the vile squealing of the wry-neck'd fife,

Clamber not you up to the casements then.

He leaves on a proverb, "Fast bind, fast find". Jessica's answer, when he is gone, is a single couplet: if her fortune is not crossed, he has lost a daughter and she a father.

Act II Scene vi, the same. The masquers wait. Jessica appears above, dressed as a boy, throws down a casket of her father's money, says she is ashamed of her exchange of clothes, and goes back in to gild herself with more ducats before coming down. Gratiano's comment as she goes is worth marking: "Now, by my hood, a gentle, and no Jew." Antonio then arrives with news that the wind has changed and Bassanio is going aboard at once, so the masque is cancelled.

Act II Scene vii, Belmont. Morocco reads the three inscriptions.

He reasons that lead threatens rather than promises, that silver invites him to weigh his own worth, and that gold must be right because all the world desires Portia. He chooses gold, and finds a skull with a scroll in its eye: "All that glisters is not gold". He leaves, and Portia's line as he goes is one of the ugliest in the play: "Let all of his complexion choose me so."

Act II Scene viii, Venice. Salarino and Solanio report two things. First, Shylock has raised the Duke and searched Bassanio's ship, too late, and has run through the streets crying about his daughter and his ducats together.

My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!

Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!

Second, a Frenchman has told Salarino that a richly laden vessel of their country was wrecked in the narrow seas between France and England, and he feared it was Antonio's. Solanio's line is the plot turning: "Let good Antonio look he keep his day."

Act II Scene ix, Belmont. The Prince of Arragon takes the same oath and reasons differently. He refuses gold because he will not rank himself with the barbarous multitude who choose by show, and takes silver because a man should have as much as he deserves. He finds the portrait of a blinking idiot with a schedule, and goes away with two fools' heads instead of one. A messenger then announces a young Venetian at the gate, and Nerissa's closing line names the hope: "Bassanio, Lord Love, if thy will it be!"

What the caskets are actually testing

The lottery is not random, and questions are set on why. Each casket is a statement about what a person expects from love.

Gold promises what many men desire, so it appeals to a man who values the lady as a prize other men want. Morocco chooses it and is shown a skull, because that is what desiring what everybody desires comes to in the end.

Silver promises as much as the chooser deserves, so it appeals to self-esteem. Arragon chooses it, after a speech about how estates and offices should go by merit, and is shown a fool's head, because a man who is sure he deserves the best is a fool.

Lead demands that the chooser give and hazard all he has, so it asks for risk with no promise at all. It is the only one that offers nothing and asks everything, which is what the play thinks love is.

This is the theme of appearance and reality, and it runs straight into the trial. Morocco is refused for choosing by the outside, and the scroll tells him that all that glisters is not gold. Six scenes later a bond that looks like a merry sport turns out to be an instrument for killing a man.

Jessica, and why this act matters legally

Jessica does three things in one night: she leaves her father's house, she takes a casket of his ducats and later "more" ducats besides, and she takes jewels including, as Act III will show, a turquoise ring her mother gave him. She then marries a Christian and converts.

Consider the position coldly. Property has been removed from a house by a person entrusted with the keys and handed to men waiting outside. Shylock does what any person in that position would do: he raises the Duke, searches the ship, and cries in the street for justice and the law. Every character in the play treats this as ridiculous, and the boys of Venice follow him mocking. Solanio calls him "the dog Jew" while reporting it.

Two consequences follow for the rest of the play. First, this is the moment Shylock's demand stops being commercial. Until now he wanted a good bargain; from here he wants Antonio's life, and Act III will say why. Second, the audience is invited to laugh at a father who has lost his daughter and his savings on one night, and how you feel about that invitation decides how you read the trial.

What beginners get wrong in this act

They treat Act II as filler. It contains the elopement, the two failed choices that explain the third, and the first news that a ship has been lost. Nothing in it is spare.

They say Jessica escapes cruelty. The text supports it: she calls the house hell and says she is ashamed to be her father's child. But she also robs him, and the play never lets her repay it. A good answer says both.

They think the caskets are a fairy tale detail. They are the play's theory of judgment, and they set up the reading of the bond in Act IV, where a document that looks like one thing is held to mean exactly what it says.

They confuse the two princes. Morocco chooses gold and gets a skull. Arragon chooses silver and gets a fool's head. Marking that pair correctly is worth two marks in a reference-to-context question.

A worked answer

Question. "What do the three caskets test, and how do you know?"

Building the answer. Take the inscriptions first, because they are the evidence: gold promises what many men desire, silver promises as much as the chooser deserves, and lead demands that the chooser give and hazard all he has.

Then the two failures. Morocco chooses gold, reasoning that all the world desires Portia, and finds a skull with the scroll "All that glisters is not gold". Arragon chooses silver, after a speech refusing to rank himself with the barbarous multitude, and finds the portrait of a blinking idiot.

Then the conclusion. So gold catches the man who wants what others want, and silver the man who is sure of his own merit, while lead is the only casket that promises nothing and asks everything. The test is not of cleverness but of what the chooser expects from love, and Bassanio passes it in Act III Scene ii by choosing the metal that threatens rather than promises.

Quick revision

Nine scenes, alternating Venice and Belmont.

Morocco chooses gold and finds a skull with the scroll "All that glisters is not gold". Arragon chooses silver and finds a fool's head.

The three inscriptions: gold, what many men desire; silver, as much as he deserves; lead, must give and hazard all he hath.

Launcelet Gobbo leaves Shylock for Bassanio; the comic scene with Old Gobbo.

Jessica elopes with Lorenzo in boy's clothes, taking a casket of ducats and jewels. Shylock raises the Duke, searches the ship, and runs crying "My daughter! O my ducats!"

Act II Scene viii carries the first report of a wreck in the narrow seas, and the warning "Let good Antonio look he keep his day".

Test yourself

1. Why does Morocco choose gold, and what does he find? Because the inscription promises what many men desire, and he reasons that all the world desires Portia. He finds a skull with a scroll beginning "All that glisters is not gold".

2. Why does Arragon reject gold? Because he refuses to choose what the "fool multitude" desires and to rank himself with the barbarous multitudes. He takes silver on the ground that a man should have what he deserves, and is given a portrait of a blinking idiot.

3. What exactly does Jessica take with her? A casket of her father's money thrown down from the window, more ducats that she goes back to fetch, and jewels. She is also dressed in a page's suit, a boy's clothes, and acts as Lorenzo's torch-bearer.

4. What is the significance of Solanio's line "Let good Antonio look he keep his day"? It is the first time anybody in the play connects Shylock's rage to the bond. The audience is told, before Antonio knows it, that the forfeiture will now be pressed.

5. How does the casket test connect to the trial scene? Both turn on reading. The caskets punish men who read an inscription for what it seems to promise instead of what it says, and the trial destroys Shylock by reading his own document for exactly what it says and nothing more.

One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.

His answer names his dead wife: it was his turquoise, he had it of Leah when he was a bachelor, and he would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys. Two lines later he tells Tubal to fee an officer, a court officer, and bespeak him a fortnight before, because he will have the heart of Antonio if he forfeits.

Why the ring matters. It is the single detail that makes Shylock a man rather than a figure. A daughter has sold her dead mother's ring for a monkey, and the loss he cannot bear is not the money. Every serious answer on Shylock's character uses this line, and most candidates have never noticed it.

Act III Scene ii: Belmont, the right casket, and the letter

What happens. Portia asks Bassanio to wait a day or two before choosing, and admits, carefully, that she could teach him how to choose right but will not break her oath. He insists. Music plays while he thinks, and the song asks where fancy is bred and answers that it is engendered in the eyes and dies in the cradle where it lies, which is a warning against choosing by sight.

Bassanio's reasoning. His speech is the play's clearest statement of appearance against reality, and it takes its first example from law.

The world is still deceiv'd with ornament.

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt

But, being season'd with a gracious voice,

Obscures the show of evil?

He goes on through religion, cowardice and beauty, rejects gold as hard food for Midas and silver as the pale and common drudge between man and man, and chooses lead because it threatens rather than promises. He finds Portia's picture and a scroll telling him to turn to his lady and claim her with a kiss.

The ring. Portia gives herself, her house and her servants, and with them a ring, on an express condition.

I give them with this ring,

Which when you part from, lose, or give away,

Let it presage the ruin of your love,

And be my vantage to exclaim on you.

Bassanio swears that when the ring parts from his finger, life parts from him. Remember that promise, because Act IV will make him break it and Act V is about nothing else. Gratiano then announces that he and Nerissa have made the same match, on the condition that Bassanio won.

The letter. Lorenzo, Jessica and Salerio arrive from Venice with Antonio's letter. Bassanio confesses to Portia that he told her he had nothing, when in truth he was worse than nothing, because he had engaged himself to a dear friend and engaged that friend to his mere enemy. Salerio confirms that not one vessel escaped, from Tripolis, Mexico, England, Lisbon, Barbary and India, and adds the fact that decides the trial.

Besides, it should appear, that if he had

The present money to discharge the Jew,

He would not take it.

Jessica supports it from her own knowledge: she has heard her father swear to Tubal and Chus that he would rather have Antonio's flesh than twenty times the value of the sum. Portia's answer is immediate and generous: pay him six thousand, double six thousand, treble that, but first go with me to church and call me wife. Antonio's own letter is short and is worth knowing, because it is the reason Bassanio leaves on his wedding day: his ships have all miscarried, the bond to the Jew is forfeit, and since in paying it it is impossible he should live, all debts are cleared between them if he might but see him at his death.

Act III Scene iii: the legal centre of the play

Antonio is under arrest, brought out by the gaoler at his own request to speak to Shylock. Shylock will not listen.

I'll have my bond, speak not against my bond.

I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond.

He gives his reason in one line: "Thou call'dst me dog before thou hadst a cause, but since I am a dog, beware my fangs." Antonio, when he has gone, tells Salarino why he cannot be saved, and this is the sentence a law student must be able to reproduce.

The Duke cannot deny the course of law,

For the commodity that strangers have

With us in Venice, if it be denied,

'Twill much impeach the justice of the state,

Since that the trade and profit of the city

Consisteth of all nations.

What it means, in plain English. Foreign merchants trade at Venice because Venetian courts enforce their contracts. If the Duke refuses to enforce this one because the creditor is unpopular, every foreign merchant learns that Venetian justice depends on who you are, and the trade of the city goes elsewhere. So the Duke has no power to release Antonio, however much he wants to. The rule of law is not a favour to Shylock, it is the condition of Venice's existence.

This is why the play is set on a law syllabus. The scene states, better than most textbooks, why a court cannot simply do what seems kind in the case in front of it.

Act III Scene iv: Portia's plan

Portia hands the management of her house to Lorenzo, and says she and Nerissa have vowed to live in prayer and contemplation at a monastery two miles off until their husbands return. That is a lie, and the audience learns so within thirty lines.

She sends her servant Balthazar to Padua, to her cousin Doctor Bellario, with a letter, and tells him to bring back whatever notes and garments Bellario gives him to the common ferry that trades to Venice. Then she tells Nerissa they will see their husbands before their husbands think of them, accoutred like young men, and she runs through a comic list of the tricks she will use to pass as a bragging youth.

Three points to carry into the trial chapter. First, Portia has legal advice in writing before she reaches the court: the notes come from a doctor of laws. Second, she has authority in the form of a letter of introduction from Bellario, which Act IV will show being read out. Third, she arrives disguised, and nobody in court knows who she is.

Act III Scene v: Launcelet and Jessica in the garden

A short comic scene. Launcelet teases Jessica that the sins of the father are laid upon the children so she is damned, and she answers that she is saved by her husband, who has made her a Christian. Launcelet complains that converting Jews will raise the price of pork. Lorenzo joins them and there is joking about Launcelet's word-play.

Why the scene is there. It gives the audience a breath between Antonio's arrest and the trial, and it keeps one uncomfortable question alive: Jessica has changed her religion, and the play keeps making jokes about whether it took. Every reading of the play's antisemitism has to account for this scene, because the mockery here is casual and comes from the characters we are meant to like.

Antisemitism in Act III, stated fairly

An examiner setting an essay on this theme expects the material of this act. Set out the evidence on both sides.

What is said to and about Shylock. He is called "the dog Jew" and "old carrion" by Solanio, spoken of as the devil in the likeness of a Jew, and told by Salarino that there is more difference between his flesh and his daughter's than between jet and ivory. The boys of Venice follow him in the street. Launcelet calls him "the very devil incarnation". Nobody in the play uses his name kindly.

What Shakespeare gives him in return. The speech at the centre of III.i, which no other character in the play could deliver. The turquoise ring. The reason for the hatred, which is stated as a business grievance as much as a religious one. And a case in law that is unanswerable until Act IV.

How to conclude. The honest position is that the play contains both, and that the second does not cancel the first. Shakespeare gives a hated figure the strongest speech in the play and then destroys him in a courtroom, and it is possible to read that as sympathy, as cruelty, or as a writer showing exactly how a society treats a man it has already decided about. An answer that argues one of those three, with the evidence above, will score. An answer that says only that Shakespeare was a man of his time has not read the act.

What beginners get wrong in this act

They quote "Hath not a Jew eyes" as a plea for tolerance. It ends in a promise of revenge.

They forget the ring in III.ii. Portia's ring is given under an express condition, and every question on Act V depends on knowing that.

They think the Duke could have stopped it. Antonio himself says the opposite, and explains why in six lines. Not knowing this is the commonest way of misreading the trial.

They miss that Shylock refuses the money before the trial. Salerio reports it in III.ii. By the time court sits, everybody knows he will not take payment.

A worked answer

Question. Reference to context: "Hath not a Jew eyes?"

A weak answer. Spoken by Shylock. It shows that all human beings are equal and that we should not hate anybody for their religion.

Why it is weak. It stops at the middle of the speech and turns it into a sentiment the speech does not express.

A strong answer. Spoken by Shylock to Salarino and Solanio in a street in Venice in Act III Scene i, after they ask him what a pound of Antonio's flesh could possibly be good for. He argues that a Jew is identical to a Christian in body and feeling, and completes the argument by insisting that the identity extends to revenge, since the villainy he will execute is what Christian example has taught him.

The test of a good answer here. It reports where the speech ends. Any answer that leaves out the revenge has described a different speech.

Quick revision

III.i: the wreck on the Goodwins; "let him look to his bond"; "Hath not a Jew eyes"; Tubal's alternating news; the diamond of two thousand ducats; fourscore ducats in one night; the turquoise ring had of Leah, sold for a monkey; "fee me an officer".

III.ii: Portia delays; the song; Bassanio's speech on ornament, beginning with a corrupt plea in law; he chooses lead; the ring is given on condition; Antonio's letter; Portia offers to pay many times the debt.

III.iii: "I'll have my bond" three times; Antonio explains that the Duke cannot deny the course of law because Venice lives on foreign trade.

III.iv: Portia pretends to go to a monastery and sends Balthazar to Doctor Bellario at Padua for notes and garments.

III.v: Launcelet and Jessica joke about conversion.

Test yourself

1. Why does Shylock refuse three thousand ducats and more? Because after Jessica's flight he wants revenge rather than payment. Salerio reports that he would not take the money if it were offered, and Jessica has heard him swear he would rather have Antonio's flesh than twenty times the sum.

2. What is the significance of the turquoise ring? It was his wife Leah's gift to him before their marriage, and Jessica traded it for a monkey. It is the detail that shows Shylock's grief is not only about money, and it is the strongest single piece of evidence in a sympathetic character sketch.

3. Reproduce Antonio's explanation of why the Duke cannot save him. That the Duke cannot deny the course of law, because if the rights that foreign merchants have in Venice are denied it will much impeach the justice of the state, since the trade and profit of the city consists of all nations.

4. Why does Bassanio choose the leaden casket? Because he reasons that the world is deceived by ornament, giving examples from law, religion, courage and beauty, and that a casket which threatens rather than promises is more likely to be true. The song played while he thinks also warns against love bred in the eyes.

5. What preparation does Portia make in III.iv, and why does it matter? She sends Balthazar to her cousin Doctor Bellario of Padua for legal notes and garments, and plans to appear disguised as a young man. It matters because she arrives in court not as an untrained woman with a clever idea but as a person carrying a doctor of laws' written opinion and his introduction.

Stage two: Shylock refuses to give a reason

Shylock's answer is deliberate and, for a modern reader, shocking. He has sworn by the holy Sabbath to have the due and forfeit of his bond, and if the court denies it, let the danger light upon the city's charter and its freedom.

Then he refuses to explain himself.

You'll ask me why I rather choose to have

A weight of carrion flesh than to receive

Three thousand ducats. I'll not answer that,

But say it is my humour.

He gives examples: a man may pay ten thousand ducats to have a rat killed in his house; some men cannot bear a roast pig, some go mad at the sight of a cat, some cannot control themselves when a bagpipe plays. There is no firm reason for any of it. So he can give no reason for his suit either, beyond "a lodg'd hate and a certain loathing I bear Antonio".

Why he does this. In law he does not need a reason. A creditor enforcing a valid bond is not obliged to explain his motive, and by refusing to give one he is standing on his strict right. It is also, dramatically, the most frightening thing he could say, because a reason can be argued with and a humour cannot.

Stage three: the money is offered and refused

Bassanio offers six thousand ducats for the three thousand. Shylock's answer is one of the quotations MU actually sets.

If every ducat in six thousand ducats

Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,

I would not draw them, I would have my bond.

The Duke asks how he can hope for mercy, rendering none. Shylock's reply is the hardest argument in the scene, and candidates almost never use it.

What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?

You have among you many a purchas'd slave,

Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,

You use in abject and in slavish parts,

Because you bought them.

If he asked them to free their slaves and marry them to their heirs, he says, they would answer "The slaves are ours." He answers the same way: the pound of flesh is dearly bought, it is his, and he will have it. And he adds the sentence that puts the court on trial: "If you deny me, fie upon your law! There is no force in the decrees of Venice."

Take this seriously in an essay. Shylock is pointing out that the Christians of Venice own human beings by purchase and see nothing wrong in it, and that his claim rests on exactly the same principle, namely that a thing bought is the buyer's. The play gives him this argument and nobody in the court answers it.

Stage four: Bellario's letter and the arrival of Balthazar

The Duke says he may dismiss the court unless Bellario, a learned doctor sent for to determine the matter, arrives. A messenger comes from Padua: Nerissa, dressed as a lawyer's clerk.

While the letter is being fetched, Gratiano and Shylock exchange insults over the whetting of Shylock's knife, and Shylock ends it with four words that state his whole position: "I stand here for law."

The letter. Bellario writes that he is very sick, but that a young doctor of Rome named Balthazar happened to be visiting him, that he acquainted him with the cause, that they turned over many books together, and that Balthazar comes furnished with Bellario's opinion bettered by his own learning. He asks that the young man's lack of years be no impediment.

What the letter does. It gives Portia everything a stranger needs to be heard: an introduction from a known authority, a stated qualification, and an explanation of why the expected expert has not come. It is also, in fact, false in every particular except the opinion, and the court never tests it.

Stage five: mercy, and the refusal of it

Portia enters as Balthazar. Her first questions are procedural and exact: which is the merchant and which the Jew, is your name Shylock, do you confess the bond. Antonio confesses it. She then states the position in law before saying anything else, and the statement is entirely in Shylock's favour.

Of a strange nature is the suit you follow,

Yet in such rule that the Venetian law

Cannot impugn you as you do proceed.

Then: "Then must the Jew be merciful." Shylock's four-word answer is the hinge of the scene: "On what compulsion must I? Tell me that."

The speech that follows is the most famous in the play. It begins by answering his question directly: none. Mercy is not strained, that is, not forced or constrained; it drops as the gentle rain from heaven; it blesses him that gives and him that takes; it is mightiest in the mightiest, and becomes a monarch better than his crown. Earthly power shows likest God's when mercy seasons justice.

Its conclusion is the part that matters for the argument, and it is a religious one: in the course of justice, none of us would see salvation, so we pray for mercy and that prayer teaches us to show it.

Shylock answers in one line and a half. "My deeds upon my head! I crave the law, the penalty and forfeit of my bond." The full treatment of what this exchange is worth as argument is in the chapter on mercy and equity.

Stage six: the money again, and the refusal to bend the law

Bassanio offers to pay twice, then ten times, and asks Portia to do what many candidates think a court should do.

Wrest once the law to your authority.

To do a great right, do a little wrong.

Portia refuses, and her reason is the most lawyerly thing in the play.

It must not be, there is no power in Venice

Can alter a decree established;

'Twill be recorded for a precedent,

And many an error by the same example

Will rush into the state.

Precedent means a decision that later courts follow. Her point is that a court which bends the law once, even for a good reason, has made a rule that will be used again in bad cases. Shylock, delighted, calls her "A Daniel come to judgment", after the young judge in the Book of Daniel who saves an innocent woman by cross-examination. It is the second time in the scene that a character praises a judge before hearing the judgment.

Stage seven: the judgment for Shylock

Portia asks to see the bond, offers Shylock thrice his money once more, and is refused on the ground of an oath in heaven. She then states the law as clearly as it can be stated.

Why, this bond is forfeit,

And lawfully by this the Jew may claim

A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off

Nearest the merchant's heart.

She invites him again to take three times the money and bid her tear the bond, and he refuses again. She gives judgment: Antonio must prepare his bosom for the knife, for the intent and purpose of the law has full relation to the penalty, which appears due upon the bond.

Then comes the exchange that ruins him, and it is Portia's trap although it looks like charity. She asks whether there is a surgeon standing by to stop Antonio's wounds, lest he bleed to death, at Shylock's charge.

SHYLOCK. Is it so nominated in the bond?

PORTIA. It is not so express'd, but what of that? 'Twere good you do so much for charity.

SHYLOCK. I cannot find it; 'tis not in the bond.

He has just told the court, in front of witnesses, that he will do nothing that is not written in the document. Everything that follows uses that against him.

Stage eight: the turn

Antonio makes his farewell to Bassanio, and Bassanio says he would sacrifice his wife and all the world to save him, which Portia answers drily: his wife would give him little thanks for the offer. Shylock says these are Christian husbands, and presses for sentence.

Portia awards the pound of flesh. Shylock cries "Most rightful judge!" She says he must cut this flesh from off Antonio's breast, the law allows it and the court awards it. He cries "Most learned judge! A sentence! Come, prepare."

Tarry a little, there is something else.

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.

The words expressly are "a pound of flesh".

If in the cutting he sheds one drop of Christian blood, his lands and goods are confiscate to the state of Venice. Shylock asks, "Is that the law?" and is told that as he urges justice he shall have more justice than he desires.

He tries to take the money instead. Portia stops him: he shall have nothing but the penalty. She adds a second impossibility: he must cut exactly a pound, neither more nor less, and if the scale turns by so much as the twentieth part of one poor scruple, or in the estimation of a hair, he dies and all his goods are confiscate. A scruple is a tiny apothecary's weight, so this is a demand for perfection that no knife can meet.

He asks only for his principal. It is offered by Bassanio. Portia refuses even that: he has refused it in open court, and shall have merely justice and his bond. Shylock gives up and turns to leave.

Stage nine: the alien statute

He is not allowed to leave.

Tarry, Jew.

The law hath yet another hold on you.

She recites a Venetian statute: if it is proved against an alien, a person who is not a citizen, that by direct or indirect attempts he has sought the life of any citizen, then the party against whom he contrived seizes half his goods, the other half goes to the state, and his life lies in the mercy of the Duke alone. She says it appears by manifest proceeding that Shylock has contrived, indirectly and directly too, against the very life of Antonio, and tells him to kneel and beg mercy of the Duke.

Read this carefully, because it is where most answers go wrong. Shylock has not committed any offence outside the courtroom. What is said to be his attempt on Antonio's life is the bringing of this very suit, on a bond a court has just declared valid. He is convicted, in effect, of asking a court for the remedy it told him he was entitled to.

Stage ten: the sentence, and what Antonio adds

The Duke pardons his life before he asks, "that thou shalt see the difference of our spirit". Half the wealth is Antonio's, the other half goes to the state, which humbleness may reduce to a fine. Portia corrects even that: the fine is for the state, not for Antonio.

Shylock's answer is four lines that many readers find the most painful in the play.

Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that.

You take my house when you do take the prop

That doth sustain my house; you take my life

When you do take the means whereby I live.

Antonio then states his own terms. He will not take the half awarded to him as owner: he asks the court to quit the fine on the state's half, and asks to hold the other half in use, that is, in trust, rendering it on Shylock's death to Lorenzo. And two conditions more.

1. That Shylock presently become a Christian.
2. That he record a deed of gift, in court, of all he dies possessed of, to Lorenzo and Jessica.

The Duke says he shall do this or the pardon is recanted. Portia asks whether he is contented. Shylock's last words in the play are three: "I am content." He then asks leave to go because he is not well, and to have the deed sent after him. Gratiano's parting joke is that in christening he shall have two godfathers, and that had Gratiano been judge he would have had ten more, to bring him to the gallows and not to the font.

The sequence of the reversal, in the order to write it

Learn this list. It is the answer to "critically examine the trial scene", and it is what most candidates cannot get in order.

1. The bond is admitted by Antonio and declared valid by the court.
2. Three thousand, six thousand, and ten times the sum are offered and refused.
3. Mercy is asked for and refused, and no compulsion to be merciful is found.
4. The court refuses to bend the law, on the ground of precedent.
5. Judgment is given for Shylock: he may cut a pound of flesh nearest the heart.
6. Shylock refuses a surgeon because a surgeon is not in the bond.
7. The bond gives flesh, not blood. One drop of Christian blood forfeits everything.
8. It must also be exactly a pound, to the estimation of a hair, on pain of death.
9. He asks for the money; refused, because he refused it in open court.
10. He asks for the principal alone; refused.
11. The alien statute is produced: half to Antonio, half to the state, life at the Duke's mercy.
12. The Duke pardons his life; Antonio adds trusteeship for Lorenzo, forced conversion, and a deed of gift.

What beginners get wrong

They say Portia proves the bond invalid. She does the opposite. She holds it valid twice, in terms, and gives judgment on it. The bond is never set aside.

They say Shylock loses because he asks for too much. He loses because a term is read against him that he never thought about, and then because of a statute nobody mentioned until he tried to leave.

They forget that the money is refused three times before the turn. Every one of those refusals is used against him later, so they are not repetition, they are the record being built.

They stop at the blood. The blood point only defeats the claim. What destroys Shylock, his fortune and his religion, is the alien statute, and half the marks are there.

They think Antonio is merciful at the end. Read the conditions. He gives up ownership of one half and takes the income of the other, and he requires the man to change his religion and disinherit himself in favour of the daughter who robbed him. Whether that is mercy is a real question, and an essay should treat it as one.

A worked answer

Question. "Critically examine the trial scene." Here is the opening paragraph and the plan.

Opening paragraph. The trial in Act IV Scene i is not a scene in which a bad claim is exposed. The court holds the bond good, twice and in terms, and gives judgment on it, and Shylock is defeated only afterwards, by a construction of his own document that no party had considered and by a statute nobody had mentioned. This answer argues that the scene is a study in what strict reading can do in the hands of a court that has already decided who should win.

The plan of the rest. One paragraph on the bond being upheld and the money refused three times. One on the mercy speech and why it fails as argument. One on the surgeon exchange, in which Shylock commits himself to the rule that nothing counts unless written. One on the blood and the exact pound. One on the alien statute, produced after judgment by the judge, with no charge and no defence. One on the sentence and Antonio's conditions. A conclusion answering the question asked.

Why this plan scores. It follows the scene's own order, so every point is anchored to a moment the examiner can find, and it takes a position in the first paragraph instead of arriving at one in the last.

Quick revision

The Duke is on Antonio's side but rules he cannot deny the course of law.

Shylock refuses to give a reason: "it is my humour", the rat, the pig, the cat, the bagpipe.

His hardest argument: you own purchased slaves because you bought them, and I own this flesh because I bought it.

Bellario's letter introduces "Balthazar", a young doctor of Rome, in his place.

"On what compulsion must I?" answered by the quality of mercy speech.

Portia refuses to bend the law because it would be recorded for a precedent.

She gives judgment for Shylock, then: no jot of blood, and exactly a pound to a hair.

Then the alien statute: half to Antonio, half to the state, life at the Duke's mercy.

Antonio's conditions: half in use for Lorenzo, become a Christian, record a deed of gift.

Shylock's last line: "I am content."

Test yourself

1. Does Portia hold the bond valid or void? Valid. She says the Venetian law cannot impugn Shylock as he proceeds, she states that the bond is forfeit and he may lawfully claim a pound of flesh nearest the heart, and she awards it. The bond is never declared void at any point.

2. What exactly does the blood argument say? That the bond expressly grants a pound of flesh and grants no blood at all, so in cutting the flesh Shylock may not shed one drop of Christian blood, and if he does his lands and goods are confiscate to the state of Venice.

3. Why does the surgeon exchange matter? Because Shylock is made to say in open court that he will do nothing which is not nominated in the bond. Having insisted that the document is the whole of the matter, he cannot object when the document is read against him with the same strictness.

4. State the alien statute in your own words. If an alien is proved to have sought the life of a citizen of Venice by direct or indirect attempts, the intended victim takes half his goods, the state takes the other half, and his life is at the mercy of the Duke alone.

5. Why is the alien statute the more serious blow? The blood point only stops him recovering. The statute makes him a criminal, takes his whole estate, and puts his life in the Duke's hands, which is what allows Antonio to impose conversion and a deed of gift as the price of survival.

6. Who is Balthazar? The name Portia uses in disguise as the young doctor of laws from Rome. It is also the name of Portia's own servant in Act III Scene iv, whom she sends to Padua, and the play reuses it without explanation.

In such a night

Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,

And with an unthrift love did run from Venice

As far as Belmont.

She answers that in such a night young Lorenzo swore he loved her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and never a true one. The tone is playful and the content is not: every one of the classical pairs they name ends in betrayal or death, and they have just put their own elopement in that list.

The music speech. Lorenzo calls for music and speaks the passage most often quoted from this act: the floor of heaven thick inlaid with patens of bright gold, every orb singing like an angel, and the harmony that immortal souls have but which we cannot hear while the muddy vesture of decay closes it in. He ends with a judgment that the play means seriously.

The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.

Remember that in Act II Shylock ordered his house shut against the drum and the wry-necked fife. Shakespeare has built a test that Shylock has already failed, offstage, three acts earlier.

Portia's arrival. She sees a candle burning in her hall and speaks two lines that a student should keep: "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world." Nerissa points out that when the moon shone they did not see the candle, and Portia takes the thought further: a substitute shines brightly as a king until a king is by. The whole exchange is about things being valued by their setting, which is what she has just done to Shylock's bond.

The quarrel over the rings

Gratiano and Nerissa are already arguing when Portia notices. Nerissa's complaint is exact: he swore to wear the ring till his hour of death and that it should lie with him in his grave, and he gave it to a judge's clerk. Gratiano's defence is that it was a prating boy who begged it as a fee, and he could not for his heart deny him.

Portia rebukes him and, in doing so, sets her own trap: she says she gave her love a ring and made him swear never to part with it, and she dare be sworn he would not leave it for the wealth that the world masters. Bassanio's aside is one of the funniest lines in Shakespeare: "Why, I were best to cut my left hand off, and swear I lost the ring defending it."

The truth comes out. Portia's response escalates from anger to a threat that is the mirror of his own fault: since the doctor has the jewel she loved, she will deny him nothing she has, not her body nor her husband's bed. Nerissa says the same about the clerk.

Bassanio's defence, and why it is a real one. He explains that no woman had it but a civil doctor, who refused three thousand ducats and begged the ring, whom he had first denied and allowed to go displeased away, and who had held up the very life of his dear friend. He says he was beset with shame and courtesy, and that his honour would not let ingratitude besmear it.

That is a genuine conflict of duties, and the play knows it. He owes an oath to his wife and a debt of gratitude to the man who saved Antonio, and the two cannot both be honoured. It is the same shape as the trial: a promise that is clear, against a good reason for breaking it.

Antonio's surety. Antonio then does something that closes his own story. He says he once lent his body for Bassanio's wealth, and offers to be bound again, his soul upon the forfeit, that Bassanio will never break faith. Portia accepts him as surety and hands him a ring to give Bassanio, and it is the same ring.

The revelation, and the letters

Portia lets the confusion run for a few lines, saying the doctor lay with her and Nerissa saying the clerk lay with her, before she produces the proof: a letter from Bellario at Padua showing that Portia was the doctor and Nerissa her clerk, with Lorenzo as witness that they set out as soon as the men did.

Two more pieces of paper follow. Antonio is given a letter, and its contents are the play's last surprise: three of his argosies are richly come to harbour. Portia refuses to explain how she came by it. Lorenzo and Jessica are given the deed of gift from Shylock, of all he dies possessed of, and Lorenzo says the ladies drop manna in the way of starved people.

The play ends with Gratiano's joke that while he lives he will fear no other thing so sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring.

Why there is a fifth act at all

This is a real examination question, and there are four answers worth giving. Use two or three of them.

Because the play is a comedy. A comedy has to end in harmony, and the trial ends in a man being stripped of his religion and his money. Shakespeare needs a whole act of moonlight and music to change the key, and the audience is sent home from Belmont and not from the courtroom.

Because the ring plot is unfinished. The oath was made in Act III, broken in Act IV, and must be resolved. Dramatically it also lets Portia keep her power for one more act: she is the only person on stage who knows everything.

Because it repeats the trial in a lower key, and reverses the verdict. Consider the parallel. A solemn oath is broken. The injured party has an absolute right to complain. She presses the letter of the promise, threatens the worst, and could have humiliated her husband in front of the whole household. Then she forgives, and hands back what was lost. Portia does in Belmont exactly what the court refused to do in Venice, and the play sets the two side by side without a word of comment.

Because it lets the play look at its own winners. Nothing in Act V is quite clean. The lovers' duet is full of betrayals, Jessica's silence after Lorenzo's speech about the deed of gift is famous among readers, and the men are forgiven only after being frightened. The act is beautiful and slightly uneasy, and a good answer says so.

What beginners get wrong

They think the ring plot is a comic subplot. It is the machinery by which the play tests whether Bassanio values his wife's word above his obligations to other men, and he fails.

They forget Antonio stands surety twice. In Act I he pledged his body for Bassanio's fortune. In Act V he pledges his soul for Bassanio's faithfulness. The rhyme between the two is deliberate and worth a sentence in any answer on Antonio.

They ignore the news of the ships. Antonio's ruin, on which the entire plot rested, is undone by a letter that Portia will not explain. It is worth noticing how casually the play repairs the loss it spent four acts building.

They say Jessica is happy at the end. She is given a deed of gift from her father's estate. She says nothing after it. Whether that silence is contentment or something else is a question the text leaves open, and either answer is arguable if you notice the silence.

A worked answer

Question. "Why does Shakespeare add a fifth act after the trial?"

A model answer in four sentences. Because the play is a comedy and must end in harmony, and the trial ends with a man stripped of his money and his religion, so a whole act of moonlight, music and marriage is needed to change the key before the audience goes home. Because the ring plot, begun in Act III Scene ii when Portia gave the ring on an express condition and continued at the end of the trial when she begged it back in disguise, is unfinished. Because it repeats the trial in a lower key and reverses its verdict: an absolute promise is broken, the injured party presses the letter of it, and then forgives and restores what was lost. And because it lets the play look at its winners, in a scene whose lovers name Troilus, Thisbe, Dido and Medea, every one of whom ended in betrayal.

The technique to notice. Each sentence is a separate reason with its own evidence. Four such sentences are a complete short answer, and they expand into four paragraphs for a thirteen-mark essay.

Quick revision

Portia, still as Balthazar, refuses payment but begs the ring; Bassanio refuses, then sends Gratiano after her with it on Antonio's urging.

IV.ii: the deed of gift is taken to Shylock's house; Nerissa sets out to get Gratiano's ring too.

V.i: Lorenzo and Jessica trade "In such a night" speeches; the music speech and "The man that hath no music in himself"; Portia's candle in a naughty world.

The quarrel: both men have given the rings away; both wives threaten to give themselves to the doctor and the clerk.

Antonio stands surety a second time, soul upon the forfeit, and the ring is returned through him.

The letter from Bellario reveals the disguise. Antonio learns three argosies are safe. Lorenzo and Jessica get the deed of gift.

Test yourself

1. How does Portia get the ring from Bassanio? By refusing payment for her services, then asking for a remembrance rather than a fee, and choosing the ring. Bassanio refuses until Antonio urges him to weigh the doctor's deserving and his own love against his wife's commandment, and then he sends Gratiano after her with it.

2. What is the condition attached to the ring when it is first given? That when he parts from it, loses it, or gives it away, it shall presage the ruin of their love and be Portia's advantage to exclaim against him. Bassanio swore that when the ring parted from his finger, life would part from him.

3. Why does Bassanio's defence deserve to be taken seriously? Because he faced two genuine duties. He had sworn an oath to his wife, and he owed gratitude to the man who had just saved his friend's life and who had refused any payment. The play deliberately gives him a real conflict rather than a simple failure.

4. What is the connection between Act V and the trial scene? Both are about the strict enforcement of a promise. In court, the letter of the bond is enforced without mercy and destroys a man. At Belmont, a broken oath is pressed hard and then forgiven, and the marriage survives. The second scene answers the first.

5. Why does Lorenzo's speech about music matter to a reading of Shylock? Because Lorenzo says the man who has no music in himself is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, and Shylock has already ordered his doors shut against the fife and the drum. The play convicts him by a standard he was never present to answer.

Why the forfeit is a penalty

This is the legal heart of the chapter, and the distinction is worth learning properly, because you will meet it in the law of contract in a later semester.

Liquidated damages are a sum fixed in advance by the parties as a genuine estimate of the loss that a breach would cause. They are enforced, because they are a substitute for proving the loss.

A penalty is a sum or a thing fixed in advance in order to frighten a party into performing, out of all proportion to any loss. It is a punishment, and courts refuse to enforce it as written.

Apply the distinction to the bond, and use the play's own evidence.

1. The forfeit bears no relation to the debt. The debt is money, three thousand ducats. The forfeit is a pound of flesh, which cannot be sold, valued or applied to the debt.
2. Shylock says so himself, twice. In Act I Scene iii he asks what he would gain by exacting the forfeiture and says a pound of man's flesh "is not so estimable, profitable neither, as flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats". In Act III Scene i, asked what the flesh is good for, he answers: "To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge."
3. He refuses payment of the debt many times over. A creditor who will not take three times his money is not seeking compensation.

So the bond is a valid agreement containing a penal forfeiture, and the plot is what happens when nobody in the system is willing to say that.

A worked example, to fix the distinction

Rakesh agrees to build a shop for Sunita by 1 June. The contract says that for every week of delay he will pay Rs 5,000, which is roughly what Sunita will lose in rent. That is liquidated damages, and a court would allow it.

Change one word. The contract says that if he is a single day late he will transfer his motorcycle to her, whatever the delay costs. The motorcycle has nothing to do with the loss. It is there to frighten him into finishing. That is a penalty, and a court will award Sunita what she actually lost instead.

Shylock's bond is the second kind, taken to its extreme: the thing forfeited is not a motorcycle but a piece of the debtor.

What an Indian court would do today

Section 74 of the Indian Contract Act 1872 is headed "Compensation for breach of contract where penalty stipulated for", and its operative words are these.

When a contract has been broken, if a sum is named in the contract as the amount to be paid in case of such breach, or if the contract contains any other stipulation by way of penalty, the party complaining of the breach is entitled, whether or not actual damage or loss is proved to have been caused thereby, to receive from the party who has broken the contract reasonable compensation not exceeding the amount so named or, as the case may be, the penalty stipulated for.

Three points follow, and they are enough for any answer.

One. Indian law does not enforce a penalty as written. It gives reasonable compensation, capped at the amount named. So even if the forfeit were money, Shylock could recover only what he actually lost, and not more because he had frightened Antonio into promising more.

Two. The Act says "any other stipulation by way of penalty", not only a sum of money. The words are wide enough to cover a forfeiture that is not money at all, which is what a pound of flesh is.

Three. An agreement to give up a pound of one's own flesh would fail long before section 74. No court would treat consent to grievous hurt or to death as a lawful object of contract, and the agreement would be void on that ground alone. Section 74 answers the smaller question of what happens to a penal clause in a contract that is otherwise good.

Keep this to a paragraph in an English answer. The examiner is testing whether you have read the play, and one accurate sentence of law is worth more than a page of it.

The other reading: Shylock never meant it as a contract at all

An essay can take a different line, and it is defensible. On this reading the bond was never a commercial instrument. Shylock proposes it as "a merry sport" immediately after being told that Antonio will spit on him again, and he says in his aside that if he can catch him once upon the hip he will feed fat the ancient grudge. The document is a trap dressed as a favour, and the waiver of interest is the bait.

If that is right, the interesting legal question changes. It is no longer whether a penalty is enforceable, but whether an agreement made with the settled intention of killing the other party is a contract at all. The play never asks that question, and the court in Act IV, which had the alien statute available all along, could have asked it at the start and did not.

What beginners get wrong

They say the bond was invalid. It was not, and the court says so twice. Everything in the trial follows from the bond being good.

They say Shylock deceived Antonio. He stated the term, in front of a witness who objected to it.

They confuse penalty with interest. Shylock takes no interest at all. The bond's cruelty is in the forfeiture clause, not in the price of the loan.

They apply modern law to Shakespeare's Venice. Say what the play does, then say what a modern court would do, and keep the two apart in your answer.

A worked answer

Question. "Was the bond a valid contract? Answer with reasons."

Step one, state the conclusion first. The bond was a valid agreement whose forfeiture clause was a penalty, and that is why the court upheld it and then refused to let it be enforced according to its apparent effect.

Step two, prove validity element by element. There was agreement, since Shylock stated the terms and Antonio accepted them in front of a witness who objected. There was consideration, since three thousand ducats were actually advanced and spent. There was capacity and deliberation, since Antonio calculated that his ships would return a month before the day. There was no fraud, since nothing was concealed.

Step three, isolate the defect. The forfeit bears no relation to the debt: the debt is money and the forfeit is flesh, which cannot be sold or applied to it. Shylock says so twice himself, that a pound of man's flesh is less profitable than mutton and that it will feed his revenge.

Step four, bring it home. A term fixed on breach which bears no relation to the loss is a penalty rather than liquidated damages, and under section 74 of the Indian Contract Act 1872 an Indian court would award only reasonable compensation not exceeding the amount named, whether or not any loss were proved.

Quick revision

Parties: Shylock lends, Antonio is bound, Bassanio has the use of the money.

Terms: three thousand ducats, three months, no interest, sealed before a notary as a single bond.

Forfeit: an equal pound of Antonio's flesh, cut off in a part chosen by Shylock.

The bond is valid: agreement, consideration, capacity, no fraud.

The forfeit is a penalty, not liquidated damages, and Shylock's own words prove it.

Indian law today: section 74 of the Indian Contract Act 1872 gives only reasonable compensation not exceeding the amount named, whether or not loss is proved.

Test yourself

1. List the elements of the bond. Lender Shylock, party bound Antonio, borrower Bassanio, three thousand ducats, three months, no interest, repayment on a named day at a named place, forfeit of an equal pound of Antonio's flesh, sealed as a single bond before a notary.

2. What is the difference between liquidated damages and a penalty? Liquidated damages are a genuine advance estimate of the loss a breach will cause and are enforceable. A penalty is fixed to frighten a party into performing and bears no relation to the loss, and courts refuse to enforce it as written.

3. Give two pieces of evidence from the play that the forfeit is a penalty. Shylock's own statement in Act I Scene iii that a pound of man's flesh is not so profitable as flesh of muttons, beefs or goats, and his answer in Act III Scene i that it is good "to bait fish withal" and to feed his revenge. His repeated refusal of three times the money is a third.

4. State what section 74 of the Indian Contract Act 1872 provides. That where a contract is broken and a sum is named as payable on breach, or the contract contains any other stipulation by way of penalty, the injured party is entitled, whether or not actual loss is proved, to reasonable compensation not exceeding the amount named or the penalty stipulated for.

5. Was Antonio tricked into the bond? No. The forfeit was stated plainly before witnesses, Bassanio objected to it, and Antonio overruled him because he expected his ships a month before the due date. He accepted with full knowledge of the term.

Wrest once the law to your authority.

To do a great right, do a little wrong.

Portia's answer, and it is the lawyer's answer. She refuses.

It must not be, there is no power in Venice

Can alter a decree established;

'Twill be recorded for a precedent,

And many an error by the same example

Will rush into the state.

That is the doctrine of precedent stated plainly: a rule bent once becomes a rule that can be bent again, by worse people in worse cases. A student who quotes this beside "the quality of mercy" has understood that Portia argues both sides of the question within thirty lines.

The mercy speech, read as an argument

Learn what the speech claims, in order, because "she says mercy is good" is not an answer.

1. Mercy cannot be compelled. It "is not strain'd", that is, not forced. This concedes Shylock's point at once: there is no compulsion, and the speech never pretends otherwise.
2. It benefits both sides. "It is twice blest, it blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
3. It is the highest attribute of power. It becomes a monarch better than his crown, because a sceptre shows only the force of temporal power, while mercy is enthroned in the hearts of kings.
4. It is divine. It is an attribute to God himself, and earthly power looks most like God's when mercy seasons justice.
5. The religious conclusion. In the course of justice, none of us would see salvation. We pray for mercy, and that prayer teaches us to show mercy to others.

Why it fails, and this is the point examiners want. The argument is Christian at every step, and it is addressed to a Jew, in a court that has spent the scene calling him a dog and a cur, in a city that took his daughter and mocked him in the street. Its final step asks him to model himself on a salvation he does not believe in. Shylock answers in a line and a half: "My deeds upon my head! I crave the law, the penalty and forfeit of my bond." He is not refusing an argument he cannot meet; he is refusing an appeal that was never available to him.

A second reason it fails. Nobody in the scene offers him any mercy either. Ten minutes later the court takes his estate, his profession and his religion. The play puts the finest speech about mercy in English immediately before the least merciful judgment in English drama, and the arrangement cannot be accidental.

How the case is actually decided

Write this out whenever a question asks whether justice or mercy wins.

Neither. The case is decided by construction.

Portia upholds the bond, twice, in terms. She then reads it with a strictness Shylock had himself demanded. He refused a surgeon because a surgeon was "not in the bond". She takes him at that word: the bond gives flesh, and the word blood does not appear in it, so he may cut and may not bleed him. She adds that the pound must be exact to the estimation of a hair, because the bond says a pound.

Every one of those moves is the letter of the document, not its spirit and not fairness. So the outcome is not mercy defeating justice. It is one strict reading of a document defeating another, and the reading that wins is the one the court prefers.

Is the judgment good law? A fair answer to a common question

The case against it. A court that upholds a contract cannot then make performance impossible by a construction nobody intended. Both parties knew that cutting flesh involves blood; a term giving flesh must carry with it whatever is necessarily involved in taking it. Modern courts imply such terms as a matter of course. On this view Portia's argument is a debating trick.

The case for it. A penal clause that authorises maiming or killing is not a term any legal system should enforce at all, and a court faced with one may fairly resolve every ambiguity against the party seeking to enforce it. The strictness is a way of refusing an unconscionable claim without saying so.

What is undeniably wrong with it. The court decided the case for Antonio and then invited Gratiano's abuse, permitted a criminal charge to be produced against the winner of the argument, and allowed the successful defendant to impose a change of religion. Whatever the blood point is worth, that ending is not a court doing justice.

Where equity comes into it

English law of the period had two systems. The common law courts enforced bonds strictly. The Court of Chancery, applying equity, could relieve a party against a penalty, that is, against a term designed to punish rather than to compensate, and could stop a plaintiff who was insisting on his strict rights in an unconscionable way.

The most useful way to put this in an answer: Shylock's bond is exactly the kind of instrument equity existed to relieve against, and the play never mentions equity. Instead of a court saying "this term is a penalty and I will not enforce it", we get a court saying "this term means less than you thought". Shakespeare gives the audience the result equity would have produced by a route equity would not have used.

A student who wants one sentence on Indian law today should read the chapter on the bond as a contract, where the position under the Indian Contract Act is set out from the Act itself.

Distinctions worth a table

What beginners get wrong

They say mercy defeats justice in this play. It does not. Shylock is defeated by the letter of his own bond and by a statute.

They quote the speech and stop. The speech is answered in the scene and loses. An answer must say why: it is a Christian argument addressed to a Jew in a hostile court, and it is followed by a judgment of no mercy at all.

They treat Portia as a champion of mercy. She refuses to bend the law, gives judgment for Shylock, and then imposes total forfeiture. She is a champion of strict construction.

They forget that Shylock offers no mercy either. He is asked three times, refuses each time, and calls down his deeds upon his own head. A balanced answer notices that the scene punishes him with exactly the quality he refused to show.

A worked answer

Question. "Does mercy defeat justice in The Merchant of Venice?"

The answer in one sentence, which should be the first sentence written. No: mercy is asked for, refused, and never shown, and the case is decided by a stricter reading of the bond than its own owner had given it.

The three moves that prove it. First, Portia's speech concedes in its opening line that mercy cannot be compelled, so Shylock's question "On what compulsion must I?" is never answered. Second, when Bassanio asks the court to wrest the law to its authority and do a little wrong to do a great right, Portia refuses, because the decision would be recorded for a precedent and many errors would follow the same example. Third, the judgment when it comes gives Shylock the pound of flesh and then removes the blood, the margin of a hair, the principal, and finally his whole estate.

The concession that lifts the mark. It is fair to say that the OUTCOME is what mercy would have produced, since an innocent man is saved and an unconscionable claim defeated. The point is that the play reaches it by construction, and that Act V then shows the same conflict settled the other way, by forgiveness, in a household rather than a court.

Quick revision

Mercy cannot be compelled, and the speech admits this in its first line.

Shylock's position: "I stand here for law." Bassanio's: do a little wrong to do a great right. Portia's answer: no, because it becomes a precedent.

The mercy speech argues in five steps and ends in a Christian appeal that a Jewish plaintiff has no reason to accept.

The case is decided by construction, not mercy: flesh but no blood, and exactly a pound.

Equity is the jurisdiction that relieved against penalties, and the play reaches an equitable outcome without using it.

Test yourself

1. What is Shylock's answer to the demand that he be merciful, and why is it strong? "On what compulsion must I?" It is strong because mercy is by definition voluntary, and Portia's own speech concedes it in her opening line: mercy is not strained.

2. Summarise the mercy speech in five steps. Mercy cannot be forced; it blesses both giver and receiver; it suits the powerful better than any symbol of power; it is an attribute of God; and since none of us would be saved by strict justice, our prayers for mercy oblige us to show it.

3. Why does Portia refuse to bend the law even to save an innocent man? Because a decision bending an established rule would be recorded as a precedent, and many errors would follow the same example into the state.

4. Does mercy decide the case? No. The bond is upheld and Shylock is defeated by a strict construction of it, first on blood and then on the exact weight, followed by the alien statute. No mercy is shown to him except the sparing of his life, which is granted only after everything else is taken.

5. What is equity, and what has it to do with this scene? Equity is the jurisdiction, historically exercised in Chancery, that relieved parties against penalties and unconscionable insistence on strict rights. Shylock's bond is precisely such a penalty. The play reaches the result equity would have reached, but by strict construction instead.

Three. It applies only to aliens. Shylock has lived in Venice, traded on the Rialto, and paid for the privilege of being spat upon there. The law he is destroyed by could never have been used against Antonio, whatever Antonio had done. A student writing on antisemitism in the play should use this: the final blow is a rule that exists to treat one class of person differently.

Four. If it was available all along, the whole crisis was unnecessary. The Duke spent the scene saying he could not deny the course of law. The statute was in the laws of Venice the entire time. Either nobody in the ducal court knew the law of their own city, or the statute is produced only when it is needed to reach a result the court has already decided on.

The sentence, step by step

The Duke pardons the life. Before Shylock can ask, and with a line that tells you exactly what the pardon is for: "That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit, I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it." The mercy is a demonstration, aimed at an audience.

The property. Half to Antonio, half to the state, though the Duke says humbleness may reduce the state's half to a fine. Portia corrects even that: the fine is for the state, not for Antonio.

Shylock's reply. Four lines that many readers find the most painful in the play, and which a candidate should know.

Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that.

You take my house when you do take the prop

That doth sustain my house; you take my life

When you do take the means whereby I live.

Antonio's conditions. He asks the court to quit the fine on the state's half, and to let him have the other half in use, that is, to hold as trustee, rendering it on Shylock's death to Lorenzo. He then adds two conditions "provided more".

1. That Shylock "presently become a Christian".
2. That he record a deed of gift, there in the court, of everything he dies possessed of, to Lorenzo and Jessica.

The Duke says he shall do this or the pardon is recanted, which means the conditions are not an offer but a price for his life.

Shylock's last words. "I am content." Then a request to be allowed to go, because he is not well, and to have the deed sent after him for signature. He never speaks again in the play.

Is Antonio's treatment of Shylock merciful?

This is a set essay question in every form. Argue it properly.

The case that it is merciful. He gives up outright ownership of the half awarded to him, taking only the use of it. He asks the state to drop its claim. He leaves Shylock alive and with the income of half his estate for life. Measured against Gratiano, who wants him hanged, this is restraint.

The case that it is not. The property still ends with Lorenzo, the man who took his daughter and his money. Shylock's daughter, having robbed him, inherits everything. He is required to change his religion, which for a man who swore "by our holy Sabbath" is the destruction of the thing he is. And the alternative offered is death, so his consent means nothing.

The strongest way to put it. Antonio takes from Shylock exactly what Shylock's Christian neighbours have been taking all along, and gives it the form of a favour. That is a defensible thesis and it is supported by the whole play, not just by this scene.

What the forced conversion is doing in the play

Two readings, and you may argue either.

The charitable reading. In the world of the play, a Christian believes conversion saves a soul. Antonio, on this view, gives Shylock the one thing he thinks is worth having and cannot lose. Some of the audience Shakespeare wrote for would have heard it that way.

The reading most readers now take. It is annihilation. Shylock's religion is the whole of his identity in the play, the thing that has been used against him in every scene. Taking his money leaves him poor; taking his faith leaves him nobody. And the three words with which he accepts, "I am content", are the flattest thing in a play full of rhetoric, from a man who has been the most articulate person on stage all evening.

What beginners get wrong

They stop at the blood. The blood argument only defeats the claim. It leaves Shylock poorer by the debt. The statute takes his estate, his profession and his religion.

They think Shylock is punished for cruelty. He is punished under a statute that applies to aliens who seek the life of citizens, and the only act relied on is his lawsuit.

They call the ending merciful without examining it. Read the conditions before you use the word.

They forget the deed of gift is used again. In Act V, Nerissa hands it to Lorenzo and Jessica, and Lorenzo says the ladies drop manna in the way of starved people. The play does not treat Shylock's ruin as unfinished business; it treats it as a gift to the lovers.

A worked answer

Question. "Was Shylock treated justly by the court?"

A weak answer. No, because he was a Jew and everybody hated him.

Why it is weak. It gives a reason outside the record and none inside it.

A strong answer, in four steps. First, the conduct relied on to convict him was the bringing of this very suit, on a bond the same court had held valid minutes earlier. Second, no charge was laid, no evidence was called and no opportunity to answer was given; the judge announced the statute after judgment, on the words "it appears by manifest proceeding". Third, the statute applies only to aliens, so the identical conduct by Antonio could not have attracted it. Fourth, the sentence went beyond the statute: the Duke pardoned the life, and Antonio then required conversion to Christianity and a deed of gift to Lorenzo and Jessica as the price of that pardon.

The closing sentence. A court may reach a right result by a wrong route, and a candidate who says so, and then shows the route, is doing what "critically examine" asks for.

Quick revision

The statute: an alien who by direct or indirect attempts seeks the life of a citizen forfeits half his goods to the intended victim, half to the state, and his life to the Duke's mercy.

The act relied on is the lawsuit itself, and the statute is produced by the judge after judgment, with no charge and no defence.

The Duke pardons the life before it is asked for, to show "the difference of our spirit".

Antonio's terms: quit the state's fine, hold the other half in use for Lorenzo, become a Christian, record a deed of gift to Lorenzo and Jessica.

Shylock: "You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live", and then "I am content".

Test yourself

1. State the alien statute in your own words. If it is proved that an alien has sought the life of a citizen of Venice, whether by direct or indirect attempts, the intended victim takes half his goods, the state takes the other half, and his life is at the mercy of the Duke alone.

2. What conduct of Shylock's is said to satisfy it? His pursuit of the bond in this very suit. Portia says it appears by manifest proceeding that he has contrived, indirectly and directly too, against the life of the defendant.

3. Give two objections to the way the statute is applied. That the only act relied on is a lawsuit on a bond the court had just held valid, and that the charge is made by the judge after judgment without any accusation, evidence or opportunity to answer. That it applies only to aliens, and that its sudden appearance contradicts the Duke's earlier statement that the law could not be denied, are two more.

4. List Antonio's conditions in order. That the state's fine on one half be quitted; that he himself hold the other half in use and render it on Shylock's death to Lorenzo; that Shylock presently become a Christian; and that he record in court a deed of gift of all he dies possessed of to Lorenzo and Jessica.

5. Why do Shylock's last three words matter? Because "I am content" is the shortest answer he gives anybody in the play, from the character who has spoken the longest and best speeches in it. The flatness is the point, and a reader is left to decide whether it is submission, exhaustion or something the play refuses to name.

He is capable of the best argument in the play. The speech in Act III Scene i is the strongest statement of common humanity that Shakespeare ever gave a character who is not the hero, and its ending is a threat: if we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in revenge.

He is exact, and it destroys him. He will not do what is not written in the bond. He refuses a surgeon because a surgeon is not nominated in it. Twenty lines later the same exactness is used against him: flesh but no blood, and a pound to the estimation of a hair.

He is unmovable once fixed. "I'll have my bond, speak not against my bond. I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond." He refuses three thousand, six thousand, and ten times the sum. He gives no reason and claims he needs none: "it is my humour."

He is cruel, and the play does not soften it. He whets his knife in open court on the sole of his shoe, has scales ready to weigh the flesh, and tells the court to pursue sentence when the Christians are talking about their wives. Nothing in a sympathetic reading requires you to pretend otherwise.

Villain or victim: how to argue it

The question is set in some form on almost every paper. Set out both cases and then take a position; an answer that only lists points scores less than one that decides.

The case that he is the villain of a comedy. He plots a man's death for a grudge, refuses money that would make him whole many times over, rejoices at Antonio's losses, tells Tubal to fee an officer a fortnight in advance, wishes his daughter dead at his foot with the jewels in her ear, and comes to court with a knife and a balance. Every other character treats him as the obstacle to happiness, and in the shape of a comedy that is what an antagonist is.

The case that he is the victim of the play's world. He is spat on before he does anything. His trade is licensed and despised at the same time. His daughter robs him and everyone laughs. He is offered a Christian argument for mercy in a court that has called him a dog since he entered. He is destroyed by a statute that could only ever apply to him. And the strongest speech in the play is his.

A position worth taking. Both, and the play is built so that neither cancels the other. Shakespeare inherited a stock figure, the Jewish villain of the Elizabethan stage, and wrote him a case. What makes the play uncomfortable four hundred years later is not that Shylock is sympathetic but that he is sympathetic and still destroyed, and that the people who destroy him are the ones the comedy asks us to leave the theatre with.

Two speeches you should be able to use

"Hath not a Jew eyes?" Use it for common humanity, but always quote its ending, because the speech argues that sameness includes revenge and that the Christians taught the lesson. An answer that stops at "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" has taken half the speech.

"You have among you many a purchas'd slave." Use it in the trial scene. It is his answer to the demand for mercy, and it is unanswered: Venice owns human beings by purchase and calls them property, and Shylock claims the pound of flesh on the same principle. Nobody in the court replies.

A model character sketch, in the form an examiner wants

Opening. Shylock is the Jewish moneylender of Venice on whose bond the plot of The Merchant of Venice turns, and he is the only character in the play with both a real grievance and a real crime.

Quality one, with proof. He is a careful man of business. His first act is to assess Antonio's credit, ship by ship, and to conclude that he is sufficient. His trade is lending at interest, which Venetian law permits and Venetian society despises.

Quality two, with proof. His hatred of Antonio has two roots, and he ranks them himself: Antonio is a Christian, and, more, Antonio lends money without interest and lowers the rate of usance in Venice. The insults he has borne, being called cut-throat dog and spat upon, are admitted by Antonio in the same scene.

Quality three, with proof. He is a father before he is a villain. The Tubal scene shows him swinging between the theft of his ducats and the loss of his daughter, and it is not the diamond worth two thousand ducats that silences him but his dead wife's turquoise, traded for a monkey.

Quality four, with proof. He is literal to the point of self-destruction. He refuses to provide a surgeon because it is not in the bond, and the same strictness is then applied to him: the bond gives flesh and not blood.

Turn. Against all of that stands what he actually does: he refuses many times the debt, prepares his knife and scales, and presses for a sentence he knows will kill a man.

Conclusion. He is neither a monster nor an innocent. He is a man whose city has treated him as an enemy and who becomes one, and the play's most unsettling achievement is that it lets you see both and does not let you rest in either.

What beginners get wrong

They summarise the plot. A sketch is an argument about a person supported by incidents, not the incidents in order.

They say he hates Antonio only because he is a Christian. He himself ranks the business reason higher.

They forget he is offered the money. The refusal, three times over, is what makes his conduct criminal in the court's eyes and is essential to any judgment of his character.

They call the trial his defeat by mercy. He is defeated by construction and by a statute, having refused mercy and been shown none.

A worked answer

Question. "Write a character sketch of Shylock."

The opening sentence. Shylock is the Jewish moneylender of Venice on whose bond the plot turns, and he is the only person in the play who has both a real grievance and a real crime.

A worked paragraph, showing how a quality is proved. He is a careful man of business before he is anything else. His first act in the play is to assess Antonio's credit ship by ship, listing the argosy to Tripolis, another to the Indies, a third at Mexico and a fourth for England, and the perils of waters, winds and rocks, and to conclude that the man is nevertheless sufficient. That is not the speech of a monster; it is the speech of a lender doing his work, and it also warns the audience, in the third scene of the play, that ships are lost.

How the sketch closes. With a judgment rather than a summary: that Shylock is neither villain nor innocent but a man whose city treated him as an enemy until he became one, and that the play's real achievement is that it will not let the reader settle into either view.

Quick revision

Five scenes only: I.iii, II.v, III.i, III.iii, IV.i.

Grievance: Christian, and more, lends gratis and lowers the rate of usance.

Abuse: rated on the Rialto, called misbeliever and cut-throat dog, spat upon, gaberdine fouled, all admitted by Antonio.

Turning point: Jessica's flight, and the Tubal scene, with the turquoise had of Leah.

Great speech: "Hath not a Jew eyes", ending in revenge.

Best argument: purchased slaves are yours because you bought them; the pound of flesh is mine because I bought it.

Fatal habit: nothing counts that is not in the bond.

End: half his goods to Antonio in trust, half to the state, forced conversion, a deed of gift to Lorenzo and Jessica, and "I am content".

Test yourself

1. In how many scenes does Shylock appear, and which are they? Five: Act I Scene iii, Act II Scene v, Act III Scene i, Act III Scene iii and Act IV Scene i.

2. Give his own ranking of his reasons for hating Antonio. That Antonio is a Christian, and more strongly, that he lends money without interest and so brings down the rate of usance in Venice.

3. What is the dramatic function of the Tubal scene? It is the only scene in which Shylock speaks to somebody who is not an enemy, and it shows his grief and his greed alternating in the same conversation. It also supplies the turquoise ring, which is the single strongest piece of evidence that his losses are not only financial.

4. Why is "Hath not a Jew eyes" not a plea for tolerance? Because its argument runs the other way: since a Jew is the same as a Christian in every respect, he will also be the same in taking revenge, and the villainy he executes was taught him by Christian example.

5. Take a position on villain or victim and defend it in three sentences. He is both, by design. The play gives him a real grievance, the strongest speech in it, and a daughter who robs him, and then shows him refusing many times his money in order to cut a man's heart out. What survives the reading is not sympathy or condemnation but discomfort, and that discomfort is the play's point.

He is generous to one person, absolutely. His purse, his person and his extremest means lie unlocked to Bassanio's occasions. He tells him not to hurry back from Belmont, and his letter asks only to see him before he dies.

He is cruel to Shylock, and admits it. He has called him misbeliever and cut-throat dog, spat on him, and spurned him, and when this is put to him he says he is as like to do it all again. His advice is to lend to an enemy so that the penalty may be exacted with a better face.

He is passive under threat and calm at the end. In court he says he is a tainted wether of the flock, fittest for death, and asks the court to give judgment quickly. He does not argue his case at any point.

His conditions in the sentence are the hardest thing to judge about him. He gives up ownership of half and asks the state to drop the fine, but he requires Shylock to become a Christian and to give everything on his death to the man who took his daughter. Whether that is mercy or the last stroke of the destruction is the best question a character sketch of Antonio can raise.

What he is for. He is the play's picture of a love that is total and one-directional. He binds his body in Act I and his soul in Act V, both for Bassanio, and he ends the play alone among three married couples.

Bassanio

Placing. Bassanio is Antonio's friend, a Venetian gentleman who has spent his estate, and the suitor who wins Portia by choosing the leaden casket.

He is honest about his own weakness. He tells Antonio at the start that he has disabled his estate by living beyond his means and that what he owed is lost, and he compares his plan to shooting a second arrow after a lost one. Later, in front of Portia, he says that when he told her his state was nothing he should have said it was worse than nothing.

He borrows to court an heiress, and the play does not hide it. His first description of Portia mentions that she is richly left before it mentions her virtue, and he compares himself to Jason going for the golden fleece.

He reasons well when it counts. His casket speech is the best piece of thinking any Venetian does in the play: the world is deceived by ornament, in law a corrupt plea seasoned with a gracious voice hides the evil, and therefore he takes the metal that threatens rather than promises.

He fails the ring test, for a reason worth defending. He refuses the doctor twice and yields only when Antonio asks him to weigh the doctor's deserving and his love against his wife's commandment. He is caught between an oath and a debt of gratitude, which is a real conflict rather than mere weakness.

What he is for. He is the ordinary man in a play of extremes: not as devoted as Antonio, not as clever as Portia, not as fixed as Shylock, and the only one who has to choose between two people he owes something to.

The others, in short

Jessica. Shylock's daughter, who calls her father's house hell, elopes with Lorenzo in boy's clothes, takes a casket of ducats and her mother's turquoise, converts, and receives her father's estate by deed of gift. She is the character the play is least willing to examine, and her silence in Act V after the deed is handed over is worth a sentence in any answer.

Gratiano. Bassanio's friend, who talks more than anybody and is warned to behave at Belmont. In the trial he supplies the abuse: inexecrable dog, currish spirit, and the wish that Shylock hang at the state's charge since his wealth is forfeit. He is the voice of the crowd, and the play gives him the ugliest lines so the principals need not say them.

Nerissa. Portia's waiting-woman, who marries Gratiano, appears as the lawyer's clerk, and runs the ring trick alongside her mistress. She is a smaller Portia, and her presence keeps the disguise plot from being a solo performance.

Lorenzo. Jessica's husband, given the moonlight and music speech in Act V and given Shylock's estate at the end. A reader may notice that the man who speaks most beautifully about harmony is also the beneficiary of the play's harshest act.

Launcelet Gobbo. The clown, Shylock's servant, who leaves him for Bassanio after a comic debate between conscience and the fiend. His jokes about Jessica's conversion keep the play's uneasiest question alive in the lightest possible register.

The Duke of Venice. Presides at the trial, openly favours Antonio, and rules that he cannot deny the course of law. He pardons Shylock's life before it is asked for, "that thou shalt see the difference of our spirit".

Tubal. Shylock's fellow Jew, who brings the news from Genoa. He exists to let Shylock be seen in private, and every fact that makes Shylock human comes through him.

Distinctions worth a table

What beginners get wrong

They call Portia merciful. She argues for mercy and shows none. Say both.

They call Antonio a good man without qualification. He spits on Shylock and says he will do it again.

They call Bassanio a fortune hunter and stop there. He says so himself, and then chooses the casket that promises nothing.

They forget Gratiano. Half the cruelty of the trial scene is in his mouth, and answers that describe the Christians as merely thoughtless have not read his lines.

A worked answer

Question. "Write a short note on Portia."

A model answer of the length question 2 wants. Portia is the heiress of Belmont, bound by her dead father's will to marry whoever chooses the right casket, and the disguised doctor of laws who defeats Shylock in Act IV. Her intelligence is established long before the trial: her first scene is a run of exact character sketches of six suitors, and when Bassanio comes to choose she has music played whose song rhymes with the answer he needs. In court she is entirely professional. She arrives with a written opinion from Doctor Bellario, opens with procedural questions, states the law in favour of the party she means to defeat, and refuses to bend a rule for a good outcome because it would be recorded as a precedent. What she is not is merciful: she makes the finest speech about mercy in English and then gives a judgment with none in it, and corrects the Duke when he is generous with the state's share. The most useful thing to say about her is that the play uses her to show that cleverness and virtue are not the same thing, since the same strict reading that saves Antonio would have destroyed him just as efficiently.

Why this scores. Five sentences, each making one point and proving it from an incident, ending in a judgment about what the character is for.

Quick revision

Portia: intelligent, bound by her father's will, arrives with Bellario's opinion, refuses to bend the law, gives a merciless judgment, tests Bassanio with the ring.

Antonio: sad from the first line, generous to Bassanio without limit, openly contemptuous of Shylock, passive in court, and the imposer of the conversion.

Bassanio: honest about his debts, courts an heiress with borrowed money, reasons his way to the leaden casket, breaks the ring oath under a real conflict of duties.

Jessica elopes and converts; Gratiano supplies the abuse; Nerissa doubles Portia; Lorenzo gets the speech and the estate; Launcelet keeps the awkward joke alive; the Duke cannot deny the course of law; Tubal makes Shylock human.

Test yourself

1. What single fact about Portia's own position should be used when judging her treatment of Shylock? That she has spent the play bound by the letter of her dead father's will, which she obeys exactly while disliking it. The woman who holds a man to his document has been held to one throughout.

2. Why does Antonio's sadness matter to the plot? Because it is never explained and never lifts, and it makes him a man indifferent to his own survival. That is the frame of mind in which he calls a bond forfeiting a pound of his flesh a kindness.

3. Is Bassanio a fortune hunter? He admits he is courting a woman who is richly left with money he has borrowed, so on the facts yes. The play complicates it by giving him the casket speech, in which he rejects gold and silver for the metal that threatens rather than promises.

4. What is Gratiano's function in the trial scene? To voice the crowd's hatred so the principal characters do not have to. He calls Shylock an inexecrable dog and a wolf, mocks him at every turn of the judgment, and wishes him hanged at the state's expense.

5. Why is Jessica's silence at the end worth noticing? Because the last thing that happens to her in the play is that she is handed a deed of gift of everything her father dies possessed of, and she says nothing at all. The play gives her no line to settle whether that is a reward or something else.

Theme four: appearance and reality

The proposition. What a thing looks like is a poor guide to what it is.

Where it is worked. The three caskets, most of all the scroll in the gold one, "All that glisters is not gold". Bassanio's speech before choosing, which takes its first example from law: a corrupt plea, seasoned with a gracious voice, obscures the show of evil. The bond that is proposed as "a merry sport". Portia and Nerissa in disguise. Antonio's "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose".

The position the play takes. Unambiguous: judge by substance. The play then complicates it by having its heroine win through a disguise.

Theme five: money, friendship and worth

The proposition. Everything in this play is priced, including things that should not be.

Where it is worked. Three thousand ducats buys a courtship. Portia offers six thousand, then twelve, then thirty-six. Jessica sells a turquoise for a monkey and spends fourscore ducats in a night. Shylock cries for his daughter and his ducats in one breath. Antonio's friendship is expressed as a bond and, in Act V, as a second suretyship. The lead casket is the only object in the play that asks a man to give rather than to get.

The position the play takes. That the things worth having cannot be bought, stated through the caskets, and then a plot in which nearly everybody gets rich anyway.

Theme six: the outsider, and the city

The proposition. Venice needs Shylock's capital and Shylock needs Venice's protection, and neither can admit it.

Where it is worked. Antonio's speech in Act III Scene iii: the Duke cannot deny the course of law because the trade and profit of the city consists of all nations. Shylock's "I stand here for law". The alien statute. And the detail that Shylock will buy, sell, walk and talk with Christians but will not eat, drink or pray with them.

The position the play takes. It states the commercial logic honestly, better than most textbooks, and then shows the city breaking its own rule the moment the rule protects the wrong man.

How to build a thirteen-mark essay on a theme

Take "justice and mercy" as the worked example.

Paragraph one. State the two ideas and say what your answer is. For example: the play sets an absolute legal right against a mercy that by definition cannot be compelled, and it resolves the conflict by avoiding it, since Shylock is defeated by construction and not by compassion.

Paragraph two. The claim of justice. Shylock's bond, its validity, his four-word answer, Antonio's own explanation that the Duke cannot deny the course of law.

Paragraph three. The claim of mercy. The Duke's plea, the mercy speech in its five steps, and why it fails: a Christian argument made to a Jew in a court that has abused him.

Paragraph four. How the case is actually decided. Blood, the exact pound, the refusal of the principal, the alien statute.

Paragraph five. The other side. Bassanio's "to do a great right, do a little wrong", and Portia's answer about precedent, which is the best argument in the play for strictness.

Paragraph six. Act V, where the same conflict returns as a broken oath and is settled the other way, and a conclusion that answers the question in its own words.

What beginners get wrong

They list themes without proving them. One incident per claim, named by act and scene, is what separates a pass from a good mark.

They treat a trial as a theme. A trial is an event. Justice and mercy is the theme it works.

They give the play a moral it does not have. The play does not conclude that mercy is better than justice. It shows mercy losing the argument and then shows a household living differently.

They ignore Act V in theme answers. Every theme above is worked again in the last act, in a lower key, and an answer that ends at the trial has left out the resolution.

A worked answer

Question. "Write an essay on the theme of appearance and reality."

Paragraph one, the position. The play states early that outward show is untrustworthy, proves it three times in the casket plot, and then complicates its own lesson by winning the trial through a disguise.

Paragraph two, the caskets. Morocco chooses gold because all the world desires Portia, and finds a skull and the scroll "All that glisters is not gold". Arragon chooses silver on his own merit and finds a fool's head. Bassanio chooses lead after a speech arguing that the world is deceived with ornament, taking his first example from a corrupt legal plea seasoned with a gracious voice.

Paragraph three, the bond. The same theme in the main plot. The forfeiture is proposed as "a merry sport" and is an instrument for killing a man, and Bassanio alone says so at the end of Act I: "I like not fair terms and a villain's mind."

Paragraph four, the complication. Portia wins by appearing to be what she is not, in borrowed robes and a false name, carrying a letter that is true only in part. A play that condemns judging by appearances is resolved by a successful deception.

Paragraph five, the conclusion. So the theme is not a simple moral. What the play condemns is reading the surface of a thing instead of its substance, and what it rewards is the reader who can tell a gilded casket from a lead one and a merry bond from a death warrant.

Quick revision

Six themes: justice and mercy; letter against spirit; prejudice; appearance and reality; money and worth; the outsider and the city.

Justice and mercy: "On what compulsion must I?" is the question the play cannot answer, and does not.

Letter against spirit: no blood in the bond, no surgeon in the bond, the will, the rings.

Prejudice: spitting admitted, "dog Jew", the alien statute, against the speech in III.i and the turquoise.

Appearance and reality: the caskets, "All that glisters is not gold", the merry bond, the disguise.

Money: everything is priced, including a daughter's ring and a friend's body.

The outsider: Venice needs foreign capital and says so, then finds a statute for aliens.

Test yourself

1. What is the difference between a theme and an incident? An incident happens once, such as the elopement or the trial. A theme is an idea the play returns to in several places, such as justice against mercy. An examiner asking for a theme wants the idea, proved by incidents.

2. Give three places where the letter against the spirit is worked. The bond, which grants flesh and not blood; Shylock's refusal of a surgeon because it is not nominated in the bond; and Portia's obedience to the exact terms of her father's will while wishing she were free.

3. How does Act V return to the theme of justice and mercy? A promise is broken, the injured party has an absolute right to complain and presses it hard, and then forgives and restores what was lost. It is the trial replayed with the opposite ending.

4. State the strongest argument in the play for strict enforcement. Portia's: that no power in Venice can alter an established decree, because the decision would be recorded as a precedent and many errors would follow the same example into the state.

5. How should an essay handle the antisemitism of the play? By setting out what is done and said to Shylock, then what Shakespeare gives him in reply, and then taking a position on whether the play endorses the treatment or exposes it. Both positions are arguable; an answer that refuses to take one scores less.

5. "let the forfeit / Be nominated for an equal pound / Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken / In what part of your body pleaseth me." Act I Scene iii. Spoken by Shylock to Antonio, proposing the terms of the bond in what he calls a merry sport. It is the forfeiture clause on which the whole plot turns, and Antonio accepts it in the next speech.

6. "I like not fair terms and a villain's mind." Act I Scene iii, the last line of the act. Spoken by Bassanio to Antonio, after Shylock has left to fetch the money and Antonio has called him a gentle Jew who grows kind. Bassanio is the only character who says out loud that generous terms may hide a bad purpose, and the play proves him right.

7. "All that glisters is not gold, / Often have you heard that told." Act II Scene vii. The opening of the scroll found in the golden casket by the Prince of Morocco at Belmont. It tells him that he has chosen by outward show, and it states the play's theme of appearance against reality in its most quotable form.

8. "My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! / Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!" Act II Scene viii. Reported by Solanio to Salarino in a street in Venice, mimicking Shylock's cries after Jessica's elopement. The mockery is the point: Shylock's grief for his daughter and his money is being performed for laughs by men who despise him.

9. "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?" Act III Scene i. Spoken by Shylock to Salarino and Solanio in a Venice street, after they ask what a pound of Antonio's flesh could possibly be good for. He argues that a Jew is the same as a Christian in every respect, and concludes that the sameness extends to revenge, which the Christians themselves taught him.

10. "It was my turquoise, I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys." Act III Scene i. Spoken by Shylock to Tubal, on hearing that Jessica traded a ring for a monkey in Genoa. Leah was his wife, so the ring was her gift before their marriage, and this is the one moment in the play where his loss is clearly not about money.

11. "The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. / In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt / But, being season'd with a gracious voice, / Obscures the show of evil?" Act III Scene ii. Spoken by Bassanio at Belmont, thinking aloud before he chooses among the caskets. He is reasoning that outward show is untrustworthy, taking his first example from a corrupt legal argument delivered attractively, and this reasoning leads him to choose the leaden casket and win Portia.

12. "The Duke cannot deny the course of law, / For the commodity that strangers have / With us in Venice, if it be denied, / 'Twill much impeach the justice of the state." Act III Scene iii. Spoken by Antonio to Salarino in a Venice street, after Shylock has refused to hear him and left. He is explaining that the Duke has no power to release him, because Venice depends on foreign merchants who will only trade where contracts are enforced regardless of the parties.

13. "If every ducat in six thousand ducats / Were in six parts, and every part a ducat, / I would not draw them, I would have my bond." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Shylock in the ducal court of Venice, refusing Bassanio's offer of six thousand ducats for a debt of three thousand. A ducat is a gold coin of Venice, and the point is that no multiple of the money will satisfy him, because he wants the forfeiture and not the debt.

14. "The quality of mercy is not strain'd, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Portia, disguised as the young doctor of laws Balthazar, in answer to Shylock's question "On what compulsion must I?" She concedes in the first line that mercy cannot be forced, and argues instead that it blesses both giver and receiver and is the attribute in which earthly power most resembles God's.

15. "Wrest once the law to your authority. / To do a great right, do a little wrong." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Bassanio to the disguised Portia, begging her to bend the law to save Antonio. She refuses, on the ground that no power in Venice can alter an established decree because it would be recorded as a precedent and many errors would follow it.

16. "A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel! / O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!" Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Shylock, praising the disguised Portia after she refuses to bend the law for Antonio. Daniel was the young judge of the Apocrypha who saved an innocent woman by cross-examination, and Gratiano throws the same words back at Shylock a few minutes later when the judgment turns.

17. "Is it so nominated in the bond?" Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Shylock to the disguised Portia, refusing to provide a surgeon to stop Antonio's wounds because the bond does not require one. It is the most fatal line he speaks, because it commits him in open court to the rule that nothing counts unless it is written, which is the rule then used to defeat him.

18. "Tarry a little, there is something else. / This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood. / The words expressly are 'a pound of flesh'." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by the disguised Portia, at the moment Shylock has been awarded the forfeiture and is preparing to cut. She holds him to the exact words of his own document, so that shedding one drop of Christian blood would forfeit his lands and goods to the state of Venice.

19. "You take my house when you do take the prop / That doth sustain my house; you take my life / When you do take the means whereby I live." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Shylock after the alien statute has been invoked and his estate divided between Antonio and the state. He is answering the Duke's pardon of his life by saying that a life without the means of living is no pardon at all.

20. "How far that little candle throws his beams! / So shines a good deed in a naughty world." Act V Scene i. Spoken by Portia to Nerissa as they approach her house at Belmont by night and see a light burning in the hall. "Naughty" here means wicked rather than mischievous, and the lines are usually taken as the play's comment on the trial she has just conducted.

Two more that are often set

"The man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, / Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." Act V Scene i. Spoken by Lorenzo to Jessica in the garden at Belmont while they wait for Portia. It is a judgment on anybody indifferent to music, and it lands on Shylock, who ordered his house shut against the drum and the fife in Act II Scene v.

"I am content." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Shylock, accepting Antonio's conditions, including forced conversion and a deed of gift of everything he dies possessed of. These are the last words he speaks in the play, and their flatness after four acts of the strongest speech in it is the effect Shakespeare wants.

Nine more the University has actually set

Note. Added by the past paper check. Every passage below has appeared on a printed English I paper, and all nine are from Act IV Scene i, the trial, which is where the examiner looks first.

A. "I have possess'd your Grace of what I purpose, / And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn / To have the due and forfeit of my bond." Spoken by Shylock to the Duke at the opening of the trial, in answer to the Duke's appeal for mercy. "Possess'd your Grace" means that he has already informed the Duke of his intention, and the "holy Sabbath" is the Jewish day of rest, on which he swore the oath he now says he cannot break.

B. "Come you from old Bellario?" Spoken by the Duke to Portia as she enters the court dressed as a doctor of laws, immediately after the letter recommending her has been read. Bellario is the learned doctor of Padua, Portia's cousin, who has sent in his place the young "Balthazar" she is pretending to be.

C. "Are you acquainted with the difference / That holds this present question in the court?" Spoken by the Duke to the disguised Portia, asking whether she knows the dispute she has come to decide. Her answer, that she is "informed throughly of the cause", is what allows the hearing to proceed, and the exchange is the moment the court accepts a woman it believes to be a young man from Padua.

D. "I am a tainted wether of the flock, / Meetest for death, the weakest kind of fruit / Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me." Spoken by Antonio in court, telling Bassanio not to grieve. A wether is a castrated ram and "meetest" means fittest, so he is calling himself the diseased animal of the flock and the fruit that falls first, which is his way of accepting death as suitable rather than unjust.

E. "It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, / It is an attribute to God himself." Spoken by Portia in the middle of the speech on mercy, arguing that mercy is above the sceptre because the sceptre shows only the force of temporal power, while earthly power comes nearest to God's when mercy tempers justice. It is the same speech as passage 14 and is the part MU has set separately.

F. "An oath, an oath! I have an oath in heaven. / Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? / No, not for Venice." Spoken by Shylock to the disguised Portia, in answer to her statement that three times the money has been offered him. He refuses on the ground that he has sworn in heaven to have the bond, so that taking the money would be perjury, and the answer is important because it puts his refusal on conscience rather than on greed.

G. "Not on thy sole but on thy soul, harsh Jew, / Thou mak'st thy knife keen." Spoken by Gratiano while Shylock sharpens his knife on the sole of his shoe in open court. The line is a pun on "sole" and "soul": Gratiano says the blade is being sharpened not on the leather but on the man's own hardness, and he adds that no metal, not even the hangman's axe, has half the keenness of Shylock's malice. When a paper asks you to explain the figure of speech, this is the pun it means.

H. "Repent but you that you shall lose your friend, / And he repents not that he pays your debt." Spoken by Antonio to Bassanio just before the sentence is to be executed. It means that Bassanio should regret only the loss of a friend, since Antonio himself does not regret paying the debt, and it is the high point of the friendship the play sets against the bond.

I. "Antonio, gratify this gentleman, / For in my mind you are much bound to him." Spoken by the Duke as he leaves the court, telling Antonio to reward the young lawyer who has saved him. It sets up the ring plot of Act V, because the fee the disguised Portia then asks for is the ring she herself gave Bassanio.

J. "Ay, his breast, so says the bond, doth it not, noble judge? Nearest his heart: those are the very words." Spoken by Shylock to the disguised Portia, when she asks whether the bond allows him to cut from the breast. He quotes the document from memory, and the answer matters because a moment later the same insistence on the exact words is used against him: the bond says a pound of flesh and says nothing about blood.

How to place a passage you have never seen

Look for a name. Shylock, Tubal, Nerissa, Launcelet and Gobbo can only be this play. Portia and Bassanio the same.

Look for the vocabulary. Ducats, argosies, the Rialto, gaberdine, usance, casket, bond and forfeiture all point here.

Look for the verse. If it is verse with a heavy Elizabethan flavour, in a paper whose other texts are eighteenth and nineteenth century novels, an American short story and a modern legal thriller, the odds are strongly on Shakespeare.

Then answer the attached question. Even a partial placing plus a correct answer to the question will earn most of the two marks.

What beginners get wrong

They summarise the play instead of placing the lines. Two sentences means two.

They name the speaker and stop. The attached question carries the mark, and it is usually the second half.

They misquote. If you are unsure of the words, refer to the passage instead of reproducing it wrongly: "in the speech beginning with the quality of mercy".

They mix up who says what in the trial. Gratiano, not Portia, supplies most of the abuse; Shylock, not Gratiano, first calls Portia a Daniel.

A worked answer

Question. A passage you have never prepared is printed, and you must place it in two sentences.

The passage. "The quality of mercy is not strain'd, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath."

The two-sentence answer. These lines are spoken by Portia, disguised as the young doctor of laws Balthazar, in the court of the Duke of Venice in Act IV Scene i of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, in answer to Shylock's question "On what compulsion must I?" She concedes in the first line that mercy cannot be forced, and argues instead that it blesses both the giver and the receiver and is the attribute in which earthly power most resembles God's.

Why this is a full answer. Text and author, speaker and disguise, place in the play, the person addressed, the question being answered, and the argument of the passage. Six facts in two sentences, and none of them padding.

Quick revision

Four steps: text and author, speaker and addressee, what is happening, then the attached question.

Highest-value passages by act: I.i the sadness; I.ii the dead father's will; I.iii the aside, the Scripture line, the forfeiture, "fair terms and a villain's mind"; II.vii "All that glisters"; II.viii "My daughter! O my ducats!"; III.i "Hath not a Jew eyes" and the turquoise; III.ii ornament; III.iii the course of law; IV.i ducats, mercy, "a great right", Daniel, "nominated in the bond", "no jot of blood", "the means whereby I live", "I am content"; V.i the candle and the music.

Test yourself

1. Place these lines and answer: "Is it so nominated in the bond?" Spoken by Shylock in the ducal court in Act IV Scene i, refusing to have a surgeon ready to stop Antonio's wounds because the bond does not mention one. It matters because he thereby insists in open court that only what is written counts, and Portia immediately applies the same rule to defeat him.

2. Who says "A Daniel come to judgment", and who repeats it? Shylock says it first, in praise of the disguised Portia when she refuses to bend the law. Gratiano throws it back at him after the judgment turns, saying "A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!"

3. What does "naughty" mean in "a good deed in a naughty world"? Wicked. The modern sense of mildly badly behaved is later, and using it would misread the line.

4. Whose speech contains the phrase "the rate of usance", and what does it mean? Shylock's, in his aside in Act I Scene iii. Usance means the lending of money at interest, so the rate of usance is the going rate of interest in Venice, which Antonio's free lending brings down.

5. Why does MU's own note insist on the original text for reference to context? Because an abridged or retold version changes the words, and a reference-to-context question is set on the exact words. A candidate who has read only a simplified version will not recognise the passage on the paper.

One distinction Fielding insists on, and examiners like it. He separates the comic from the burlesque. Burlesque, he says, exhibits what is monstrous and unnatural, and its pleasure comes from surprising absurdity, such as giving the manners of the highest to the lowest. The comic writer must confine himself strictly to nature. He admits burlesque in his diction, in the mock-heroic battle descriptions, but excludes it from his characters and sentiments.

The point for a student. Adams is funny, but he is not a caricature. He is a real man with real learning, real poverty and real courage, and Fielding's claim is that the comedy comes from observing him accurately, not from exaggerating him.

The shape of the book

Four books. Book I is London and the beginning of the journey. Book II is the road, the inns and the coach. Book III is Wilson's story and the roasting squire. Book IV is the return to the parish, where Lady Booby uses the law against the couple, and where Joseph's parentage is discovered.

The structure is a journey with interruptions, and Fielding uses two devices repeatedly. Every book opens with a chapter of the author talking directly to the reader, about writing lives, about divisions in authors, in praise of biography. And the journey is interrupted by inset stories told by people the travellers meet, most importantly the history of Leonora in Book II and the history of Mr Wilson in Book III.

The vocabulary you need

Curate. A clergyman who does the work of a parish for a small salary, usually paid by whoever holds the living. Adams is one, with a wife and six children on twenty-three pounds a year.

Living. A parish appointment with an income attached. Who gives it out is decided by the local landowner, which is why Adams cannot afford to offend Lady Booby.

Justice of the peace. A local magistrate, usually a country gentleman with no legal training, who could examine suspects, take depositions and commit them to gaol.

Mittimus. The warrant by which a justice commits a person to prison. It appears three times in this novel and is worth knowing.

Bridewell. A house of correction, where people were sent for short periods with hard labour.

Settlement. The parish that was legally obliged to relieve a pauper. The whole plot of Book IV turns on it.

Benefit of clergy. An old rule by which a person who could read was spared the death penalty for certain offences. By Fielding's time it survived mostly as a joke, and the justice makes one about it.

What beginners get wrong

They call it a parody of Pamela and stop. It starts as one and becomes something else by Book I chapter XI, when Joseph takes to the road and Adams takes over the book.

They think Joseph is the hero. He is the title character. Parson Adams is the centre of the novel and every reader knows it, including Fielding.

They give the definition without the distinction. "A comic epic poem in prose" earns half a mark. Explaining why it is epic, why prose, why comic, and how it differs from burlesque earns the rest.

A worked answer

Question. "What did Fielding mean by calling Joseph Andrews a comic epic poem in prose?"

A model answer. In his preface Fielding writes that a comic romance is a comic epic poem in prose, differing from comedy as the serious epic differs from tragedy. He calls it EPIC because its action is extended and comprehensive, containing a much larger circle of incidents and a greater variety of characters than a stage comedy can hold. He calls it IN PROSE because it has every part of an epic, namely fable, action, characters, sentiments and diction, and wants only metre, so it should be classed with the kind it differs from in one particular rather than with romances it resembles in none. He calls it COMIC because its fable and action are light and ridiculous where the serious romance is grave and solemn, and because it introduces persons of inferior rank where the grave romance sets the highest before us. He then separates the comic from the BURLESQUE: burlesque exhibits what is monstrous and unnatural and delights by surprising absurdity, while the comic writer must confine himself strictly to nature, and Fielding admits burlesque in his diction but excludes it from his characters and sentiments.

Why this scores. Four terms defined and one distinction made, each attributed to the preface, in the order Fielding uses them.

Quick revision

Published 1742, Henry Fielding's first novel, in four books.

Fielding was a barrister and later the Bow Street magistrate; the legal scenes come from that experience.

It begins as a parody of Richardson's Pamela, whose heroine is Joseph's sister.

Fielding's own description, from his preface: "a comic romance is a comic epic poem in prose", epic in the width of its action, prose because it lacks only metre, comic in its light action and low characters.

Comic is not burlesque: burlesque exhibits the monstrous and unnatural, the comic confines itself strictly to nature.

Book I London and the road; Book II the inns and the justice; Book III Wilson and the roasting squire; Book IV the parish, the law, and the discovery.

Test yourself

1. Give Fielding's own definition of the form and explain each part. "A comic romance is a comic epic poem in prose." Epic because its action is extended and comprehensive with many incidents and characters; in prose because it has every part of an epic except metre; comic because its fable and action are light and ridiculous rather than grave; and it introduces persons of inferior rank where a serious romance sets the highest before us.

2. What is the difference between the comic and the burlesque, according to Fielding? The burlesque exhibits what is monstrous and unnatural, and its pleasure comes from surprising absurdity, such as giving the manners of the highest to the lowest. The comic confines itself strictly to nature, and Fielding allows burlesque in his diction but excludes it from his characters and sentiments.

3. How is the novel connected to Pamela? Joseph is presented as Pamela's brother, and the opening parodies Richardson's novel by making a footman resist his mistress on the same principles of chastity that made Pamela famous.

4. Why is Fielding's biography relevant to this novel? Because he was a barrister and later the Bow Street magistrate, and the novel's justices, constables, depositions and settlement disputes are drawn from what he saw in that work rather than invented.

5. What is a mittimus, and why does it matter in this book? The warrant by which a justice commits a person to prison. It matters because the novel shows a mittimus being ordered before the accused has been heard, and later burnt the moment a squire asks for the prisoners.

Book II: the road, the inns, and the magistrate

Chapters I to III. Fielding opens with a comic essay on why authors divide books into chapters. Then the sermons: Adams discovers that the nine volumes he set out to sell in London were never in his saddlebags at all, because his wife had packed shirts instead. He turns back, and the journey home becomes the novel.

They meet two lawyers at an inn who give opposite opinions of the same gentleman, one praising him and one damning him, and both, it turns out, are describing their own interests rather than the man.

Chapters IV to VII, the history of Leonora. A lady in the coach tells the story of Leonora, the unfortunate jilt, who abandons her betrothed Horatio for the richer and showier Bellarmine, and is abandoned in turn when Bellarmine learns her father will give her nothing. It is an inset tale, told in two parts, and its subject is the same as the novel's: people who calculate.

Chapters VIII to X. Adams falls into conversation with a gentleman who talks magnificently about bravery and heroic virtue and offers to do anything for a friend. A scream is heard. The gentleman runs away. Adams goes to the rescue, knocks down a man who is attempting to rape a young woman, and discovers that the woman is Fanny Goodwill, who had set out to find Joseph after hearing he was hurt.

Chapter XI, before the justice. The rescued and the rescuer are both arrested. The attacker accuses Adams and Fanny of robbing him, and their fellow travellers, hoping for the reward, take them before a justice of the peace. The scene is treated in full in the chapter on law in this novel. In short: the justice is drunk and just back from a fox chase, the company make jokes about Fanny, the depositions are sworn without being read, the mittimus is ordered, Adams is refused a hearing, his Greek manuscript of Aeschylus is taken for a cipher in a plot against the Government, and the whole thing collapses the moment a squire recognises Adams and says he is a gentleman.

Chapters XII and XIII. Joseph and Fanny are reunited at an inn. Mrs Slipslop, travelling in a coach, refuses to know Fanny, and Fielding writes a mock dissertation on high people and low people, which is one of the sharpest things in the book: the ladder of contempt runs all the way down, and everybody is looking down at somebody.

Chapters XIV to XVII. Adams, out of money, walks to the house of parson Trulliber, a fellow clergyman who keeps pigs, to borrow fourteen shillings. Trulliber first takes him for a pig dealer, then, when he learns Adams wants a loan, throws him out and tells him he is no Christian. A poor pedlar, who has almost nothing, then lends Adams the money. Later, a gentleman promises Adams a living, horses, and every kindness, and vanishes before morning.

The pattern of Book II, and how to use it in an essay

Notice that Fielding builds the same shape three times.

That table is worth reproducing in any answer on charity in the novel. Fielding's argument is not that the rich are wicked and the poor are good. It is that professions of goodness are worthless and that only conduct counts, and he proves it by putting the same test three times to different people.

What beginners get wrong

They tell the Pamela joke as though it were the whole book. It is Book I. From the moment Adams turns back for his sermons, the novel belongs to him.

They forget the inset stories. Leonora in Book II and Wilson in Book III are set in examinations, and a candidate who cannot say what they are about has read half the novel.

They treat the justice scene as farce. It is funny, and it also shows a man being committed to gaol on unread depositions and saved only by being vouched for as a gentleman.

A worked answer

Question. Reference to context: "that he would rather ride in his shirt all his life than suffer a fellow-creature to lie in so miserable a condition."

The two-sentence answer. These words are sworn by the postillion of the stage-coach in Book I chapter XII of Fielding's Joseph Andrews, as he strips off his only garment to cover Joseph, who has been robbed, beaten and left naked in a ditch, after two gentlemen, a lady and the coachman have all refused him a greatcoat. Fielding adds in a parenthesis that this lad has since been transported for robbing a hen-roost, so that the single act of real charity in the scene is performed by a person the law has since punished as a thief.

The examiner's likely follow-up. Why does Fielding mention the transportation? Because the whole novel argues that goodness is shown by conduct and never by profession, and this is the sharpest possible instance of it.

Quick revision

Book I: Joseph in London; Lady Booby's advances and Mrs Slipslop's; the refusal; the dismissal; Peter Pounce; the robbery and the coach; the Tow-wouse inn; Betty.

Book II: the sermons left behind; the two lawyers; the history of Leonora; the boasting gentleman who runs from a scream; Adams rescues Fanny; the arrest and the drunk justice; the mittimus and the Aeschylus manuscript; the reunion; high people and low people; parson Trulliber; the pedlar's loan; the gentleman of promises.

The pattern: three times somebody with means refuses help and somebody with nothing gives it.

Test yourself

1. Why does Adams turn back from London? Because he discovers that the nine volumes of sermons he meant to sell were never in his saddlebags. His wife had packed shirts instead, thinking he would need them more.

2. What happens to Joseph in Book I chapter XII? He is attacked by two robbers on the road, stripped naked, beaten and thrown into a ditch, and is picked up by a stage-coach whose passengers argue about whether to take him in, none of whom will lend him a coat except the postillion.

3. Who is Trulliber, and what is his function? A fellow clergyman with a farm and pigs who refuses to lend Adams fourteen shillings and tells him he is no Christian. He exists to be compared with the pedlar, who has almost nothing and lends the money.

4. Who rescues Fanny, and what happens next? Parson Adams, who knocks down her attacker. The attacker then accuses Adams and Fanny of robbing him, and both are taken before a justice of the peace.

5. What is the history of Leonora about? A young woman who abandons her betrothed Horatio for the richer and more fashionable Bellarmine, and is then abandoned by Bellarmine when he learns her father will settle nothing on her. It is told by a lady in the coach, in two parts.

Chapter XIII, Peter Pounce. Adams rides with Lady Booby's steward, who has grown rich lending money to servants, and they quarrel about charity. Pounce's view is that charity is a mean virtue, mostly practised by the poor because they have nothing else to give. Adams walks the rest of the way rather than sit beside him.

Book IV: the parish, the law, and the discovery

Chapters I and II. Lady Booby returns to Booby-hall and finds that Joseph is back, in her parish, and about to marry Fanny. She sends for Adams and orders him not to publish the banns. Adams answers with the line MU set on the paper.

Madam, if any one puts in a sufficient caution, and assigns a proper reason against them, I am willing to surcease.

Banns are the public announcement of an intended marriage in church on three Sundays, so that anybody with a lawful objection may state it. To surcease is to stop. Adams is saying that he will stop if there is a lawful objection, and Lady Booby's objection is that the couple are poor. His reply is the moral centre of the book: the poor have little share enough of this world already, and it would be barbarous to deny them the common privileges nature indulges to them.

Chapter III, lawyer Scout. Lady Booby turns to a lawyer, and the chapter is dealt with in full in the chapter on law in this novel. In outline: Scout explains that a year's service gains a settlement, that is, the right to be relieved by that parish, and then explains how the law can be made not to apply. He proposes taking Joseph before Justice Frolick, who will commit him on hearing Lady Booby's name.

Chapter IV. Mr Booby, Lady Booby's nephew, arrives with his new wife, who is Pamela, Joseph's sister.

Chapter V, the justice business. Joseph and Fanny are committed to Bridewell for a month on a deposition, printed in the novel in the justice's own spelling, that Joseph cut one hazel twig of the value of three halfpence and that Fanny carried it. Mr Booby arrives, asks what the crime is, and is told by the lawyer that it was leniency: "if we had called it a young tree, they would have been both hanged". The justice hands the prisoners over to the squire, burns the mittimus, and the constable is sent about his business.

Chapters VI to IX. Joseph and Pamela meet as brother and sister. Mr Booby gives Joseph the grave advice of a new gentleman to a new relation. Lady Booby, still hoping, pays a visit to the parson.

Chapter VIII, the scene readers remember. Adams is lecturing Joseph on not setting his heart too absolutely on any person, since a Christian must be able to resign whatever Providence takes, when a man rushes in to say that Adams's youngest son is drowned. Adams stamps about the room in the bitterest agony, and when Joseph offers him back his own arguments he answers, "Child, child, do not go about impossibilities." The boy then walks in alive, saved by the same poor pedlar who lent Adams the fourteen shillings in Book II. As soon as the joy is over, Adams turns to Joseph and begins the lecture again.

Chapters X to XIV. Beau Didapper, a fashionable little man, makes advances to Fanny and is knocked down by Joseph. The pedlar reappears with information about Fanny's parentage. Lady Booby wrestles with her own feelings. The night adventures follow, in which Didapper gets into the wrong bedroom, Adams ends up in Mrs Slipslop's bed by mistake, and the confusion is sorted out by daylight.

Chapter XV, the solution. Gaffar and Gammar Andrews arrive. The pedlar's information is that Fanny was stolen in infancy by gypsies and sold, and Mrs Andrews confirms that a daughter was stolen from her and that a boy was left in the cradle in her place. For a few pages Joseph and Fanny appear to be brother and sister, which would make their marriage impossible.

Then the mark. Mrs Andrews recalls a strawberry on the breast of the boy who was left. Adams starts at the word, and Mr Wilson, who has arrived on his way to visit Adams, recognises it as the mark of his own stolen son.

I have discovered my son, I have him again in my arms!

So Fanny is the Andrewses' daughter and Pamela's sister; Joseph is Mr Wilson's son and no relation to Fanny at all.

Chapter XVI. Joseph and Fanny are married by Adams, Mr Booby gives Fanny two thousand pounds, and Joseph settles near his newly found father. Adams is given a living worth one hundred and thirty pounds a year, which is nearly six times what he had.

The two discoveries, and what to say about them

An examiner may ask whether the ending is a weakness. Take the question seriously.

The case that it is. It is the oldest device in comic fiction: a birthmark, gypsies, a lost heir. Nothing in the plot earns it, and every difficulty is solved by information nobody could have found.

The case that it is not. The whole novel has been about people being judged by rank rather than conduct. The justice will not commit a gentleman; the coach passengers will not lend a coat to a naked man; Lady Booby will not have a footman marry in her parish. The ending simply changes Joseph's rank and shows everybody's behaviour changing with it, which is the joke and the argument at once.

What beginners get wrong

They forget Wilson's story is the key to the ending. The strawberry mark is planted in Book III chapter IV and used in Book IV chapter XV.

They call the roasting squire a minor character. He is the novel's picture of what an uneducated man with money and no restraint does to people who cannot resist him, and the scene is set for exactly that reason.

They miss the point of the drowning scene. Adams is not being mocked for hypocrisy. He is being shown to be human, and Fielding's affection for him is at its clearest in the moment his own philosophy fails him.

A worked answer

Question. "How is the mystery of Joseph's birth solved, and where is it prepared?"

A model answer. It is prepared in Book III chapter IV, where Mr Wilson, having told Adams the story of his life, says that his eldest son was stolen from his door by gypsies and that he would know the boy among ten thousand because he had a mark on his left breast of a strawberry. It is solved in Book IV chapter XV, when Gaffar and Gammar Andrews arrive and Mrs Andrews recalls that a daughter was stolen from her and a boy left in the cradle in her place, and that the boy had a strawberry on his breast. For a few pages Joseph and Fanny appear to be brother and sister, which would make their marriage impossible, and then Mr Wilson, arriving on a visit to Adams, hears the word strawberry and recognises the mark of his own son.

The judgment to add. The device is as old as comic fiction, and Fielding uses it deliberately: the whole novel has shown people judged by rank rather than conduct, and the ending changes Joseph's rank without changing Joseph, so that everyone else's behaviour to him changes and his own does not.

Quick revision

Book III: praise of biography; the night scene; Mr Wilson's history, his reform, and his son stolen by gypsies with a strawberry mark on the left breast; the hunting dogs turned on Adams; the roasting squire and his design on Fanny; the poet and the player; Peter Pounce on charity.

Book IV: Lady Booby orders the banns stopped and Adams answers that he will surcease only on a proper reason; lawyer Scout and the law of settlement; the twig deposition and Bridewell; the mittimus burnt for a squire; Adams and the drowned son who is not drowned; Beau Didapper; the night confusions; the pedlar's information; the strawberry mark; Joseph is Wilson's son, Fanny is the Andrewses' daughter, and they marry.

Test yourself

1. What is the strawberry mark, and where is it planted? The mark on the left breast of Mr Wilson's stolen son, mentioned in Book III chapter IV when Wilson says he would know the boy among ten thousand. It is used in Book IV chapter XV to identify Joseph.

2. What is the crime for which Joseph and Fanny are committed to Bridewell? Cutting one hazel twig worth about three halfpence, on lawyer Scout's land, Fanny having carried it. The deposition is set out in the novel in the justice's own spelling.

3. Explain Adams's line about surceasing. He is telling Lady Booby that he will stop publishing the banns of Joseph and Fanny's marriage if anybody enters a sufficient caution and gives a proper reason. He refuses to accept poverty as a reason.

4. What is the point of the roasting squire? He shows what an uneducated man with a large fortune and no restraint does with people who cannot resist him: he hunts a clergyman with dogs, makes his guests drunk, and plans an assault on a girl, all as entertainment.

5. Why does Adams's grief for his son matter? Because he has just been telling Joseph that a Christian must be able to resign anything Providence takes, and he cannot do it himself. Fielding uses it not to expose him as a hypocrite but to show that his goodness is human rather than doctrinal.

Scene two: before the justice

Where. Book II chapter XI, after Adams rescues Fanny from a man attempting to rape her, and the attacker accuses them both of robbing him.

The failures, in order. Each one is a separate point in an answer.

1. The justice is not fit to sit. He has just returned from a fox chase, has not finished his dinner, and is "in the height of his mirth and his cups". He orders the prisoners into the stable while he eats.
2. He decides before he hears. He begins by reviling them, saying robberies on the highway are so frequent that people cannot sleep safely in their beds, and assures them they will both be made examples of at the ensuing assizes.
3. The depositions are a formality. He only takes them because his clerk reminds him, and he lights his pipe while they are written. When they are ready, he "having sworn the several witnesses without reading a syllable, ordered his clerk to make the mittimus".
4. The court amuses itself with the accused. The company make jokes about Fanny, one offering himself to her, another saying she is related to the highwayman Turpin. Adams is challenged to cap Latin verses.
5. A hearing is refused in terms. Adams says he hopes he will not be condemned unheard. The justice answers that he is not being tried, only committed, and that if he can prove his innocence at the assizes he will be found ignoramus and no harm done. Adams's reply is the sentence to quote.

Is it no punishment, sir, for an innocent man to lie several months in gaol?

1. Evidence is invented out of ignorance. A Greek manuscript of Aeschylus in Adams's pocket is taken for a book in cipher, and the justice concludes that the prisoner "may be in a plot against the Government". The parish parson, asked to identify it, guesses that it is a manuscript of one of the Fathers and that the beginning is the catechism in Greek.
2. And then rank decides everything. A squire recognises Adams and says he is a clergyman of good character. The justice's position reverses instantly: he does not desire to commit a gentleman, he will commit the woman by herself and take bail for the man, and he adds the line that gives the whole scene away.

Nobody can say I have committed a gentleman since I have been in the commission.

What Fielding is showing. That committal on unread depositions is a punishment in itself, and that the protection of the law in the eighteenth-century countryside depended on being recognised as a gentleman. Adams is saved by a squire's word, not by evidence, and Fanny would have gone to gaol alone if Adams had not insisted.

Scene three: lawyer Scout, and the law of settlement

Where. Book IV chapter III.

What the law was. Under the settlement laws, every poor person had a settlement, that is, a parish legally bound to relieve them if they became destitute. Parishes therefore fought to prevent poor people acquiring a settlement in them. One way of gaining one was a year's service in the parish, and marriage fixed a man in fact where he was settled in law.

What Scout does with it. Lady Booby wants Joseph and Fanny out of the parish so that their children will not become a charge on it. Scout tells her that no lawyer can alter the law, and then offers the thing that matters.

The utmost that was in the power of a lawyer was to prevent the law's taking effect.

He then produces a distinction between being "settled in law" and "settled in fact", argues that his earlier opinion referred only to the former, and concludes that if they can prove Joseph is not settled in fact he is not an inhabitant, and if not an inhabitant then not of the parish, and so the banns need not be published. He advises taking Joseph before Justice Frolick, "who, upon hearing your ladyship's name, will commit him without any farther questions".

Fielding's own note on him. The narrator stops to explain that Scout is one of those men who, without any knowledge of the law or being bred to it, take upon them in defiance of an Act of Parliament to act as lawyers in the country. They are, he says, "the pests of society, and a scandal to a profession, to which indeed they do not belong".

Why that note matters. Fielding is a lawyer defending his own profession while attacking its imitators, and an essay should notice the distinction. His target is not law but the use of legal forms by people who understand neither the law nor any duty attached to it.

Scene four: the twig, and the deposition

Where. Book IV chapter V.

What happens. Joseph and Fanny are committed to Bridewell for a month, with talk of "a little stripping and whipping", on a deposition the justice has written himself in the absence of his clerk. Fielding reproduces it, spelling and all: that Thomas Trotter saw Joseph Andrews and Francis Goodwill walk across a field belonging to lawyer Scout, out of the path, and there saw Joseph "with a nife cut one hassel twig, of the value, as he believes, of three half-pence, or thereabouts", and that Fanny received and carried the twig and was thereby "cumfarting, eading, and abatting".

Mr Booby asks whether they would commit two persons to Bridewell for a twig. The lawyer's answer is the line every reader remembers.

"Yes," said the lawyer, "and with great lenity too; for if we had called it a young tree, they would have been both hanged."

The three points in it. First, the charge is dressed as larceny for a thing worth three halfpence. Second, the choice of the word "twig" rather than "young tree" is what stands between a month in Bridewell and the gallows, so the accused's life depends on the drafting. Third, the justice admits privately that the real reason is Lady Booby's wish to get them out of the parish, and that Scout will tell the constable to let them run away if they please.

The ending of the scene. Mr Booby asks for the prisoners to be delivered into his custody, and they are, immediately. The justice burns the mittimus, the constable is sent about his business, and the lawyer makes no complaint. Rank again, in three lines.

The pattern across all four scenes

In not one of the four does a rule protect the person it was made for. That sentence is a good thesis for an essay on law in this novel.

What beginners get wrong

They say Fielding attacks the law. He attacks bad justices, unqualified attorneys and the settlement laws. He was a magistrate, and the narrator explicitly defends the profession against men like Scout.

They describe the justice scene as comedy only. It contains a refusal to hear an accused man and a committal on unread depositions.

They forget the postillion. The one act of real charity comes from a boy who is later transported for stealing, and leaving him out of an answer on this novel loses its best point.

A worked answer

Question. "Discuss Fielding's satire of the law in Joseph Andrews."

Paragraph one, the position. Fielding does not attack the law. He was a barrister and the Bow Street magistrate, and his narrator expressly defends the profession against men like lawyer Scout, who are not lawyers at all. What he attacks is the operation of legal machinery in the hands of the drunk, the ignorant and the interested, and he shows it four times.

Paragraph two, the coach. A young lawyer argues for taking a dying man into the coach because the passengers may be proved to have been last in his company and may be called to account for his murder. The right thing is done for a reason that has nothing to do with the man in the ditch.

Paragraph three, the justice. A magistrate just back from a fox chase swears witnesses without reading their depositions, orders a mittimus, and refuses Adams a hearing, telling him he may prove his innocence at the assizes. Adams's reply is the sentence to quote: is it no punishment for an innocent man to lie several months in gaol. Then a squire vouches for him and everything reverses, on the principle the justice states himself, that nobody can say he has committed a gentleman.

Paragraph four, the twig. Two people are committed to Bridewell for a month on a deposition about a hazel twig worth three halfpence, and the lawyer calls it lenity, because had they called it a young tree both would have hanged. The justice admits privately that the real reason is Lady Booby's wish to clear the parish.

Conclusion. In none of the four does a rule protect the person it was made for, and in the last three the deciding factor is rank. That is the satire: not that the law is broken, but that it works.

Quick revision

Book I chapter XII: the lawyer helps Joseph to avoid being charged with his murder; the postillion, later transported, gives his only coat.

Book II chapter XI: a drunk justice, jokes about the accused, depositions sworn without being read, a mittimus ordered, a hearing refused, Aeschylus taken for cipher, and everything reversed when a squire calls Adams a gentleman.

Adams's question: is it no punishment for an innocent man to lie several months in gaol?

Book IV chapter III: Scout on settlement, and that a lawyer's power is to prevent the law taking effect; Fielding's note that such men are not lawyers at all.

Book IV chapter V: the deposition about a hazel twig worth three halfpence; "if we had called it a young tree, they would have been both hanged"; the mittimus burnt when a squire asks.

Test yourself

1. Why does the lawyer in the coach argue for taking Joseph in? Not out of pity. Because they might be proved to have been last in his company, so if he died they might be called to account for his murder, and he wants to prevent a jury finding that they fled for it.

2. Who actually helps Joseph, and why does the detail matter? The postillion, who strips off his only garment and swears he would rather ride in his shirt all his life than let a fellow creature lie in that condition. Fielding adds that he has since been transported for robbing a hen-roost, so the only charitable person in the scene is a convicted thief.

3. List three defects in the justice's conduct in Book II chapter XI. He is drunk and has prejudged the case; he swears the witnesses without reading their depositions and orders a mittimus; and he refuses Adams a hearing, then reverses himself entirely when a squire vouches that Adams is a gentleman.

4. What does Scout say a lawyer can do about a law he cannot change? That the utmost in a lawyer's power is to prevent the law's taking effect, which he offers to do for Lady Booby as well as anybody.

5. Explain the lawyer's remark about the young tree. Joseph was charged with cutting a hazel twig worth three halfpence and committed to Bridewell. The lawyer says this was lenient, because had they described the same act as cutting a young tree it would have been a capital offence and both would have hanged. The point is that the accused's life turned on the choice of a word in the charge.

Joseph Andrews

Placing. Joseph is a footman in Lady Booby's household, the brother of Richardson's Pamela, and the title character.

He begins as a joke and stops being one. The parody requires a handsome young man who protects his chastity from his mistress and writes to his sister about it. By Book II he is a serious young man who has been robbed, stripped and abandoned, and who takes his part in every fight in the book.

He is loyal and physically capable. He beats the hounds off Adams, knocks down Beau Didapper for insulting Fanny, and is the one who notices that the sermons are not in the saddlebags.

He grows. By Book IV he can answer Adams back. When Adams resumes his lecture on not setting the heart too absolutely on any person, Joseph interrupts to say that it is easier to give advice than to take it, and he is right.

What he is for. He is the ordinary decent person the plot happens to, and the vehicle of the novel's argument about rank: he behaves in exactly the same way before and after he is discovered to be a gentleman's son, and everybody else's behaviour to him changes completely.

Fanny Goodwill

Placing. Fanny is a dairymaid, Joseph's beloved, and, as the last book reveals, the Andrewses' own daughter, stolen in infancy by gypsies.

She is defined by what other people try to do to her. A man attempts to rape her and is knocked down by Adams. The roasting squire's household plans to get her companions drunk so that the squire can get at her. Beau Didapper makes advances and is knocked down. She is jeered at by a room of gentlemen in front of a magistrate.

She is not weak. She sets out alone to find Joseph when she hears he has been hurt, and she refuses to be seated at the squire's table away from him.

She has little to say, and that is a criticism worth making. Fielding gives her beauty, constancy and danger, and very few words. A candidate who notices that, and says the novel is more interested in what happens to her than in what she thinks, is making a real critical point rather than repeating a summary.

What she is for. She is the test the novel applies to every man in it. How a man behaves towards a beautiful girl with no money and no protector is Fielding's quickest way of telling you what he is.

Lady Booby

Placing. Lady Booby is the widow of Sir Thomas Booby, Joseph's mistress in the household sense, and the antagonist of the novel.

She is genuinely in the grip of something. The mourning for her husband is mocked, but the desire for Joseph is not a joke to her, and Book IV gives her a chapter of real inner conflict between her passion and her pride.

She uses power because persuasion fails. She cannot make Joseph want her, so she dismisses him. She cannot stop his marriage by asking, so she orders Adams to stop the banns. When he refuses, she sends for a lawyer, and the lawyer sends for a justice.

She is the novel's clearest statement of how the law reaches a poor person. Nothing she does is violent. She speaks to a lawyer, who speaks to a justice, and two young people end up in Bridewell over a hazel twig.

What she is for. She shows that the danger to Joseph and Fanny is not wickedness but ordinary social power used without restraint by somebody who never has to see the consequences.

The others, in short

Mrs Slipslop. Lady Booby's chambermaid, who also wants Joseph and who mangles long words at every opportunity. She refuses to recognise Fanny in the coach, which sets up Fielding's essay on high people and low people.

Peter Pounce. Lady Booby's steward, grown rich by lending money to the servants at heavy interest. He tells Adams that charity is a mean virtue, mostly a matter of the poor giving to the poor, and Adams gets out of his coach rather than travel with him.

Parson Trulliber. A clergyman with a farm, who mistakes Adams for a pig dealer, refuses him fourteen shillings, and tells him he is no Christian. He is the anti-Adams: the same office, the opposite man.

The pedlar. Poor, unnamed for most of the book, and the person who lends Adams the money, saves his son from drowning, and supplies the information that resolves Fanny's parentage. Fielding gives every decisive act of kindness in the novel to people with nothing.

Mr Wilson. The gentleman whose life story fills Book III, a reformed man of the town living quietly in the country, and, as it turns out, Joseph's father.

Beau Didapper. A small fashionable man of no substance who tries to buy Fanny's favour and is knocked down.

Distinctions worth a table

What beginners get wrong

They reduce Adams to absent-mindedness. The forgotten sermons are one joke. His courage, his poverty and his refusal to stop a poor couple's marriage are the character.

They call Joseph the hero and stop. Say why the book is named after him and yet belongs to Adams, and you have made an argument.

They ignore Fanny's silence. Noticing it is worth more than describing her beauty for a page.

They treat Lady Booby as a comic villain. Book IV gives her genuine internal conflict, and her power is the real threat in the plot.

A worked answer

Question. "Write a character sketch of Parson Adams."

A model answer. Abraham Adams is the curate of Lady Booby's parish and the true hero of Joseph Andrews, a man of great learning, no worldly sense, and complete moral reliability. His learning is real and useless to him: he carries a manuscript of Aeschylus that he transcribed himself, and it gets him taken before a justice as a man with a book in cipher who may be in a plot against the Government. His poverty is extreme and never complained of: he keeps a wife and six children on twenty-three pounds a year, sets out to sell nine volumes of sermons that his wife has replaced with shirts, and has to borrow fourteen shillings from a pedlar after a fellow clergyman refuses him. His courage is instinctive: when a woman screams, the gentleman who has just been discoursing on heroic virtue runs away and Adams runs towards it. And his judgment is by conduct and never by rank: he refuses Lady Booby's order to stop the banns because the parties are poor, telling her that the poor have little share enough of this world already. Fielding's final touch is the one that makes him human rather than a model: told that his youngest son has drowned, he stamps about the room in agony, and when Joseph gives him back his own arguments about resignation he answers, "Child, child, do not go about impossibilities."

Why it scores. Five qualities, each proved by an incident, and a closing detail that complicates rather than repeats.

Quick revision

Adams: learned, poor, brave, unworldly, judges by conduct, and breaks down over his son after preaching resignation.

Joseph: begins as a parody of Pamela, becomes a serious young man, behaves identically before and after his rank changes.

Fanny: constant, endangered by every man with power in the book, given very little to say.

Lady Booby: uses dismissal, then a parson, then a lawyer, then a justice, and never touches anybody herself.

Slipslop, Peter Pounce, Trulliber, the pedlar, Wilson, Didapper: the supporting cast, and the pedlar is the one who matters.

Test yourself

1. Write the opening sentence of a character sketch of Parson Adams. Abraham Adams is the poor and learned curate who walks home across England beside Joseph, and he is the character in whom Fielding puts everything he means by goodness: courage without calculation, charity without means, and an almost total incapacity to look after himself.

2. Why is the drowning scene the best evidence in a sketch of Adams? Because it shows the gap between his doctrine and his heart. He is preaching resignation to Providence when he is told his son is dead, cannot practise a word of it, and then resumes the lecture the moment the boy is found alive.

3. What is the function of Parson Trulliber? To be Adams's opposite in the same office. He has land, pigs and money, refuses a fellow clergyman fourteen shillings, and tells him he is no Christian, which proves that the office guarantees nothing.

4. What criticism can fairly be made of Fielding's handling of Fanny? That she is given beauty, constancy and constant danger but very little speech or interior life, so the novel is more interested in what happens to her than in what she thinks.

5. How does Lady Booby pursue Joseph after he refuses her? She has him dismissed; she orders Adams not to publish the banns; when he refuses she employs lawyer Scout; and Scout arranges for a justice to commit Joseph and Fanny to Bridewell on a charge of cutting a twig.

Theme four: chastity, and the parody of Pamela

The proposition. Richardson made chastity a commodity that paid. Fielding makes it a virtue that costs.

Where it is worked. Joseph refuses Lady Booby and loses his place. He refuses Mrs Slipslop. Fanny keeps her constancy through three attempts to take it from her by force or money. Neither of them is rewarded for it until an accident of birth intervenes, and Fielding leaves you to notice that the reward comes from a birthmark and not from the virtue.

Theme five: the road

The proposition. A journey lets a writer put the same person in front of every kind of society in turn.

Where it is worked. Inn after inn, coach after coach, magistrate, squire, clergyman, pedlar. The travellers own nothing and control nothing, so every encounter is a test of the other party. The structure is the argument.

Reference to context: the passages that are set

1. "He wished they had passed by without taking any notice; but that now they might be proved to have been last in his company; if he should die they might be called to some account for his murder." Book I chapter XII. Spoken by the young lawyer in the stage-coach that stops for Joseph, who has been robbed, stripped and thrown into a ditch. He is arguing for taking Joseph in on the ground of the passengers' own legal risk, not out of pity, which is Fielding's point.

2. "that he would rather ride in his shirt all his life than suffer a fellow-creature to lie in so miserable a condition." Book I chapter XII. Sworn by the postillion, who has just stripped off his only garment to cover the naked Joseph when nobody else in the coach would lend a greatcoat. Fielding adds in a parenthesis that this lad has since been transported for robbing a hen-roost.

3. "Is it no punishment, sir, for an innocent man to lie several months in gaol?" Book II chapter XI. Spoken by Parson Adams to the justice of the peace, who has ordered a mittimus against him and Fanny without hearing them and has told him he may prove his innocence at the assizes. It is the novel's sharpest statement that committal before trial is itself a punishment.

4. "Nobody can say I have committed a gentleman since I have been in the commission." Book II chapter XI. Spoken by the same justice, immediately after a squire tells him that Adams is a clergyman of good character. He instantly offers to take bail for Adams and commit Fanny alone, which shows that rank and not evidence has decided the case.

5. "Madam, if any one puts in a sufficient caution, and assigns a proper reason against them, I am willing to surcease." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Parson Adams to Lady Booby, who has ordered him to stop publishing the banns of marriage between Joseph and Fanny. To surcease is to stop, and Adams is saying he will do so only for a lawful objection; when she gives poverty as her reason he refuses, saying the poor have little share enough of this world already.

6. "The utmost that was in the power of a lawyer was to prevent the law's taking effect." Book IV chapter III. Spoken by lawyer Scout to Lady Booby, when she threatens to send to another lawyer because she dislikes his opinion on the law of settlement. It states, in one line, what Fielding thinks men like Scout are for.

7. "Yes, and with great lenity too; for if we had called it a young tree, they would have been both hanged." Book IV chapter V. Spoken by lawyer Scout to Mr Booby, who has asked whether they would really commit two people to Bridewell for a twig. The remark shows that the difference between a month in a house of correction and the gallows lay in the word chosen to describe the same act.

8. "Child, child, do not go about impossibilities." Book IV chapter VIII. Spoken by Parson Adams to Joseph, moments after being told that his youngest son has drowned, when Joseph offers him back the arguments about resignation to Providence that Adams himself had been urging on Joseph a minute earlier. The boy is soon found alive, rescued by the pedlar.

Nine more the University has actually set

Note. Added by the past paper check. Every one is from Book IV, and eight of the nine come from two chapters: chapter II, where Lady Booby confronts Parson Adams, and chapter III, where she sends for Lawyer Scout.

A. "I will have no more vagabonds settled here." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Lady Booby to Parson Adams, on being told that the banns of Joseph and Fanny have been published. She is using the language of the settlement laws, under which a parish could refuse to let a poor stranger settle in it, and she is applying it to a man she wants for herself.

B. "Well, and you did very wisely and honestly too, notwithstanding she is the greatest beauty in the parish." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Lady Booby to Adams, after he says that he had earlier dissuaded the couple from marrying at once. The compliment is bitter, since her objection to Fanny is precisely that she is a beauty, and Lady Booby's jealousy is the real ground of everything she says in the scene.

C. "I tell you a reason: he is a vagabond, and he shall not settle here, and bring a nest of beggars into the parish." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Lady Booby to Adams, and it is her answer when he says that he will stop the marriage if anyone assigns a proper reason against it. Joseph is the "vagabond", and the reason she gives is that the poor should not be allowed to marry and multiply, which is the law of settlement turned into a private weapon.

D. "I know not what your ladyship means by the terms master and service. I am in the service of a Master who will never discard me for doing my duty." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Parson Adams to Lady Booby, after she threatens to have him turned out of his cure. It is the moment the scene turns from a quarrel about a marriage into a statement about conscience: the Master he means is God, and he says he has never been able to pay for a licence anyway.

E. "I condemn my humility, for demeaning myself to converse with you so long." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Lady Booby to Adams, ending the interview. She has failed to move him and cannot answer him, so she withdraws on the ground of rank, which is Fielding's regular way of showing that his gentry lose arguments and then punish the winner.

F. "I would obey your ladyship in everything that is lawful; but surely the parties being poor is no reason against their marrying." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Parson Adams to Lady Booby. He adds that God forbid there should be any such law, and that it would be barbarous to deny the poor the common privileges nature allows them. It is the most direct statement in the novel of the principle Lady Booby and Scout are trying to defeat.

G. "If she sent to a hundred lawyers, not one or all of them could alter the law." Book IV chapter III. Said by Lawyer Scout, in reply to Lady Booby's threat to send to another lawyer if he cannot give her the answer she wants. He follows it at once with the sentence set out as passage 6 above, that the utmost in a lawyer's power is to prevent the law taking effect, which is the novel's judgment on him and on his trade.

H. "The ugliest creature almost I ever beheld; a poor dirty drab, your ladyship never saw such a wretch." Book IV chapter III. Spoken by Lawyer Scout to Lady Booby, describing Fanny. He has never seen her; he is telling his client what she wishes to hear, having just been told that Adams described Fanny as a beauty. The line is set often, and the answer that scores says who says it and why he says it.

I. "Don't tell me your facts and your ifs; I don't understand your gibberish." Book IV chapter III. Spoken by Lady Booby to Scout, when he begins to qualify his advice with the actual state of the law about settlement. "Gibberish" means unintelligible jargon, and the line shows that what she wants from a lawyer is not law but obedience.

How to place a passage from this novel

Look for the names. Adams, Joseph, Fanny, Slipslop, Trulliber, Booby, Didapper, Pounce and Scout belong to no other text on this paper.

Look for the eighteenth-century legal furniture. Mittimus, Bridewell, settlement, banns, assizes and justice of the peace point here rather than to Dickens, whose court is a Victorian one with attorneys and serjeants.

Look for the narrator. Fielding talks to the reader directly, calls him "reader", and makes jokes about his own chapters. Nobody else on this paper does that.

What beginners get wrong

They write "charity" and stop. Prove it with the table above. Three tests, three refusals, three people with nothing who help.

They confuse this novel's law with Pickwick's. Both have a trial-like scene, but this one is a committal before a country justice in the 1740s and Pickwick's is a jury trial in a London court in the 1830s.

They mistake the parody for the theme. The Pamela joke sets the plot going; charity is what the book is about.

A worked answer

Question. "Charity is the theme of Joseph Andrews. Discuss."

The thesis sentence. Fielding's subject is not charity as a feeling but charity as conduct, and he proves his case by putting the same test to different people three times and recording what each of them does.

The evidence, in one paragraph. In Book I chapter XII a coachful of respectable people refuse a naked and bleeding man a greatcoat, and the postillion gives him his only garment. In Book II chapter XIV a clergyman with land and pigs refuses a fellow clergyman fourteen shillings and tells him he is no Christian, and a penniless pedlar then lends the money. In Book II chapter XVI a gentleman promises Adams horses, a living and every kindness, and disappears before morning.

The turn that lifts the answer. Fielding is not sentimental about the poor. The postillion has since been transported for robbing a hen-roost, and the novel says so in the same sentence that records his generosity. The argument is not that poverty makes people good; it is that professions of goodness are worth nothing and only conduct counts.

The conclusion. Which is why the ending is not a betrayal of the theme. Joseph behaves identically before and after he is found to be a gentleman's son, and everybody else's behaviour to him changes completely.

Quick revision

Themes: charity as conduct rather than profession; hypocrisy and vanity, which Fielding calls affectation; rank deciding treatment; chastity that costs instead of paying; the road as a structure.

The three tests: the coach and the postillion; Trulliber and the pedlar; the gentleman of promises and nobody.

Set passages: the lawyer's calculation; the postillion's oath; Adams on lying months in gaol; the justice on never committing a gentleman; Adams on surceasing; Scout on preventing the law taking effect; the young tree; and "do not go about impossibilities".

Test yourself

1. State Fielding's theme of charity in one sentence and prove it twice. That goodness is shown by conduct and never by profession: the coach passengers who can afford a greatcoat refuse one while the postillion gives his only garment, and Parson Trulliber, a clergyman with land, refuses fourteen shillings that a penniless pedlar then lends.

2. Place: "Nobody can say I have committed a gentleman since I have been in the commission." The justice of the peace in Book II chapter XI, immediately after a squire vouches for Adams as a clergyman of good character. It shows that the outcome turned on rank rather than on the depositions he had sworn without reading.

3. What does "surcease" mean, and who says it to whom? To stop or desist. Parson Adams says it to Lady Booby in Book IV chapter II, meaning he will stop publishing the banns of Joseph and Fanny's marriage if anybody enters a sufficient caution and gives a proper reason.

4. How does the ending prove the theme of rank? Joseph behaves in exactly the same way before and after he is discovered to be Mr Wilson's son, and everybody else's behaviour towards him changes completely. The virtue was always there; only the rank is new.

5. What does Fielding say in his preface is the source of the ridiculous? Affectation, which he says proceeds from vanity or hypocrisy. That is the theory behind Slipslop's long words, Trulliber's religion, Barnabas's punch and Didapper's fashion.

The cast of the action

The vocabulary you need before the trial

Breach of promise of marriage. A civil action by which a person, in practice almost always a woman, sued for damages when an engagement was broken. It is dealt with fully in its own chapter.

Serjeant. A senior barrister of a now abolished rank, the Serjeants-at-Law, who had the exclusive right of audience in some courts. Buzfuz and Snubbin are serjeants; Skimpin and Phunky are their juniors.

Attorney. In this period, the lawyer who prepares a case and instructs a barrister, roughly what a solicitor is today. Dodson and Fogg and Perker are attorneys.

Special jury. A jury of men of a higher property qualification, which either party could demand. When too few attend, the court presses common jurymen into the panel, which is called praying a tales.

Damages laid at. The amount the plaintiff claims. Here it is fifteen hundred pounds, and the jury awards seven hundred and fifty.

Costs. The expenses of the litigation. Who pays them is the hinge of the second half of the novel.

The Fleet. A London prison for debtors, where a person could be held until the debt was paid or he was formally discharged.

What Dickens is attacking, stated as three propositions

One. That litigation is a trade, and the parties are its raw material. Dodson and Fogg take the case on speculation and charge nothing unless they get it out of Pickwick, a fact Sam Weller cheerfully announces from the witness box. Mrs Bardell is their instrument, and by chapter 46 she is in the Fleet herself, arrested at their suit for their own costs.

Two. That advocacy is performance, and a jury will be moved by anything. Buzfuz reads a note about chops and tomato sauce as a coded love letter, and the jury takes notes.

Three. That the law's machinery falls hardest on people who cannot pay. Pickwick can afford the damages and refuses on principle. Mrs Bardell cannot, and goes to prison for the costs of an action brought in her name.

What beginners get wrong

They call the trial a criminal trial. It is a civil action for damages. Nobody is prosecuted, and no one can be imprisoned for the verdict itself, only for refusing to pay what follows from it.

They think Mrs Bardell is the villain. She misunderstands a conversation, and two attorneys build an action on it. Dickens is careful to show her being used.

They date the novel to the trial's period without checking. The action is heard on the fourteenth of February, and the novel appeared in 1836 and 1837.

A worked answer

Question. "Why is a comic novel like The Pickwick Papers set on a law syllabus?"

A model answer. Because its central action is a lawsuit reported by a man who had worked inside the courts, and because that lawsuit is used to make three arguments a law student should meet early. Dickens was a solicitor's clerk at fifteen and then a shorthand reporter in the courts and in Parliament, so the procedure in chapter 34 is observed rather than invented, down to the praying of a tales when too few special jurymen attend and the low seat below the King's Counsel from which an attorney whispers instructions. The first argument is that litigation can be a trade: Dodson and Fogg take the case on speculation and charge nothing unless they recover from Pickwick. The second is that advocacy is performance: a note reading "Chops and tomato sauce" is read to a jury as a coded love letter. The third is that the machinery falls hardest on those who cannot pay: Pickwick can afford the damages and refuses on principle, while Mrs Bardell, who won, is imprisoned in the Fleet on a cognovit for her own attorneys' costs.

What makes it an answer rather than a description. Every claim is attached to a fact in the text, and the three arguments are ranked so that the last one is the most serious.

Quick revision

Dickens: solicitor's clerk at fifteen, then a shorthand reporter in the courts and in Parliament, and the son of a man imprisoned for debt.

Published in twenty monthly parts, 1836 to 1837, fifty-seven chapters.

The action: Bardell against Pickwick, breach of promise of marriage, damages laid at fifteen hundred pounds, verdict for the plaintiff, seven hundred and fifty pounds.

The lawyers: Dodson and Fogg for the plaintiff, instructing Serjeant Buzfuz and Mr Skimpin; Perker for the defendant, instructing Serjeant Snubbin and Mr Phunky. The judge is Mr Justice Stareleigh.

Three targets: litigation as a trade, advocacy as performance, and imprisonment for debt.

Test yourself

1. What is the difference between an attorney and a serjeant in this novel? An attorney prepares the case and instructs counsel, as Perker and Dodson and Fogg do. A serjeant was a senior barrister who argued it in court, as Buzfuz and Snubbin do.

2. Why is Dickens's own biography relevant? He was a solicitor's clerk and then a shorthand reporter in the courts, so the procedural detail is reported rather than imagined, and his father was imprisoned for debt, which is the experience behind the Fleet chapters.

3. What are the damages claimed, and what are awarded? Claimed, or laid at, fifteen hundred pounds. Awarded, seven hundred and fifty.

4. Is Bardell against Pickwick a criminal case? No. It is a civil action for damages for breach of promise of marriage. Pickwick's later imprisonment is not a punishment for the verdict but the consequence of his refusing to pay the damages and costs.

5. Name the four counsel and say who instructs them. For the plaintiff, Serjeant Buzfuz leading Mr Skimpin, instructed by Dodson and Fogg. For the defendant, Serjeant Snubbin leading Mr Phunky, instructed by Mr Perker.

Chapter 20: Dodson and Fogg

Pickwick, who cannot believe the action is serious, goes to the attorneys' office in Freeman's Court to tell them there has been a mistake.

What he finds. A firm that treats him with elaborate courtesy while writing everything down. When he says the whole thing is a fabrication, Dodson and Fogg are careful to have witnesses to what he says. They will not discuss the merits. They know, and he does not, that the merits are not the point.

The professional facts that come out later. Sam Weller tells the court in chapter 34 that the two ladies had praised Dodson and Fogg for taking the case "on spec", that is, on speculation, and charging nothing at all for costs unless they got them out of Mr Pickwick. That single answer is the most damaging evidence in the trial, and it comes from a witness called by the other side.

Chapter 26: the progress of the action

A short chapter that follows the case as a piece of machinery. Sam Weller visits Mrs Bardell's house, hears the ladies talking about the trial, and reports back. The action moves forward on its own, with neither party doing anything, which is Dickens's point: once started, litigation runs.

Chapter 31: all about the law

Pickwick's own preparation. He goes with Perker to consult Serjeant Snubbin, who has to be reminded what the case is, and who advises settlement in the mildest possible terms. Dickens's description of the profession here is unsentimental: a barrister with more work than he can read, a clerk who manages access to him, and a client who is a file.

The scene worth remembering. Perker tells Pickwick that his defence, being that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, is exactly what any guilty defendant would say. Truth is not, in itself, a strategy.

The two letters

Buzfuz will produce two notes at the trial, and it is worth having them here because they are the documentary evidence of an engagement.

"Garraways, twelve o'clock. Dear Mrs. B.--Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick."

"Dear Mrs. B., I shall not be at home till to-morrow. Slow coach." and then: "Don't trouble yourself about the warming-pan."

What they actually are. Notes from a lodger to his landlady about his dinner and his return. Snubbin says exactly that at the trial.

What Buzfuz makes of them. That they are covert, sly and underhanded, designed to mislead any third party into whose hands they might fall, and that "warming-pan" is a mere cover for hidden fire, a substitute for some endearing word, agreeably to a preconcerted system of correspondence.

Why it is the best-known joke in English legal fiction. Because the method is real. A document with an innocent meaning is read aloud in a tone that supplies a guilty one, and the jury is invited to supply the rest. Any law student who has watched a cross-examination will recognise it.

What beginners get wrong

They say Pickwick proposed and changed his mind. He never proposed. He was engaging a servant, and every word he used was true of that.

They say Mrs Bardell lied. She did not. She misheard, and by the time attorneys were involved the misunderstanding had a life of its own.

They forget the friends. The only eyewitness evidence of an embrace comes from Pickwick's own friends, who are called by the plaintiff.

A worked answer

Question. Reference to context: "Do you think it a much greater expense to keep two people, than to keep one?"

The two-sentence answer. Spoken by Mr Pickwick to his landlady Mrs Bardell in her parlour in Goswell Street in chapter 12 of Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, at the moment he is working up to telling her that he intends to engage Sam Weller as a manservant. Mrs Bardell, who has long admired him, understands the question as the opening of a proposal of marriage, and the misunderstanding that follows is the whole foundation of the action of Bardell against Pickwick.

The follow-up you should be ready for. Every sentence Pickwick speaks in the scene is literally true of hiring a servant, including the promise that her son will have a companion who will teach him more tricks in a week than he would learn in a year, and that is why neither party is lying when the case comes to trial.

Quick revision

Chapter 12: the two-people conversation, the companion for the boy, the embrace, and the three friends in the doorway.

Chapter 18: hysterics, and the writ from Dodson and Fogg.

Chapter 20: Pickwick calls at Freeman's Court and is carefully recorded; the firm acts on speculation and charges nothing unless it recovers from him.

Chapter 26: the action moves on its own.

Chapter 31: the consultation with Serjeant Snubbin, and Perker's warning that an innocent defence sounds exactly like a guilty one.

The letters: chops and tomato sauce, and the warming-pan.

Test yourself

1. What was Pickwick actually talking about in chapter 12? Engaging Sam Weller as his manservant. Every question he asks, about the expense of two people, about the person's sharpness and knowledge of the world, about a companion for the boy, is true of a servant.

2. What is the only direct evidence of a promise of marriage? That Tupman, Winkle and Snodgrass walked in and found Mrs Bardell in Pickwick's arms. Buzfuz calls them "three of his own friends, most unwilling witnesses".

3. What do the two letters really say, and what does Buzfuz say they mean? They are notes from a lodger to his landlady about chops and tomato sauce and about not troubling herself over a warming-pan. Buzfuz calls them covert and underhanded and treats the warming-pan as a code word standing in for an endearment.

4. Why is Sam Weller's answer about "on spec" so damaging? Because it tells the court, from the plaintiff's own side of the case, that the attorneys are running the action for their own costs and will charge nothing unless they recover from Pickwick.

5. What does Perker warn Pickwick about his defence? That saying the whole thing was a misunderstanding is precisely what a guilty defendant would say, so the truth of it gives him no advantage in the eyes of a jury.

He does not listen. He gets Mr Phunky's name wrong, writing him down as Mr Monkey, and observes that he never had the pleasure of hearing the gentleman's name before.

He sleeps. When Buzfuz pauses for breath, the silence wakes the judge, who "immediately wrote down something with a pen without any ink in it, and looked unusually profound, to impress the jury with the belief that he always thought most deeply with his eyes shut". At the end of Buzfuz's speech, Dickens notes in six words that Buzfuz sat down "and Mr Justice Stareleigh woke up".

The jury

Only ten special jurymen attend, so Buzfuz prays a tales and two common jurymen are pressed in: Richard Upwitch, a greengrocer, and Thomas Groffin, a chemist. The chemist warns the court, before being sworn, that there will be murder before the trial is over, because he has left nobody but an errand boy in his shop, and the boy believes Epsom salts means oxalic acid and syrup of senna means laudanum.

Why Dickens puts this in. A man's whole fortune is about to be decided by twelve men, two of whom are there by accident, one of whom is thinking about poison.

The staging of the plaintiff

Mrs Bardell is led in "in a drooping state", supported by Mrs Cluppins. Dodson hands in an extra-sized umbrella and Fogg a pair of pattens, "each of whom had prepared a most sympathising and melancholy face for the occasion". Master Bardell is placed on the floor of the court in front of his mother, in what Dickens calls "a commanding position in which he could not fail to awaken the full commiseration and sympathy of both judge and jury".

Perker's whispered comment is the key to the whole chapter: "Capital fellows those Dodson and Fogg; excellent ideas of effect, my dear Sir, excellent."

Serjeant Buzfuz's speech

How it opens. He has never in his whole professional experience approached a case with feelings of such deep emotion, and could never have supported the responsibility were he not sustained by a certainty that the cause of truth and justice must prevail with the high-minded and intelligent dozen of men before him. Dickens notes drily that counsel begin this way because it puts the jury on the best terms with themselves, and that several jurymen at once began taking voluminous notes.

The devices, and you should be able to name them.

The line MU quotes. The paper of February 2026 printed this and asked for the speaker and the damages demanded.

Damages, gentlemen, heavy damages is the only punishment with which you can visit him; the only recompense you can award to my client.

The answer is Serjeant Buzfuz, and the damages were laid at fifteen hundred pounds.

The witnesses

Mrs Cluppins. Admits she was in the back room "unbeknown to Mrs Bardell", having gone in to say good morning, and heard voices. Asked whether she listened, she replies with dignity that she would scorn the action and that the voices forced themselves upon her ear. The judge is puzzled by "on the jar" and has to be told it means partly open, then says he will make a note of it. Snubbin does not cross-examine, because Pickwick wishes it stated that her account is in substance correct.

Mrs Sanders and the Pickwickians. Winkle is examined by Skimpin and made to look ridiculous, and his evidence, that he saw Mrs Bardell in Pickwick's arms, is technically true and completely misleading.

Sam Weller. Called by the plaintiff, and the best thing in the chapter. Asked whether he remembers going to Mrs Bardell's house in November, he says he went to pay the rent but they did get talking about the trial. Invited to say what passed, he obliges.

they said what a wery gen'rous thing it was o' them to have taken up the case on spec, and to charge nothing at all for costs, unless they got 'em out of Mr. Pickwick.

Dodson and Fogg turn red and whisper to Buzfuz, who announces that it is useless to try to get at evidence through the impenetrable stupidity of this witness and tells him to stand down. Sam asks whether any other gentleman would like to ask him anything. Dickens's own summary is that Sam went down "after doing Messrs. Dodson & Fogg's case as much harm as he conveniently could, and saying just as little respecting Mr. Pickwick as might be, which was precisely the object he had had in view all along."

The defence, the summing-up and the verdict

The defence. Snubbin makes a long and emphatic speech praising Pickwick's character and argues that the letters relate to Pickwick's dinner and to preparations for receiving him on his return. Dickens declines to report it, on the ground that his readers can judge Pickwick better than Snubbin could. That refusal is itself a comment: the defence is true and unmemorable, and the case has already been decided by rhetoric.

The summing-up. Stareleigh reads as much of his notes as he can decipher at short notice and comments as he goes. Dickens reduces it to a circle: if Mrs Bardell were right, it was perfectly clear that Mr Pickwick was wrong, and if they thought Mrs Cluppins's evidence worthy of credence they would believe it, and if they didn't, why, they wouldn't.

The verdict. The jury retire; the judge retires to a mutton chop and a glass of sherry. After a quarter of an hour they find for the plaintiff, with damages of seven hundred and fifty pounds.

Immediately afterwards. Pickwick meets Dodson and Fogg in a side room while Perker pays the court fees, and tells them that not one farthing of costs or damages will they ever get from him if he spends the rest of his existence in a debtor's prison. Dodson laughs and says he will think better of it before next term.

The last line of the chapter. Tony Weller, Sam's father, shakes his head and delivers the popular verdict on the whole proceeding.

Oh, Sammy, Sammy, vy worn't there a alleybi!

How to write "Critically examine the trial"

Your position. That the trial is technically regular and substantially worthless: the forms are all observed, and nothing that decides it has anything to do with what happened in Goswell Street.

Paragraph one. Say what the action is and how it ends.

Paragraph two. The evidence. There is one embrace, seen by the defendant's friends, and two notes about dinner. Nothing else. Neither party gives evidence, because at this date the parties to a civil action could not be witnesses in their own cause, which is why the case is fought entirely on inference.

Paragraph three. The advocacy. Buzfuz's method, with two or three devices named from the table above.

Paragraph four. The court. A judge who sleeps, a jury made up in part by a tales, and a summing-up that decides nothing.

Paragraph five. The attorneys, and Sam Weller's answer about "on spec". This is the point at which a critical answer becomes an argument rather than a description.

Conclusion. That Dickens's target is not the rules but the gap between the dignity of the forms and the interests actually being served, and that the proof is what happens next: the successful plaintiff ends up in the Fleet at her own attorneys' suit.

What beginners get wrong

They retell the speech and stop. The speech is one paragraph of an answer. The evidence, the court and the attorneys are the rest.

They say Pickwick was found guilty. It is a civil action. He was found liable and damages were awarded against him.

They omit Sam Weller's evidence. It is the moment the novel tells you what the case is really about.

They think the judge decides the case. The jury decides it. Stareleigh's contribution is a summing-up that leaves them exactly where they were.

A worked answer

Question. "Critically examine the trial of Bardell against Pickwick." The opening and the plan.

Opening paragraph. The trial of Bardell against Pickwick is procedurally regular and substantially worthless. Every form is observed: a special jury is empanelled, a tales is prayed when only ten attend, counsel open and reply, witnesses are examined and cross-examined, and the judge sums up. Nothing that decides the case has any connection with what happened in Goswell Street, and this answer argues that Dickens's target is precisely that gap between the dignity of the forms and the interests they serve.

The plan of the rest. One paragraph on the evidence: a single embrace seen by the defendant's own friends and two notes about dinner, with neither party competent to testify. One on Buzfuz's method, naming three devices. One on the court itself, the sleeping judge, the accidental jurymen and the circular summing-up. One on Sam Weller's answer about the case being taken on speculation. One on what happened afterwards, since the successful plaintiff ended in the Fleet at her own attorneys' suit. A conclusion in the words of the question.

The sentence to end on. A verdict that sends the winner to prison is the strongest evidence available about whose action it really was.

Quick revision

Fourteenth of February, at the Guildhall, before Mr Justice Stareleigh.

Perker's rule: hungry jurymen find for the plaintiff.

Ten special jurymen, a tales prayed, a greengrocer and a chemist pressed in.

Staging: the umbrella, the pattens, the child on the floor of the court.

Buzfuz: flattery, pathos, the placard, the serpent and the mine, "systematic villainy", chops and tomato sauce, the warming-pan, and "heavy damages".

Witnesses: Mrs Cluppins, Mrs Sanders, Winkle, and Sam Weller, whose "on spec" answer wrecks the attorneys.

Snubbin's defence is not reported. The summing-up is a circle. Verdict for the plaintiff, seven hundred and fifty pounds.

Test yourself

1. What are the damages laid at, and what does the jury award? Laid at fifteen hundred pounds. Awarded, seven hundred and fifty.

2. Name three of Buzfuz's rhetorical devices with an example of each. Flattery of the jury, in his opening about the high-minded and intelligent dozen; false pathos, in describing Mr Bardell as gliding imperceptibly from the world when he was in fact killed with a quart-pot; and supplying a meaning to an innocent document, in his reading of the warming-pan note.

3. Why can neither Pickwick nor Mrs Bardell give evidence? Because at this period the parties to a civil action were not competent witnesses in their own cause. That is why the whole case is built on inference from other people's observations and from two notes.

4. What does Sam Weller reveal, and why does Buzfuz stop questioning him? That Dodson and Fogg took the case on speculation and would charge nothing for costs unless they got them out of Mr Pickwick. Buzfuz stops because every further question invites more damage, and covers the retreat by calling the witness impenetrably stupid.

5. What is Dickens's real target in this chapter? Not the rules of procedure, which are followed, but the distance between the solemnity of the forms and the interests they actually serve. The judge sleeps, the jury is half accidental, the advocacy is performance, and the attorneys are running the case for their own costs.

Chapter 47: Pickwick pays. Perker explains the position. Mrs Bardell can be released only if the costs are paid, and only Pickwick can pay them. He has spent months in prison rather than give Dodson and Fogg a farthing, and he now pays both his own costs and hers to get a woman out of gaol. His benevolence, in Dickens's own chapter title, "proves stronger than his obstinacy".

Chapter 53: the exit of Dodson and Fogg. They appear once more, are told exactly what Pickwick thinks of them, and are shown out. They have lost nothing.

Chapter 57: the club is dissolved. Pickwick retires, Sam marries, and the novel ends away from the law altogether.

The cognovit, explained properly

What it is. A cognovit, in full cognovit actionem, is a written acknowledgment by a defendant that the plaintiff's claim is good, on which judgment can be entered without any trial. Signing one hands the other side a judgment in advance.

What Mrs Bardell signed. A cognovit in favour of her own attorneys, for their costs. She describes it as a matter of form, which is what she was told it was.

What it meant. Once she signed, Dodson and Fogg did not need to sue her or prove anything. They could execute on the cognovit, and they did, taking her to the Fleet.

Why it is the sharpest point in the novel. Consider the outcome. The plaintiff won her action and was awarded seven hundred and fifty pounds. She ends in prison. The defendant lost and refused to pay, and he ends up paying, but voluntarily and to free her. The only people who gain anything are the attorneys, and their client's imprisonment is simply a step in collecting their bill.

Imprisonment for debt, in four facts a law student should know

One. It was civil, not criminal. No offence had been committed. The creditor's remedy was to take the debtor's body.

Two. It had no fixed term. Release depended on payment, on the creditor's consent, or on discharge under the insolvency provisions. That is why the Chancery prisoner in chapter 44 has been inside for twenty years.

Three. The prisoner paid his own way. Food, a room, and comforts were bought. The poor lived on the common side on charity, so the prison reproduced the inequality that had put people there.

Four. Dickens was writing from his own family's experience. His father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea when Dickens was twelve, and the boy was sent to work in a blacking factory. Imprisonment for debt in England was substantially abolished by the Debtors Act 1869, more than thirty years after this novel, and the campaign against it is one of the things the book belongs to.

Dodson and Fogg: a character sketch of a firm

They are always correct. They never threaten, never lie in a way that can be pinned on them, and take care to have witnesses when Pickwick loses his temper in their office.

They take the risk and keep the profit. The case is run on speculation. If it fails they charge nothing; if it succeeds they take their costs, and if the defendant will not pay they take them from their own client.

They stage the case. The umbrella and the pattens handed in at court, the melancholy faces, the child placed in front of the judge. Perker, a lawyer himself, admires the workmanship: "excellent ideas of effect, my dear Sir, excellent."

They are never punished. No court censures them, no rule catches them, and they leave the novel exactly as they entered it. That is Dickens's most serious charge: not that the law was broken, but that none of this required breaking it.

Two questions this material answers

"Critically examine the trial between Bardell and Pickwick." The trial chapter answers most of it, but the strongest conclusion comes from here: the proceedings ended in a verdict for the plaintiff and the plaintiff went to prison, so the outcome tells you who the litigation was actually for.

"Discuss Dickens's satire of the legal profession." Use three things: the attorneys who work on speculation and enforce a cognovit against their own client, the advocate who reads a note about chops as a love letter, and the prison that holds people until somebody pays.

What beginners get wrong

They think Pickwick is imprisoned for the damages. He is arrested and imprisoned because he refuses to pay, and it is the costs that are enforced. Refusing to pay a judgment debt was what put a person in the Fleet.

They think he gives in. He does not. He pays to release Mrs Bardell, and Dickens is explicit that benevolence, not obstinacy, decides it.

They forget Sam. Sam Weller has himself arrested on a debt arranged with his own father so that he can stay with his master, which is the novel's best single act of loyalty.

They leave out the Chancery prisoner. He is the answer to anyone who says the Fleet chapters are comic.

A worked answer

Question. "Explain how Mrs Bardell came to be imprisoned, although she won her case."

A model answer in five steps. First, after the verdict she signed a cognovit in favour of her own attorneys, Dodson and Fogg, for the amount of their costs. Second, a cognovit is a written acknowledgment that the other side's claim is good, on which judgment may be entered without any trial, so signing one hands over a judgment in advance; she was told it was a matter of form and says so herself. Third, Pickwick refused to pay a farthing of damages or costs, so the attorneys could recover nothing from him. Fourth, they therefore executed on the cognovit against their own client, and a clerk named Jackson took her by a trick, in a coach she believed was going on an outing, to the Fleet Prison. Fifth, she could be released only if the costs were paid, and the only person able to pay them was the defendant, so Pickwick, who had spent months in prison rather than give them a penny, paid both bills to get her out.

The point to close on. Nothing in that sequence required any rule to be broken, and that is Dickens's charge.

Quick revision

Chapter 40 arrest by Namby and the sponging house; 41 chummage and the whistling shop; 42 the common side; 43 Sam has himself arrested by arrangement with his father; 44 the Chancery prisoner dies after twenty years; 45 Pickwick pays for others' release; 46 Mrs Bardell taken to the Fleet on a cognovit for her own attorneys' costs; 47 Pickwick pays both bills and both go free; 53 Dodson and Fogg exit unpunished; 57 the club is dissolved.

Cognovit: a written confession of judgment allowing execution without a trial. Mrs Bardell signed one "just as a matter of form".

Debtors' prison: civil, indefinite, self-financed, abolished substantially by the Debtors Act 1869.

Test yourself

1. Why is Pickwick imprisoned? Not as a punishment for losing the action. He refuses to pay the damages and costs, and a judgment creditor could take a debtor's body, so he is arrested and committed to the Fleet.

2. What is a cognovit and what did Mrs Bardell's do to her? A written acknowledgment that the other party's claim is good, on which judgment may be entered without trial. She gave one to her own attorneys for their costs, and they executed on it and had her imprisoned in the Fleet.

3. Why does Pickwick finally pay? Because Mrs Bardell cannot be released unless the costs are paid, and he is the only person who can pay them. He gives up his principle in order to get a woman out of prison.

4. What does the Chancery prisoner add to the book? He shows that the system's cruelty is not confined to comedy: a man may spend twenty years inside on a suit that never ends, and die there. It is the point at which Dickens stops being funny.

5. In one sentence, what is Dickens's charge against the profession here? That everything which ruins the parties was done within the rules: the attorneys acted lawfully at every step, and the result was that the winner of the case went to prison and only the lawyers gained.

It was open to abuse. A case could be built on ambiguous conduct and pressed by attorneys with an interest in the costs, which is exactly what Dickens describes.

It became a way of buying off scandal. Defendants settled to avoid the publicity of a trial, which meant the threat was worth money whether or not the claim was good.

Society changed. As women's access to work, property and divorce widened through the twentieth century, the economic premise of the action weakened.

The abolition in England and Wales

Section 1 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1970 is headed "Engagements to marry not enforceable at law", and it provides:

(1) An agreement between two persons to marry one another shall not under the law of England and Wales have effect as a contract giving rise to legal rights and no action shall lie in England and Wales for breach of such an agreement, whatever the law applicable to the agreement.

(2) This section shall have effect in relation to agreements entered into before it comes into force, except that it shall not affect any action commenced before it comes into force.

Read the words carefully, because they do two separate things. The agreement is deprived of contractual effect, and separately no action lies for breach of it. And the closing words, "whatever the law applicable to the agreement", shut out the argument that a promise governed by some other system of law could still be sued on in England.

Subsection (2) is the transitional provision. It reaches back to engagements already made, but it does not disturb any action already commenced.

The position in India

The action has not been abolished in India. There is no Indian statute corresponding to section 1 of the 1970 Act, and an agreement to marry is treated as a contract, so a suit for damages for its breach is maintainable.

Keep this short in an English answer and do not overstate it. What a student can safely say is this: England abolished the action by statute in 1970; India has passed no such statute, so the claim survives here as an ordinary contract claim, and questions about promises to marry are also litigated in India in quite different contexts that belong to later semesters. Anything more detailed is a subject for the law of contract paper and not for this one.

The distinctions an examiner may want

How this feeds an essay on the trial

A good answer uses the law twice.

Early, to be fair to Mrs Bardell. The action she brought was a real one, available to her because the law recognised that a broken engagement cost a woman something. She is not a fraud; she is mistaken and then used.

Late, to make the criticism land. Because damages were at large and juries were moved by feeling, the action rewarded advocacy of exactly Buzfuz's kind. Dickens is not attacking a silly rule; he is showing a rule whose method of assessment invited the performance he describes.

What beginners get wrong

They call it a criminal charge. It is civil, and the remedy is damages.

They say Dickens got the law wrong. He did not. The procedure in chapter 34 is accurate down to the tales and the attorney's seat.

They say the action was abolished because it was ridiculous. It was abolished in England and Wales because its social basis had gone, and the statute says only that engagements are not enforceable at law.

They import the English abolition into India. Section 1 of the 1970 Act applies to England and Wales, and it says so on its face.

A worked answer

Question. "What had to be proved in an action for breach of promise of marriage, and was it proved here?"

The elements, stated first. A promise to marry, which need not be in writing and could be inferred from conduct; acceptance, so that there was an agreement; breach, by refusal, repudiation or marriage to another; and damage, which the law largely presumed and the jury measured.

Applying them to the case. On the first element the evidence was that Tupman, Winkle and Snodgrass walked into a room and found Mrs Bardell in Pickwick's arms, together with two notes in the defendant's hand about chops and tomato sauce and a warming-pan. There was no writing containing any promise, no witness to any words of promise, and no date. On the second element there was nothing at all except the same embrace. Breach was not seriously in issue. Damage was assumed, and the jury awarded seven hundred and fifty pounds on a claim laid at fifteen hundred.

The conclusion, which must take a position. On that material a promise could only be inferred, and the inference was supplied by Serjeant Buzfuz rather than by the evidence. Since damages in such actions were at large and juries were moved by feeling, the action rewarded exactly the advocacy Dickens describes, and the verdict is better explained by the performance than by the proof.

Quick revision

Four elements: a promise, acceptance, breach, and damage.

Why it existed: marriage was a woman's economic settlement, reputation was affected, she may have acted on the promise, and it was one of the few actions she could bring herself.

Why it fell: sentimental juries, easy abuse, settlement to avoid scandal, and social change.

Abolished in England and Wales by section 1 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1970: an agreement to marry has no effect as a contract, and no action lies for its breach.

Not abolished in India, where such an agreement remains a contract.

In the novel: no writing, no witness to any promise, two notes about dinner, damages laid at fifteen hundred pounds and seven hundred and fifty awarded.

Test yourself

1. State the elements of the action. A promise to marry, accepted so that there is an agreement, a breach by refusal or repudiation, and damage, which the law largely presumed and the jury measured.

2. Give two reasons why the action existed. Because marriage was the economic settlement of a middle-class woman's life, so that a broken engagement removed her future provision; and because a publicly broken engagement damaged her reputation and position, which the law treated as a real loss.

3. What does section 1 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1970 provide? That an agreement between two persons to marry one another shall not under the law of England and Wales have effect as a contract giving rise to legal rights, and that no action shall lie in England and Wales for breach of such an agreement, whatever the law applicable to the agreement.

4. Is the action available in India? There is no Indian statute abolishing it, and an agreement to marry is treated as a contract, so a suit for damages for its breach is maintainable. The English abolition applies to England and Wales only.

5. On the evidence given at the trial, was the verdict justified? On the material before the jury there was an embrace witnessed by three men and two notes capable of an innocent reading, and no evidence of any words of promise. The verdict is explicable by the advocacy and by the fact that damages in such actions were at large, which is precisely Dickens's argument.

He talks in a manner that has a name. A Wellerism is a saying with an incongruous attribution attached, of the form "as the soldier said when he polished his boots". They are his signature and are worth a line in a sketch.

His loyalty is the plot's best act. He arranges with his own father to be arrested for a debt of twenty-five pounds so that he can be imprisoned in the Fleet alongside Pickwick, and refuses to name his detaining creditor.

Mrs Martha Bardell

Placing. Mrs Bardell is a widow, the relict and sole executrix of a custom-house officer, who keeps lodgings in Goswell Street and is the plaintiff in the action.

She is not a schemer. Dickens gives her a genuine misunderstanding, in a scene where every word Pickwick says is capable of the meaning she takes, and he tells us she had long worshipped Pickwick at a distance.

She is taken over. From chapter 18 the action belongs to Dodson and Fogg. They stage her in court with an umbrella, a pair of pattens and her child on the floor in front of the judge.

She ends worse off than the man she sued. She signs a cognovit for her attorneys' costs, calling it a matter of form, and is taken to the Fleet on it. Her release is bought by the defendant.

What she is for. She is the proof of the novel's argument. If the litigation had been about her wrong, it would not have ended with her in prison.

Dodson and Fogg

Placing. Attorneys of Freeman's Court, Cornhill, for the plaintiff.

They are a pair, and Dickens never separates them. They speak almost interchangeably, and Dickens has Dodson answer "for self and partner".

They take the case on speculation. No costs unless recovered from Pickwick, which is Sam's evidence at the trial and the fact that explains their conduct.

They are professionals of effect. The umbrella and the pattens are their idea, and Perker, their opponent, admires it: "excellent ideas of effect, my dear Sir, excellent."

They break no rule. Everything they do is lawful. That is the charge.

The rest, in short

Mr Perker. Pickwick's attorney, a small brisk man with a snuff-box, cynical and competent. He explains that hungry jurymen find for the plaintiff and that an honest defence sounds like a guilty one, and he pays the court fees while Pickwick is still stunned.

Serjeant Buzfuz. The plaintiff's counsel, red-faced, who greets his opponent pleasantly and then calls the defendant a systematic villain. He is the novel's picture of advocacy as performance.

Serjeant Snubbin. Pickwick's counsel, overworked and detached, who has to be reminded of the case and whose truthful speech Dickens declines to report.

Mr Justice Stareleigh. The judge: short, fat, irritable, asleep for much of the trial, and unable to get counsel's name right.

Tupman, Winkle and Snodgrass. Pickwick's companions, whose function in the action is to be the witnesses whose truthful evidence convicts an innocent man.

Tony Weller. Sam's father, a coachman, whose contribution to jurisprudence is the last line of the trial chapter: "vy worn't there a alleybi!"

Mrs Cluppins and Mrs Sanders. Mrs Bardell's friends and witnesses, whose evidence is that they overheard things they were not supposed to hear.

Distinctions worth a table

What beginners get wrong

They call Mrs Bardell a liar. Dickens is careful to show that she believed what she said.

They treat Sam as comic relief. He is the practical intelligence of the book, and his evidence is the most effective thing anybody does in court.

They say Pickwick is defeated. He loses the action and wins the argument, and Dickens gives him the last word by making him pay for his opponent's freedom.

A worked answer

Question. "Write a short note on Sam Weller."

A model answer. Sam Weller is the boot-cleaner whom Mr Pickwick engages as his servant, and he is the practical intelligence the novel's hero entirely lacks. He knows what attorneys are, what a sponging house is and how the Fleet works, and he supplies that knowledge without ever appearing to instruct his master. His loyalty is the strongest thing in the book: he arranges with his own father to be arrested for a debt of twenty-five pounds so that he can follow Pickwick into the debtors' prison, and refuses to name his detaining creditor. His finest moment is in the witness box, where, called by the plaintiff, he answers every question truthfully and volunteers that the ladies had praised Dodson and Fogg for taking the case on speculation and charging nothing for costs unless they got them out of Mr Pickwick, at which Buzfuz abandons the cross-examination and calls him impenetrably stupid. Dickens's own summary is exact: Sam went down after doing the attorneys' case as much harm as he conveniently could and saying as little about his master as might be, which was precisely his object all along. His speech is famous for the Wellerism, a saying with an incongruous attribution attached, of the pattern "as the soldier said when he polished his boots".

Why it scores. It gives a placing sentence, three qualities each proved by an incident, and one technical term correctly used.

Quick revision

Pickwick: innocent, obstinate on principle, imprisoned by choice, pays only to free Mrs Bardell.

Sam Weller: worldly, loyal to the point of imprisoning himself, best witness in the book, speaks in Wellerisms.

Mrs Bardell: honest misunderstanding, taken over by her attorneys, ends in the Fleet on a cognovit for their costs.

Dodson and Fogg: on speculation, masters of effect, never censured.

Perker, Buzfuz, Snubbin, Stareleigh, the three friends, Tony Weller, Cluppins and Sanders.

Test yourself

1. Why does Pickwick refuse to pay? Because paying would put money into the hands of Dodson and Fogg, who manufactured the action, and he tells them so in the side room after the verdict: not one farthing if he spends the rest of his life in a debtor's prison.

2. What finally makes him pay, and why is it not a defeat? Learning that Mrs Bardell has been imprisoned by her own attorneys on a cognovit for their costs and that only his money can release her. He abandons the principle for a person, which Dickens presents as the stronger impulse.

3. What is a Wellerism? A saying with an incongruous attribution attached, of the pattern "as the soldier said when he polished his boots", and it is Sam Weller's characteristic form of speech.

4. How does Sam damage the plaintiff's case while being called as her witness? By answering truthfully that the ladies had praised Dodson and Fogg for taking the case on speculation and charging nothing for costs unless they got them out of Mr Pickwick, which tells the court whose action it really is.

5. Why does Dickens make Mrs Bardell sympathetic? Because the satire is aimed at the profession and not at her. If she were a fraud the trial would be about a liar being caught; because she is honest, the trial is about a system that can turn an honest mistake into a judgment and then imprison the person who won.

Theme five: England on the road

The proposition. Like Fielding a century earlier, Dickens uses a journey to put his characters in front of a whole society.

Where it is worked. Eatanswill and its election, the inns, the coaches, the country houses, the prison. The structure is inherited from the eighteenth-century comic novel, and comparing it with Joseph Andrews is a legitimate and often rewarded move in an essay.

Reference to context: the passages that are set

1. "A good, contented, well-breakfasted juryman is a capital thing to get hold of. Discontented or hungry jurymen, my dear sir, always find for the plaintiff." Chapter 34. Spoken by Perker, Pickwick's attorney, over breakfast on the morning of the trial. It sets the tone of the whole chapter by suggesting that the verdict may turn on the jury's digestion rather than on the evidence.

2. "Damages, gentlemen, heavy damages is the only punishment with which you can visit him; the only recompense you can award to my client." Chapter 34. Spoken by Serjeant Buzfuz, counsel for Mrs Bardell, at the close of his address to the jury. The damages demanded were fifteen hundred pounds, and the jury awarded seven hundred and fifty.

3. "Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick." Chapter 34. Read out by Serjeant Buzfuz as one of two letters said to prove a promise of marriage. It is in fact a note from a lodger to his landlady about his dinner, and Buzfuz's treatment of it as a covert communication is the best-known piece of legal satire in English fiction.

4. "Why, gentlemen, who does trouble himself about a warming-pan?" Chapter 34. Spoken by Serjeant Buzfuz about the second letter, in which Pickwick tells Mrs Bardell not to trouble herself about the warming-pan. He argues that the word must be a cover for hidden fire and a substitute for some endearment in a preconcerted system of correspondence.

5. "they said what a wery gen'rous thing it was o' them to have taken up the case on spec, and to charge nothing at all for costs, unless they got 'em out of Mr. Pickwick." Chapter 34. Spoken by Sam Weller in the witness box, called as a witness for the plaintiff. It reveals that the plaintiff's attorneys are running the action for their own costs, and Buzfuz abandons the cross-examination immediately.

6. "Oh, Sammy, Sammy, vy worn't there a alleybi!" Chapter 34, the last line. Spoken by Tony Weller, Sam's father the coachman, to Sam outside the court after the verdict. It is the popular verdict on the whole proceeding, and it is funny because an alibi is a defence to a crime and this was a civil action about an engagement.

7. "You may try, and try, and try again, Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, but not one farthing of costs or damages do you ever get from me, if I spend the rest of my existence in a debtor's prison." Chapter 34. Spoken by Mr Pickwick to the plaintiff's attorneys in a side room immediately after the verdict, while Perker is paying the court fees. He keeps the promise for several months and gives it up only to release Mrs Bardell.

8. "You gave them a cognovit for the amount of your costs, after the trial, I'm told." Chapter 46. Spoken by Jackson, a clerk of Dodson and Fogg, to Mrs Bardell in a coach which she believes is taking her on an outing. She answers that she did, "just as a matter of form". The coach is in fact taking her to the Fleet Prison.

Five more the University has actually set

Note. Added by the past paper check. All five are from chapter 34, the trial.

A. "The plaintiff is a widow; yes, gentlemen, a widow." Spoken by Serjeant Buzfuz in his opening speech for Mrs Bardell, in what Dickens calls a melancholy voice. It is the first move of the speech: before any fact is stated the jury is told the plaintiff's condition, and the whole address is built on the sympathy that word is meant to produce.

B. "Apartments furnished for a single gentleman. Inquire within." The written placard Mrs Bardell placed in her front parlour window in Goswell Street, read aloud in court by Buzfuz. He treats an ordinary advertisement for a lodger as evidence of a design upon a husband, and the passage is the clearest instance in the text of a document being given a meaning it does not carry.

C. "I wonder what the foreman of the jury, whoever he'll be, has got for breakfast." Spoken by Mr Snodgrass on the morning of the fourteenth of February, at the opening of chapter 34, by way of keeping up a conversation. Perker answers that he hopes it is a good one, and then explains that a contented, well-breakfasted juryman is a capital thing to get hold of, which is the remark set out as passage 1 above.

D. "What were you doing in the back room, ma'am?" inquired the little judge. Spoken by Mr Justice Stareleigh to Mrs Cluppins during her evidence, after she has placed Mr Pickwick's sitting-room on the first floor front. Her answer, that she will not deceive his Lordship and was there on a private matter, is what leads her to admit she overheard the conversation through a door left ajar, which is how the case's best evidence arrives by eavesdropping.

E. "I know I ought to do, if I got on as well as I deserved; but I don't, my Lord," answered the chemist. Spoken by Thomas Groffin, the chemist pressed on to the jury when a tales is prayed, replying to Mr Justice Stareleigh, who has reddened and told him that he ought to be able to afford an assistant. Groffin is one of two common jurymen sworn that morning, the other being Richard Upwitch, the greengrocer, and he warns the court before taking the oath that there will be murder before the trial is over, since he has left nobody but an errand boy in his shop who believes that Epsom salts means oxalic acid.

F. "Your little boy is a very long time gone." Spoken by Mr Pickwick to Mrs Bardell in chapter 12, as she finishes dusting his rooms and he works himself up to ask whether keeping two people costs much more than keeping one. He is talking about hiring a servant, Sam Weller, and she believes he is proposing marriage; the whole action of the trial grows from the conversation that begins with this line, which is why the examiner sets it.

How to place a passage from this novel

Names decide it. Pickwick, Bardell, Weller, Buzfuz, Snubbin, Stareleigh, Dodson, Fogg, Perker, Cluppins, Snodgrass, Winkle and Tupman appear in no other text on this paper.

Speech decides it. Sam and Tony Weller's dialect, with "v" for "w" and "w" for "v", is unmistakable.

Legal vocabulary decides it. Tales, special jury, serjeant, cognovit, sponging house and the Fleet belong to the Victorian court, not to Fielding's country justice.

What beginners get wrong

They treat the novel as one long joke. The Fleet chapters and the Chancery prisoner are not comic, and an answer that misses them misses the argument.

They attribute Buzfuz's lines to the judge, or Perker's to Snubbin. Keep the sides straight: Buzfuz and Skimpin, instructed by Dodson and Fogg, are for the plaintiff; Snubbin and Phunky, instructed by Perker, are for the defendant.

They say the satire is against Mrs Bardell. It is against the profession, and she is one of its casualties.

A worked answer

Question. "Discuss Dickens's treatment of imprisonment for debt."

Paragraph one, the position. Dickens treats the debtors' prison as the point at which the comedy of the novel stops, and he makes three arguments about it, in ascending order of seriousness.

Paragraph two, that it punished poverty. A debtor stayed until his creditor was satisfied or he was discharged, so there was no fixed term, and a man with money left at once while a man without money did not leave at all. Inside, everything had to be bought: a room, food, and relief from being chummed on other prisoners, so the prison reproduced the inequality that had filled it.

Paragraph three, that it was civil and not criminal. Pickwick has committed no offence. He is there because a judgment creditor could take a debtor's body, and because he refuses on principle to pay Dodson and Fogg. Mrs Bardell, who committed no offence either, is there because she signed a cognovit for her own attorneys' costs.

Paragraph four, the Chancery prisoner. In chapter 44 a man who has been inside for twenty years on a Chancery matter dies there. Dickens makes no joke in these pages, and the point is delay rather than debt: a suit could outlive the parties to it.

Conclusion. Dickens is writing from his own family's experience, his father having been imprisoned for debt, and the campaign the novel belongs to succeeded long afterwards, imprisonment for debt being substantially abolished in England by the Debtors Act 1869.

Quick revision

Themes: satire of the profession; imprisonment for debt; innocence meeting experience; master and servant; England on the road.

The escalation of the satire: performance, then a sleeping judge, then an accidental jury, then attorneys on speculation, then a client imprisoned for her own lawyers' costs, then a man dead in prison after twenty years of Chancery.

Set passages: the well-breakfasted juryman; heavy damages; chops and tomato sauce; the warming-pan; Sam on "spec"; the alibi; not one farthing; the cognovit.

Test yourself

1. State Dickens's central charge against the law in one sentence. That nothing which ruins the parties requires any rule to be broken: the procedure is regular throughout, and its regular operation ends with the successful plaintiff in prison and the attorneys paid.

2. Place: "vy worn't there a alleybi!" Tony Weller, Sam's father, speaking to Sam outside the court immediately after the verdict in chapter 34. It is the last line of the trial chapter, and the joke is that an alibi is a defence to a criminal charge while this was a civil action for breach of promise.

3. Which passage shows that the action is really about costs? Sam Weller's evidence in chapter 34 that Dodson and Fogg took the case on speculation and would charge nothing unless they recovered from Mr Pickwick, confirmed in chapter 46 when they imprison their own client on a cognovit for those costs.

4. Why are the Fleet chapters necessary to the novel's argument? Because they show the consequence of the trial for everybody in it, and because they make the point that a debtors' prison punishes inability to pay rather than any wrong. Without them the trial is only a funny chapter.

5. Compare the use of the road in this novel and in Joseph Andrews. Both use a journey to bring the central characters before every level of society in turn, so that each encounter tests the people met rather than the travellers. Dickens inherits the structure from Fielding, and both novels put a legal scene at the centre of the journey.

Two religions in it. The Church of England, represented by Mr Irwine, the rector, comfortable and humane and not very searching. And Methodism, a movement of open-air preaching and personal conversion, represented by Dinah Morris, a woman preacher. Dinah's right to preach at all is contested in the novel, which is historically accurate.

Three classes that matter. The squire's family at the Chase, who own the land. The tenant farmers, the Poysers at the Hall Farm, respectable and proud. And the craftsmen and labourers, Adam among them. Hetty is a farmer's niece and Arthur is the heir to the estate, and the distance between those two positions is the engine of the plot.

Chapter XVII, and George Eliot's own statement of her method

Chapter XVII is titled "In Which the Story Pauses a Little", and the author stops the novel to explain what she is doing. It is the most quoted chapter in the book after the trial, and it is the source of any answer on realism.

What she argues. That she will not idealise. That she would rather paint people as they are, with their commonness and their mistakes, than invent noble characters who never existed. That there is a truth and a beauty in ordinary faces and ordinary lives that a taste for the heroic misses.

Why it matters for the trial. Because it is the licence for what happens to Hetty. A novelist writing to a pattern would have made Hetty either wicked or wholly innocent. Eliot makes her vain, thoughtless, frightened and very young, and then puts her in a criminal court.

How to use it in an answer. Say that the trial is the test of the doctrine in chapter XVII: the novel refuses to simplify the person the law has to classify.

The main people

The vocabulary you need

Assizes. The periodic sittings at which serious criminal cases were tried in the counties by judges sent out from London. Hetty is tried at the assizes at Stoniton.

The dock. The enclosure in which a prisoner stands during a criminal trial.

Capital offence. One punishable by death.

Reprieve. An order postponing or cancelling the execution of a sentence. What Arthur brings is a commutation, that is, the substitution of a lesser punishment.

Transportation. Removal to a penal colony overseas for a term of years or for life, used as the standard substitute for hanging.

Methodist. A member of the movement founded by John Wesley, which permitted lay and, for a time, women preachers.

What beginners get wrong

They write "Mary Ann Evans" throughout. Use the published name and mention the real one once.

They call it a Victorian novel about Victorian life. It was published in 1859 but it is set sixty years earlier, in 1799 to 1801, and the law that convicts Hetty is the law of that earlier period.

They treat chapter XVII as a digression. It is the novel's statement of its own method and the best material for any question about realism.

They forget the epilogue. The novel ends in 1801 and then adds a short final chapter, and the marriages there are part of the argument.

A worked answer

Question. "What does George Eliot mean by realism, and where does she say it?"

A model answer. She says it in chapter XVII of Adam Bede, titled "In Which the Story Pauses a Little", where she stops the narrative to address the reader directly about her method. Her argument is that she will not idealise: she would rather paint people as they actually are, with their commonness, their dullness and their mistakes, than invent noble characters who never existed, because there is a truth and a beauty in ordinary faces and ordinary lives that a taste for the heroic misses entirely. The doctrine is then tested by the novel itself. A writer working to a pattern would have made Hetty Sorrel either an innocent victim or a wicked girl, and Eliot makes her vain, ignorant, frightened and seventeen, and then puts her in a criminal dock on a capital charge. That is the real force of chapter XVII: it is a promise, and the trial is where the promise is kept.

How to use it. Name the chapter and its title, state the argument in a sentence, and then prove that the novel obeys it. Naming the chapter is worth a mark on its own.

Quick revision

George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. Adam Bede, 1859, six books, fifty-five chapters, set 1799 to 1801.

Hayslope: a village of squire, tenant farmers and craftsmen, with the Church of England and Methodism side by side.

Chapter XVII is the author's defence of realism: ordinary people painted as they are, not idealised.

Central action: Arthur seduces Hetty; she bears a child in secret, abandons it, is tried for child murder, convicted, sentenced to death, and reprieved at the gallows.

The trial is in 1800, which decides which law applies.

Test yourself

1. Who is George Eliot? The pen name of Mary Ann Evans, under which Adam Bede was published in 1859.

2. When is the novel set, and why does the date matter? It opens on 18 June 1799 and closes in 1801, so the trial falls in 1800. The date matters because the law governing a charge of child murder changed in 1803, and Hetty is tried under the older and harsher rule.

3. What is the argument of chapter XVII? That the novelist should paint people as they actually are, including their commonness and their faults, rather than idealise them, and that there is truth and beauty in ordinary lives that a taste for the heroic overlooks.

4. Name the three social levels in Hayslope and place the main characters in them. The squire's family at the Chase, where Arthur Donnithorne is heir; the tenant farmers, the Poysers at the Hall Farm, where Hetty lives as a niece and dairymaid; and the craftsmen and labourers, among whom Adam Bede is a carpenter.

5. Why is Dinah Morris's preaching historically significant in the novel? Because she is a woman preaching in the open air as a Methodist at a time when the right of women to preach was contested, and the novel makes that contest part of its picture of the period.

Book Fourth, chapters XXVII to XXXV: the crisis and the betrothal

Chapter XXVII, "A crisis". Adam, walking home through the Chase, sees Arthur and Hetty together, and understands. He confronts Arthur, they fight, and Adam knocks him down. It is the pivot of the novel: the friendship between the two men ends, and Adam forces Arthur to write to Hetty and break it off.

Chapters XXVIII to XXXI. Arthur writes the letter. Adam delivers it. Hetty reads it alone in her bed-chamber, and the chapter titled "In Hetty's Bed-Chamber" is where the reader sees the extent of her hopelessness. She is already pregnant, though the novel says so only by implication.

Chapter XXXII, "Mrs Poyser 'Has Her Say Out'". The comic high point of the novel, and famous on its own: Mrs Poyser tells the old squire exactly what she thinks of him and his farm management, to his face. It is often set as a passage, and it matters because it shows that plain speech is possible in this village for everybody except the person who needs it most.

Chapter XXXIV, "The Betrothal". Hetty accepts Adam. She does not love him; she is trying to save herself. Adam is happier than he has ever been.

Chapter XXXV, "The Hidden Dread". Hetty understands her condition and what it will mean. The last chapter of Book Fourth leaves her preparing to run.

The two silences that cause the tragedy

Any essay on this novel should notice them.

Arthur does not tell Mr Irwine. Chapter XVI puts him in the rector's room with the words nearly out of his mouth. He talks about a hypothetical man in trouble and cannot go on. One sentence would have ended it.

Hetty tells nobody. She cannot tell the Poysers, because respectability is the whole of their standing. She cannot tell Adam. She thinks of Dinah and decides that if she tells Dinah, others will know at last. Her isolation is complete before she leaves the farm, and the novel builds it carefully.

What beginners get wrong

They call Hetty wicked from the start. She is vain, ignorant and seventeen, and the novel takes trouble over the difference.

They think Arthur intends harm. He does not, and that is the criticism. He intends nothing at all, repeatedly, and the novel treats thoughtlessness as a form of responsibility.

They skip Mrs Poyser. Her scene with the squire is one of the most quoted passages in the book.

A worked answer

Question. "Trace the steps by which Hetty Sorrel becomes isolated."

A model answer in five steps, each anchored to a chapter. First, in chapters XII and XIII Arthur meets her in the Chase and the affair begins in secret, so from the start there is something she cannot tell. Second, in chapter XVI Arthur half tries to confess to Mr Irwine and cannot, so the one adult who could have stopped it never learns. Third, in chapter XXVII Adam sees them together, knocks Arthur down, and forces him to write a letter breaking it off, which she reads alone in chapter XXXI. Fourth, she cannot tell the Poysers, whose entire standing in Hayslope is respectability, and she cannot tell Adam, whom in chapter XXXIV she accepts in the hope of saving herself. Fifth, she thinks of Dinah and rejects the idea, because if she tells Dinah other people will come to know at last.

The sentence that lifts it. By the time she leaves the farm in Book Fifth there is not one person alive who knows her condition, and Eliot has built that isolation deliberately, one refusal at a time, so that the reader can see the trial coming before the characters can.

Quick revision

Book First: the workshop, Dinah's preaching, Thias Bede's death, the Hall Farm and the dairy, Hetty's world, the two bed-chambers, the meetings in the wood, and Arthur's failed confession to Mr Irwine.

Book Second: the chapter in which the story pauses, church, Adam at work, the night school.

Book Third: Arthur's coming of age, the feast, the health-drinking, the games and the dance.

Book Fourth: Adam sees them in the Chase and knocks Arthur down; the letter is written and delivered; Mrs Poyser has her say out; Hetty becomes engaged to Adam; the hidden dread.

Test yourself

1. What happens in chapter XXVII, and why is it the pivot? Adam sees Arthur and Hetty together in the Chase, confronts him and knocks him down, and then makes him write a letter breaking off the affair. It ends the friendship, and it sets Hetty on the road she takes in Book Fifth.

2. Why does Hetty accept Adam? Not out of love. She is pregnant and abandoned, and marriage to Adam is the only way she can imagine of avoiding disgrace.

3. What is the significance of chapter XVI? Arthur almost confesses to Mr Irwine and cannot. The novel's tragedy turns on silences, and this is the first and most avoidable of them.

4. Why does Eliot spend a whole book on the birthday feast? To show the community whole and happy immediately before it is broken, so that the reader measures what Hetty and Arthur destroy.

5. What is the contrast in "The Two Bed-Chambers"? Hetty secretly dressing up and admiring herself before a mirror, and Dinah at prayer in the next room. The chapter sets the novel's two women against each other in one image, and it is the shortest route to a character comparison in an answer.

Chapter XLVIII, "Another Meeting in the Wood". Adam and Arthur meet again in the Chase, where the fight happened. Arthur tells him the sentence has been commuted to transportation, and that he is leaving Hayslope himself.

Book Sixth, chapters XLIX to LV

The recovery. Chapters XLIX to LI move the novel back to ordinary life: the Hall Farm, the Bede cottage, Sunday morning. Adam is changed, quieter and older.

Chapters LII to LV. "Adam and Dinah", "The Harvest Supper", "The Meeting on the Hill", "Marriage Bells". Adam realises that he loves Dinah. Dinah, who has resolved on a life of preaching and service, struggles with it and accepts him. They marry.

The epilogue. A short final section set in 1807. Hetty died on the voyage home after her sentence was remitted, so she never returns. Arthur, who has been away with his regiment, comes back ill and much altered. Adam and Dinah have children. Dinah no longer preaches, because the Methodist conference has forbidden women to preach, which is an accurate piece of history and which some readers find the saddest thing in the book.

The reprieve, and what it actually is

A student should be exact about this, because it is often misstated in answers.

Hetty is not acquitted. The verdict stands. She was convicted of child murder and sentenced to death.

What Arthur obtains is a commutation. The sentence of death is replaced by transportation. He obtains it by going to the authorities with everything he knows, which necessarily involves telling them what he did.

It arrives at the last possible moment. The cart has reached the place of execution. Eliot places it there deliberately: the reader is made to feel the machinery running to its end and stopping only because one man finally acted.

It does not save her life in the long run. The epilogue records that she died on the voyage home when the sentence was remitted, which is Eliot refusing the comfortable ending.

What beginners get wrong

They say Hetty is pardoned or found innocent. She is convicted, and the death sentence is commuted to transportation.

They say Arthur rescues her. He arrives with the reprieve, and he is also the reason she is in the cart. An answer should say both.

They forget that the confession is not evidence. Hetty tells Dinah what happened after she has been convicted, in a cell, to a preacher. Nothing she says there was before the jury.

They end the novel at the reprieve. Book Sixth and the epilogue carry the novel's judgment on everybody, and Dinah's silencing is part of it.

A worked answer

Question. Reference to context: "It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman cleaving the crowd at full gallop."

The two-sentence answer. These words are the narrator's, in chapter XLVII of George Eliot's Adam Bede, at the place of execution outside Stoniton, correcting the reader's assumption that the shout from the waiting crowd was a yell of cruelty as the cart carrying Hetty Sorrel and Dinah Morris reached the gallows. The horseman is Arthur Donnithorne, who is carrying what Eliot calls a hard-won release from death, that is, a commutation of Hetty's sentence to transportation, which he has obtained by telling the authorities what he himself had done.

The trap in this passage. It is not a pardon and not an acquittal. The conviction stands, and the epilogue records that Hetty died on the voyage home, so an answer that treats this as a happy ending has missed what Eliot does with it.

Quick revision

XXXVI to XXXVII: the journey of hope to Windsor and the journey in despair back, with the attempt at the pool.

XXXVIII to XL: Adam's search, the news of an arrest at Stoniton, the effect on the Poysers.

XLI to XLIII: the eve, the morning, and the verdict; Sarah Stone and John Olding are the witnesses; guilty, without recommendation to mercy; the black cap and Hetty's shriek.

XLIV to XLVII: Arthur returns; Dinah brings Hetty to confess in the cell; the cart to the gallows; Arthur arrives with a hard-won release from death.

XLVIII: Adam and Arthur meet again in the wood; the sentence is commuted to transportation.

Book Sixth: Adam and Dinah marry. The epilogue: Hetty dies on the voyage home, Arthur returns ill, and Dinah has given up preaching because the conference has forbidden it to women.

Test yourself

1. What exactly does Arthur bring to the gallows? A commutation of the death sentence, described by Eliot as a hard-won release from death. Hetty remains convicted, and the punishment becomes transportation.

2. Who are the two principal witnesses at the trial, and what does each say? Sarah Stone, a widow of Stoniton who took Hetty in and in whose house the child was born and was dressed in clothes she made herself; and John Olding, a labourer who heard a cry in Hetton Coppice, found a baby's hand among the timber choppings, and later found Hetty sitting against the same bush.

3. What does Hetty confess to Dinah, and how does it differ from what the jury believed? That she buried the child in the wood and heard it cry, and went back because it cried, but that she did not kill it with her own hands and that when she returned it was gone. The jury convicted her of murder, without ever hearing her account.

4. Why is the epilogue important? Because it refuses a comfortable ending: Hetty dies on the voyage home, Arthur comes back ill and diminished, and Dinah stops preaching because women have been forbidden to. The novel does not restore what was broken.

5. What is the significance of Adam and Arthur meeting again in the wood? It is the same place as the fight in chapter XXVII, so the novel measures the distance travelled. Arthur brings the news of the commutation and announces that he is leaving Hayslope, which is the only reparation available to him.

Its effect on Adam. He takes hope from it. Hetty took the child with her, so she cannot have meant to kill it; the child may have died naturally and she hid it. Eliot lets the reader share that hope for one page.

Four. John Olding's evidence. A labourer of Tedd's Hole. He saw Hetty in a red cloak sitting under a haystack near Hetton Coppice, looking white and scared. Later, in the wood, he heard a cry, could not place it, went on, came back an hour later, and saw "something odd and round and whitish lying on the ground under a nut-bush". He stooped and found it was a little baby's hand. He dug the child out from among the timber choppings and it was cold. The next morning, returning with a constable, he found Hetty sitting against the same bush with a big piece of bread on her lap.

Its effect. Adam gives a faint groan and hides his face. Eliot writes that it was the supreme moment of his suffering, and Hetty, for the first time in the trial, is seen to tremble.

Five. Character evidence. Mr Irwine goes into the witness box and speaks of Hetty's unblemished character in her own parish and the virtuous habits in which she was brought up. Eliot's comment on it is the most important legal sentence in the novel.

This testimony could have no influence on the verdict, but it was given as part of that plea for mercy which her own counsel would have made if he had been allowed to speak for her, a favour not granted to criminals in those stern times.

Six. The verdict. The jury retire for hardly more than a quarter of an hour. The prisoner is made to hold up her hand. The verdict is "Guilty", and Eliot records that there was a sigh of disappointment from some hearts that it was followed by no recommendation to mercy.

Seven. The sentence. The judge puts on the black cap, the chaplain appears behind him in his canonicals, and the judge speaks her full name, "Hester Sorrel". Then the words MU quoted.

But at the words "and then to be hanged by the neck till you be dead," a piercing shriek rang through the hall. It was Hetty's shriek.

She falls in a fainting fit and is carried out of court.

Why her counsel could not speak for her

This is the point that makes the chapter more than sad, and it should be in every answer on this trial.

The rule. Until 1836, a person on trial for a felony, that is, a serious crime, was not allowed the assistance of counsel in the fullest sense. Counsel could examine and cross-examine witnesses and could argue points of law, but could not address the jury on the facts on the prisoner's behalf. The prisoner had to speak for herself or not at all.

The change. The rule was altered by the Prisoners' Counsel Act 1836, also called the Trials for Felony Act 1836, which allowed counsel to make a full defence for a prisoner charged with felony. Hetty is tried in 1800, so the old rule applies to her.

What it means in this case. Hetty cannot or will not speak. Her counsel may not speak for her on the facts. So the only version of events the jury ever hears is the prosecution's, and the story she eventually tells Dinah in the cell, which is materially different, is told after conviction to a person with no standing in the case.

The question it raises, and it is a good essay question. Would the verdict have been the same if her account had been before the jury? The answer is not obviously yes: her account is of abandonment and panic, not of killing, and a jury told that she went back because she heard it cry might have returned a different verdict, or added the recommendation to mercy that they conspicuously withheld.

The defendant who never speaks

Count what Hetty says in three chapters of trial: nothing. She does not plead. She does not testify, and at this date she could not have testified even if she had wished, because a prisoner was not a competent witness in her own defence. She stands, in Eliot's words, "like a statue of dull despair", her hands crossed and her eyes fixed on them.

The three effects Eliot gets from that silence.

She makes the trial happen to Hetty rather than involve her, which is what a trial felt like to most prisoners in 1800.

She makes the reader supply what the court cannot hear, so that we condemn the process rather than the girl.

She saves the confession for chapter XLV, where it is given to a woman in a cell and to God, and not to a court at all.

How to answer "Describe the trial of Hetty Sorrel"

Paragraph one. The charge, the court, and Hetty's silence at arraignment.

Paragraph two. Sarah Stone's evidence, and why it gives Adam hope.

Paragraph three. John Olding's evidence, and the moment the hope ends.

Paragraph four. What could not be done for her: no address to the jury by counsel, no evidence from the prisoner, character evidence admitted only as a plea for mercy that could not affect the verdict.

Paragraph five. The verdict, the absence of a recommendation to mercy, the black cap, and the shriek.

Paragraph six. The confession in chapter XLV set against the verdict, and your judgment on whether the trial did justice.

What beginners get wrong

They give Hetty a defence speech. She says nothing at any point in the trial.

They say her counsel was incompetent. He was doing everything the law of 1800 permitted, and Eliot says so.

They treat the confession as part of the trial. It comes after conviction, in the condemned cell, to Dinah.

They forget the missing recommendation to mercy. The jury could have added one and did not, and Eliot draws attention to it.

A worked answer

Question. "Describe the trial of Hetty Sorrel."

Paragraph one. Hetty Sorrel is tried at the Stoniton assizes for the murder of her newborn child, in a grand old hall fitted up as a court. Asked whether she pleads guilty or not guilty she does not answer, and a plea of not guilty is entered for her. She says nothing at any point in the trial and gives no evidence, since a prisoner was not then a competent witness in her own defence.

Paragraph two. Two witnesses prove the case. Sarah Stone, a widow of Church Lane, Stoniton, took her in on a Saturday evening in February, saw the child born in her house, made the baby clothes and identified them in court, and returned after an hour and a half to find the candle burning and the girl and the baby gone. John Olding, a labourer, heard a cry in Hetton Coppice, came back an hour later and found a little baby's hand under a nut-bush among timber choppings, and the next morning found Hetty sitting against the same bush.

Paragraph three. Mr Irwine gives evidence of her unblemished character, and Eliot records that it could have no influence on the verdict, being part of a plea for mercy which her own counsel would have made if he had been allowed to speak for her, a favour not granted to criminals in those stern times.

Paragraph four. The jury retire for hardly more than a quarter of an hour and return a verdict of guilty, with no recommendation to mercy, at which Eliot notes a sigh of disappointment. The judge puts on the black cap and speaks her name, and at the words about being hanged by the neck a piercing shriek rings through the hall and she faints and is carried out.

Paragraph five, the judgment. The trial was regular and the girl was unrepresented in the only way that mattered: her account, given afterwards to Dinah in the cell, was never before the jury, and on that account she abandoned a living child and returned because she heard it cry, which is not the same as killing it.

Quick revision

Chapters XLI to XLIII: the eve, the morning, the verdict. Stoniton assizes, a great hall fitted up as a court.

Hetty does not plead; not guilty is entered for her. She never speaks and never gives evidence.

Sarah Stone: the lodging, the birth, the baby clothes she made, the empty room.

John Olding: the cry in the coppice, the baby's hand under the choppings, Hetty against the bush the next morning.

Mr Irwine's character evidence could not affect the verdict; it was part of a plea for mercy that counsel was not allowed to make, because counsel could not address the jury for a prisoner charged with felony until the Prisoners' Counsel Act 1836.

Guilty, with no recommendation to mercy. The black cap, "Hester Sorrel", and the shriek at the words of the sentence.

Test yourself

1. Why does Hetty plead nothing? She does not answer when asked, and the court enters a plea of not guilty on her behalf. She is silent throughout the trial.

2. What could Hetty's counsel do, and what could he not do? He could cross-examine the prosecution witnesses and argue points of law. He could not address the jury on the facts on her behalf, because until the Prisoners' Counsel Act 1836 a prisoner charged with felony was not allowed a full defence by counsel.

3. Why does Eliot say Mr Irwine's evidence could have no influence on the verdict? Because it was character evidence offered in support of a plea for mercy, and a plea for mercy is directed to the sentence and to the prerogative of pardon rather than to the question the jury has to answer.

4. What is the significance of the jury adding no recommendation to mercy? It shows how completely the court was against her. Eliot notes the sigh of disappointment, and the omission is what leaves the death sentence standing until Arthur obtains a commutation.

5. Would her confession have changed the verdict? It is arguable both ways, and an answer should say so. Her account is of abandoning a living child in panic and returning because she heard it cry, which is not the same as killing it, and a jury that heard it might at least have recommended mercy. Against that, the law of the time treated concealment of the child's death by an unmarried mother as strong evidence of murder, which is the subject of the next chapter.

Two. It created a lesser offence. Where a woman was acquitted of the murder, the jury could find her guilty of concealing the birth, punishable by imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

The point for an essay, stated in one sentence. Had Hetty Sorrel been tried three years later, the prosecution would have had to prove that the child was born alive and died by her act, and a jury unable to be sure of that could have convicted her of concealment of birth and sent her to prison for up to two years instead of to the gallows.

George Eliot never cites either Act. She was writing a novel and not a case note. What she does is set the trial precisely in 1800 and describe a procedure that fits that year exactly, and a law student is entitled to supply the rule the novel is silent about.

What Hetty actually did, on her own account

Her confession in chapter XLV is not evidence in the trial, but it is the material for any moral judgment.

I did do it, Dinah... I buried it in the wood... the little baby... and it cried... I heard it cry... ever such a way off... all night... and I went back because it cried.

And then: "I didn't kill it. I didn't kill it myself. I put it down there and covered it up, and when I came back it was gone."

How a lawyer reads that. She abandoned a living child in circumstances where death was practically certain, and she stayed within earshot. Whether that is murder depends on what she intended and foresaw, and on the standard of the time. What it is not is a killing by an act of violence, and the difference is exactly what the presumption in the 1624 Act removed from the jury's consideration.

How the novel reads it. As neither innocence nor wickedness but as terror. She had tried to drown herself and could not. She could not go home and could not go on. The thought of getting rid of the child, in her own words, "came all of a sudden" and then "got stronger and stronger".

The reprieve, and what it actually is

It is not an acquittal and not a pardon. The conviction stands. What Arthur obtains is a commutation: the sentence of death is replaced by transportation.

Who grants it. Not the trial judge. Mercy of this kind was exercised by the Crown, in practice on the advice of the Home Secretary or the judge, and obtaining it meant persuading somebody in authority with new information. That is why Arthur's part is decisive: the new information is his own conduct, and giving it costs him his standing.

The timing is deliberate. The cart has reached the place of execution and the crowd shouts, and Eliot lets the reader believe for a moment that the shout is cruelty. It is Arthur riding through with, in her words, "a hard-won release from death".

And it does not save her. The epilogue records that Hetty died on the voyage home when the sentence was remitted. Eliot refuses to let the rescue undo the story.

Three questions this material answers

"Discuss the trial of Hetty Sorrel with reference to the law of the period." Use the statute, the presumption, the missing witness, and the 1803 change.

"Was justice done to Hetty Sorrel?" Argue it. Against: a presumption that reversed the burden of proof, counsel who could not address the jury, a defendant who could not testify and did not speak, and a father of the child who was never charged with anything. For: a child died as a direct result of what she did, and the community's horror is not manufactured.

"Discuss the responsibility of Arthur Donnithorne." He commits no offence known to the law of 1800. He is nevertheless the cause of everything, and the novel's judgment is that thoughtlessness at the top of a society is paid for at the bottom of it.

What beginners get wrong

They apply modern law. Infanticide as a separate and lesser offence, and the modern rules on diminished responsibility, belong to the twentieth century and not to 1800.

They say Hetty was innocent. She buried a living child. The argument is about what that amounts to in law, not about whether it happened.

They call the reprieve a pardon. It is a commutation of the sentence, and the conviction stands.

They forget the date. Everything in this chapter turns on the trial being in 1800 rather than after 1803.

A worked answer

Question. "Would Hetty Sorrel have been convicted if she had been tried a few years later?"

Step one, fix the date. The novel opens on 18 June 1799 and the trial falls in 1800.

Step two, state the law then in force. The statute of 1624, 21 James I chapter 27, provided that where the mother of an illegitimate child concealed its death she should suffer death as in a case of murder unless she proved by at least one witness that the child was born dead. Concealment was proved against Hetty by both prosecution witnesses, and she had no witness to anything, because she had made certain there was none.

Step three, state the law shortly afterwards. From 1 July 1803 that statute was repealed by Lord Ellenborough's Act, 43 George III chapter 58, which required the prosecution to prove murder in the ordinary way and created the separate lesser offence of concealment of birth, punishable by imprisonment not exceeding two years.

Step four, answer the question asked. Tried in 1804 rather than 1800, Hetty would have faced a prosecution obliged to prove that the child was born alive and died by her act. On the evidence actually given, that it was found cold among timber choppings and that she was sitting nearby, a jury could well have been left in doubt, and the available verdict would then have been concealment of birth and a sentence of up to two years' imprisonment instead of death.

The closing sentence. Nothing about Hetty's conduct would have differed. Only the burden of proof would have moved, and the whole difference between the gallows and a prison term lies in that.

Quick revision

The offence charged: murder of her newborn child, a capital felony.

The governing statute: 21 James I chapter 27 of 1624, which presumed murder where the mother of a bastard child concealed its death, unless she proved by at least one witness that it was born dead.

The effect: the burden of proof lay on Hetty, and she had no witness because she was alone.

Repealed from 1 July 1803 by Lord Ellenborough's Act, 43 George III chapter 58, which restored the ordinary burden of proof and created the lesser offence of concealment of birth, punishable by up to two years' imprisonment.

Her own account: she buried it, heard it cry, went back because it cried, and says she did not kill it herself.

The reprieve is a commutation to transportation, obtained by Arthur, arriving at the place of execution. She dies on the voyage home.

Test yourself

1. Which statute governed a charge of this kind in 1800, and what did it do? The Act of 1624, 21 James I chapter 27. Where the mother of an illegitimate child concealed the child's death, she was to suffer death as in a case of murder unless she could prove by at least one witness that the child was born dead.

2. Why is that rule so damaging to Hetty? Because it reverses the burden of proof. She has to prove the child was born dead, and she gave birth and abandoned the child alone, so there is no witness she could call.

3. What changed in 1803? Lord Ellenborough's Act repealed the 1624 statute, so the prosecution had to prove murder in the ordinary way, and it created a separate lesser offence of concealment of birth punishable by up to two years' imprisonment.

4. What is the difference between what Hetty confesses and what she was convicted of? She was convicted of murdering the child. She confesses to burying it alive, hearing it cry, and returning because it cried, and she insists she did not kill it herself. The difference is between an act of killing and an abandonment whose consequence was death.

5. Explain the legal nature of what Arthur brings. A commutation of the death sentence to transportation, obtained from the authorities on the strength of what he was able to tell them. It is not an acquittal and not a pardon, and the conviction remains.

His judgment of people is poor. He loves Hetty for a character she does not have, and he trusts Arthur completely until the moment in the Chase.

The fight is the turning point of his life as well as hers. He knocks Arthur down and then forces him to write the letter, and what he is defending is not only Hetty but his own view of how the world should work.

Suffering changes him. Bartle Massey stays with him through the trial; he sits by the dock; he hears the sentence. Eliot's judgment is that he learns fellow feeling, which he had not needed before. In Book Sixth he is quieter, gentler and able to forgive Arthur.

What he is for. He is the novel's argument that goodness without imagination is incomplete, and that the thing which completes it is sorrow.

Dinah Morris

Placing. Dinah Morris is a Methodist preacher, a mill worker from Snowfield, Hetty's cousin, and the only person who reaches Hetty at the end.

She is goodness that acts. Where others deplore, she goes: to Lisbeth Bede when Thias drowns, to the sick and poor of Snowfield, to the condemned cell at Stoniton.

Her preaching is the novel's opening set piece. Chapter II puts a woman on the village green addressing a crowd, and the novel takes seriously both her authority and the resistance to it.

The prison scene is what she is in the book for. Hetty is silent and hard. Dinah does not argue, accuse or comfort. She prays aloud, holds her, and waits, and Hetty confesses. It is the only thing in the novel that changes anybody's inner state.

The epilogue complicates her. Dinah has given up preaching, because the Methodist conference has forbidden women to preach. Eliot records it without comment, and it is the most arguable point in any answer on her.

What she is for. She is the one person whose religion is not a manner. Set her against Mr Irwine, who is kind and cultivated and never asks Arthur the question that would have stopped everything.

Arthur Donnithorne

Placing. Arthur Donnithorne is the young squire, heir to the Donnithorne estate, twenty-one at the start of the novel, an officer, and the father of Hetty's child.

He is likeable, and the novel insists on it. He wants to be a good landlord, is generous, is popular with the tenants, and thinks well of himself for good reasons.

He never intends anything. Every stage of the affair is something he means to stop. He resolves after the first meeting in the wood, and again after the second, and he goes to Mr Irwine intending to confess and talks about something else.

He is protected by his position at every point. Nobody can refuse him. Hetty cannot; the Poysers depend on the estate; Mr Irwine is his friend; and no law reaches him at all.

He does the one thing that can be done, too late. He obtains the commutation, which requires him to tell the authorities what he has done, and then leaves Hayslope. In the epilogue he comes back ill and diminished.

What he is for. He is Eliot's demonstration that harm does not require a villain. He is the strongest argument in the book that responsibility and criminal liability are different things.

The others, in short

Mrs Poyser. Hetty's aunt, mistress of the Hall Farm, and the funniest character in Eliot. Her scene with the old squire in chapter XXXII is set on its own.

Mr Irwine. The rector, humane, cultivated, and not searching enough. He gives the character evidence at the trial that cannot affect the verdict.

Seth Bede. Adam's brother, gentle, Methodist, who loves Dinah and accepts that she does not love him.

Bartle Massey. The schoolmaster, sharp-tongued and loyal, who feeds Adam and sits with him through the trial and brings him the news from the courtroom.

Lisbeth Bede. Adam's mother, querulous and devoted.

Distinctions worth a table

What beginners get wrong

They write Hetty as either a victim or a murderess. Eliot wrote a shallow, frightened girl who did a terrible thing, and an answer that will not hold both has not read chapter XVII.

They make Adam faultless. His hardness towards his father and his misjudgment of Hetty are in the text, and his change is the point of his story.

They treat Arthur as a villain. He is worse than a villain for the novel's purposes, because he is ordinary.

They leave Dinah's silencing out. The epilogue's note that she no longer preaches is part of Eliot's judgment on the world of the novel.

A worked answer

Question. "Write a character sketch of Arthur Donnithorne."

A model answer. Arthur Donnithorne is the young squire of Hayslope, heir to the estate, twenty-one years old at the opening of the novel, and the father of Hetty Sorrel's child. The first thing to say about him is that he is likeable, and that George Eliot insists on it: he means to be a good landlord, he is generous, he is popular with the tenants, and he thinks well of himself for reasons that are not false. The second is that he never intends anything. Every stage of the affair is something he resolves to stop, and in chapter XVI he goes to Mr Irwine intending to confess, talks about a hypothetical man in trouble, and leaves without saying it. The third is that his position protects him at every point: Hetty cannot refuse him, the Poysers depend on the estate, the rector is his friend, and no law of 1800 reaches him at all. The fourth is that when he finally acts he acts decisively and too late, obtaining the commutation that arrives at the gallows, which requires him to tell the authorities what he has done, and then leaving Hayslope. What he is for is the novel's demonstration that great harm does not require a villain: he is the strongest argument in the book that moral responsibility and criminal liability are different things.

Why this scores. It refuses the easy line. Calling Arthur a seducer and stopping would miss the whole point Eliot is making about thoughtlessness at the top of a society.

Quick revision

Hetty: beautiful, vain, without imagination for others, utterly alone by Book Fifth, silent at trial, confessing in the cell.

Adam: upright, proud, a poor judge of people, changed by suffering into somebody who can forgive.

Dinah: goodness that acts, the preacher on the green, the only person who reaches Hetty, silenced in the epilogue.

Arthur: likeable, weak, protected by rank, never intends harm, obtains the commutation too late.

Mrs Poyser, Mr Irwine, Seth, Bartle Massey, Lisbeth.

Test yourself

1. Write the opening sentence of a character sketch of Hetty Sorrel. Hetty Sorrel is the seventeen-year-old dairymaid of the Hall Farm whose beauty makes everyone around her imagine a character she does not possess, and George Eliot's achievement is to make the reader see her whole at the moment the law is required to classify her.

2. What is the strongest evidence of Hetty's want of imagination? Chapter IX, "Hetty's World", in which her inner life is shown to consist almost entirely of dress, admiration and the wish to be a lady, with no attention to what anybody else is feeling.

3. How does Adam change, and what changes him? He begins as a man whose standard is duty done and who is hard on those who fail it, and he ends able to pity and to forgive. What changes him is the trial and the months around it, and Eliot presents suffering as the thing that supplies what his uprightness lacked.

4. Is Arthur a villain? No, and that is the criticism. He is generous, popular and well-intentioned, and he causes the whole catastrophe by never intending anything, protected at every stage by a position that makes refusal impossible for the people around him.

5. Why is the prison scene the centre of Dinah's character? Because it is the only moment in the novel in which one person's action changes another's inner state. She does not argue or accuse; she prays aloud and waits, and Hetty, silent through an entire trial, speaks.

Reference to context: the passages that are set

1. "But at the words 'and then to be hanged by the neck till you be dead,' a piercing shriek rang through the hall. It was Hetty's shriek." Chapter XLIII. The narrator, describing the moment sentence of death is passed on Hester Sorrel at the Stoniton assizes, after a verdict of guilty with no recommendation to mercy. It is the first sound Hetty makes in three chapters of trial, and she faints and is carried out of court.

2. "I did do it, Dinah... I buried it in the wood... the little baby... and it cried... I heard it cry... ever such a way off... all night... and I went back because it cried." Chapter XLV. Spoken by Hetty to Dinah Morris in the condemned cell at Stoniton, after Dinah has prayed with her. It is her confession, and it comes after her conviction and so was never before the jury.

3. "I didn't kill it. I didn't kill it myself. I put it down there and covered it up, and when I came back it was gone." Chapter XLV. Also spoken by Hetty to Dinah in the cell, immediately after the confession above. It is the distinction on which any legal discussion of the case turns, between abandoning a child and killing it.

4. "This testimony could have no influence on the verdict, but it was given as part of that plea for mercy which her own counsel would have made if he had been allowed to speak for her, a favour not granted to criminals in those stern times." Chapter XLIII. The narrator, on Mr Irwine's evidence of Hetty's good character. It records the rule that until 1836 counsel for a prisoner charged with felony could not address the jury on the facts.

5. "She didn't speak when they asked her if she'd plead 'guilty' or 'not guilty,' and they pleaded 'not guilty' for her." Chapter XLII. Spoken by Bartle Massey to Adam Bede, reporting what he has seen in court. It establishes that Hetty is silent from the arraignment onwards.

6. "And I saw it was a little baby's hand." Chapter XLIII. The last words of John Olding's evidence about what he found under a nut-bush among the timber choppings in Hetton Coppice. Eliot notes that a thrill ran through the court and that Hetty, for the first time, seemed to be listening.

7. "It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman cleaving the crowd at full gallop." Chapter XLVII. The narrator, at the place of execution, correcting the reader's assumption that the crowd's shout was cruelty. The horseman is Arthur Donnithorne, carrying a hard-won release from death.

8. Chapter XVII, "In Which the Story Pauses a Little". Not a single quotable line but a whole chapter, in which the author stops the narrative to defend her refusal to idealise her characters. It is the source for any question on realism in this novel, and an answer should name the chapter by its title.

Four more the University has actually set

Note. Added by the past paper check. All four are from chapter XLIII, the day of the trial, and three of them are the words of the two witnesses.

A. "Those are the clothes. I made them myself, and had kept them by me ever since my last child was born." Spoken by Sarah Stone, the widow of Church Lane, Stoniton, identifying in court the baby clothes produced as evidence. She adds that she took a deal of trouble for both the child and the mother, and that she could not help taking to the little thing and being anxious about it. The line proves that the child was born alive and cared for in her house, which is the foundation of the case against Hetty.

B. "I left the prisoner sitting up by the fire in the kitchen with the baby on her lap." Spoken by Sarah Stone, describing the evening she went out to fetch an acquaintance because she feared the girl was taking a fever. She came back to find the candle burning and the girl and the baby gone, and it is this departure, with a child a day or two old, that turns the case from misfortune into a charge.

C. "My name is John Olding. I am a labourer, and live at Tedd's Hole, two miles out of Stoniton." The opening of the evidence of the second witness, a rough peasant, who describes seeing a young woman in a red cloak sitting under a haystack near Hetton Coppice about one o'clock in the afternoon. His evidence carries the case to its end, and Adam's hope collapses in the middle of it.

D. "There was a lot of timber-choppings put together just where the ground went hollow, like, under the bush, and the hand came out from among them." Spoken by John Olding, describing what he found in the wood. He says a hole was left in one place through which he could see the child's head, so that he made haste, cleared away the turf and the choppings and took the child out. It is the passage that produces the thrill through the court noted as passage 6 above.

How to place a passage from this novel

Names. Adam, Seth, Hetty, Dinah, Arthur, Irwine, Poyser, Bartle Massey and Lisbeth belong only to this text.

Places. Hayslope, the Hall Farm, the Chase, Snowfield, Stoniton.

Register. Eliot's narrator speaks in long, weighted sentences and addresses the reader directly about method, which distinguishes her from Dickens's comic narrator and from Twain's.

Dialect. The Poysers and the Bedes speak a Midlands dialect, but without the "v" and "w" exchange that marks the Wellers in Pickwick.

What beginners get wrong

They call it a novel about a seduction. It is a novel about what a seduction costs, and two thirds of the book is the cost.

They quote chapter XVII without naming it. Naming the chapter and its title is worth a mark.

They confuse the confession with evidence. It is given in the cell after conviction.

They summarise instead of arguing. Every theme above is a proposition, and an answer must take a position on it.

A worked answer

Question. "Deeds have consequences. Discuss with reference to Adam Bede."

Paragraph one, the thesis. George Eliot's moral universe contains no forgiveness that undoes anything. An act produces effects that run on past the person who did it, and fall on people who never chose them, and the novel is constructed to make the reader watch that happen.

Paragraph two, Arthur. Two meetings in a wood in Book First produce a child, a capital charge, a trial and a death, and Arthur is not present for any of it. The novel makes the distance between the act and its consequence the measure of his fault.

Paragraph three, Adam. His blow in chapter XXVII is justified and produces the letter, which produces Hetty's despair, which produces the flight. Even the right action has consequences its author did not intend.

Paragraph four, Hetty. Her concealment is the very thing that convicts her, because the law of 1800 presumed murder from concealment.

Paragraph five, the reprieve. And the consequence outlives even the rescue: Arthur arrives at the gallows with a commutation, and the epilogue records that she died on the voyage home. Eliot will not let the reader off.

Conclusion. The only thing the novel offers against consequence is fellow feeling, which is what Adam acquires through suffering and what Dinah brings into the condemned cell, and neither of them can undo a single fact.

Quick revision

Themes: consequences; realism and the refusal to idealise; rank and who pays; two kinds of religion; work as a moral fact.

Chapter XVII is the author's statement of method and the answer to any question on realism.

The set passages: the sentence of death and Hetty's shriek; the confession; "I didn't kill it myself"; the note on counsel not being allowed to address the jury; the plea entered for her; the baby's hand; and the horseman at the gallows.

The comparison that carries any essay: the same act sends one person abroad with a regiment and the other to the assizes on a capital charge.

Test yourself

1. State the theme of consequences and prove it twice. That an act produces effects which cannot be recalled and which fall on people who did not choose them. Arthur's two meetings in the wood end at a gallows, and the reprieve that saves Hetty from hanging does not save her life, since the epilogue records that she died on the voyage home.

2. Place: "And I saw it was a little baby's hand." The close of John Olding's evidence in chapter XLIII, describing what he found under a nut-bush among timber choppings in Hetton Coppice. It is the moment Adam's hope collapses and the first moment Hetty is seen to listen.

3. What does chapter XVII argue, and why is it relevant to the trial? That the novelist should paint ordinary people as they really are rather than idealise them. It is relevant because the trial requires the law to classify a person the novel has refused to simplify.

4. How does the novel handle the difference between Arthur's position and Hetty's? Without ever stating it as a slogan. He commits no offence known to the law and goes abroad with his regiment; she is tried for a capital felony and sentenced to death. The comparison is left for the reader to make.

5. Why does Eliot correct the reader about the shout at the execution? Because the reader, like the characters, expects cruelty from a crowd at a hanging. Making the shout be excitement at a rider bringing a reprieve is Eliot's way of refusing an easy view of the community, immediately after showing what that community's law was about to do.

Dawson's Landing, and the vocabulary

The place. A small slaveholding town on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey below St Louis, with a first family or two, a judge, a doctor, and everyone's business known to everyone.

Down the river. To be sold to the plantations of the deep South, where the work was harder and life shorter. It is the worst thing that can happen to a slave in this book, it is used as a threat in the second chapter, and it is the last event in the novel.

Chattel. Personal property. A slave was chattel, which is why an estate's creditors can claim a man.

Inventory. The list of a deceased person's property made for the benefit of creditors. The whole ending turns on an item wrongly left off one.

F.F.V. First Families of Virginia, the aristocratic descent the Driscolls and Howards claim.

Pudd'nhead. A fool. Wilson earns the name in chapter I with a joke the town cannot understand, and it costs him his practice for twenty years.

The calendar

Every chapter opens with an epigraph from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar", a set of sardonic maxims. They are Twain's own voice, and they comment on the chapter they head. Two examples a student can use: "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond", which heads the chapter about the twins and speaks to the nature-and-nurture theme, and "Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault", which heads chapter XX, the chapter of the trial.

The people

What beginners get wrong

They think the fingerprints are the murder mystery. The reader knows who did the murder. The suspense is whether Wilson will prove it, and what else the proof will reveal.

They call the twins the villains. They are innocent, accused, and cleared.

They treat the substitution as a fairy tale device. It is the plot's premise and its argument: the switch works because the law's definition of who a person is has nothing to do with the person.

They stop at the trial. The conclusion, with the creditors and the pardon, is where the book's argument lands.

A worked answer

Question. "Why is Pudd'nhead Wilson called a tragedy?"

A model answer. The title page reads The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the word is earned by the last page rather than by the trial. Wilson himself ends well: after twenty years as the town fool he is vindicated and made. The tragedy belongs to three other people. It belongs to Roxana, who exchanged the babies to save her son from being sold down the river and was repaid by being treated as a slave by him, refused when she was ruined, and finally sold down the river by him, so that Twain's last word on her is that the spirit in her eye was quenched and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land. It belongs to the false Tom, who was made cruel and cowardly by twenty-three years of being told he could do as he liked, and who is convicted of murder, pardoned because he is somebody's property, and sold down the river. And it belongs to the real heir, restored at twenty-three to wealth and freedom he cannot use, unable to read or write, at home nowhere, whose story Twain declines to follow because it would be a long one.

The sentence to finish on. A comedy would have ended when the innocent were cleared. This book goes on for three more pages, and every one of them takes something away.

Quick revision

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894, set from 1830 at Dawson's Landing, Missouri, twenty-one chapters and a conclusion.

Roxana is one sixteenth black, her son thirty-one parts white, and both are slaves by what Twain calls a fiction of law and custom.

Wilson is nicknamed Pudd'nhead for a joke in chapter I and keeps finger-print records for twenty years.

Every chapter is headed by a maxim from Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.

The ending: the murderer is convicted, then pardoned by the Governor because he is property, and sold down the river by the creditors.

Test yourself

1. Why is this novel on a law syllabus? Because its plot is built out of legal ideas: that the law defines who a person is by a fraction of descent, that a human being can be an asset on an inventory, and that a new kind of evidence can settle a question the ordinary law of the time could not.

2. What does Twain mean by "a fiction of law and custom"? That Roxy's son, thirty-one parts white in appearance and descent, is treated as black and enslaved because the law says so, not because of anything observable about him. The phrase concedes that the classification is made rather than found.

3. What is the significance of "down the river"? It means being sold to the plantations of the deep South, where conditions were far worse. It is the standing threat in the novel and the punishment with which it ends.

4. What is Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar? A set of sardonic maxims by Wilson, one of which heads every chapter, which serve as Twain's own commentary on the action.

5. How did the novel come to have Italian twins in it? It began as a farce about the twins and became a tragedy about identity as Twain wrote it, and they remained in the finished book, which is why they occupy so much of a novel that is not about them.

VIII, "Marse Tom Tramples His Chance". In chapter VIII Roxy, freed by her master's will and returned to Dawson's Landing after years as a chambermaid on a steamboat, comes to her son for help. She has lost her savings in a bank failure. Tom refuses her contemptuously, and she turns on him.

IX, "Tom Practises Sycophancy". In chapter IX Roxy tells him what he is: not the heir, not white in law, her own son, and a slave whom she put in the cradle. He can be sold if it is known, and from this point she has him.

X, "The Nymph Revealed". Chapter X is where Tom's world collapses. Twain gives him a moment of something like conscience, and then he begins to steal to pay his gambling debts, dressed in the woman's disguise of chapter VII, and to plot.

The three legal facts planted in these chapters

One. A slave is property, and property can be sold. The threat in chapter II is not cruelty for its own sake. It is the exercise of an owner's right, and the diary entry that follows it is a man congratulating himself on not exercising the right fully.

Two. Descent decides status, and appearance does not. Twain states the rule in chapter II in the passage every answer on this book should use:

To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro. She was a slave, and salable as such. Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a negro.

Three. Status passes through the mother. That is why the child of a white father and a slave mother is a slave. The novel does not state the rule as a rule, and it does not need to: the whole plot rests on it, and a law student should be able to name it.

What Roxy's act actually is

Consider it as a lawyer would, because an examiner may ask you to judge her.

In law, at the time, it is a fraud on the estate. She converts one item of her master's property into his heir and removes his heir into slavery. The creditors' complaint in the conclusion is founded on exactly this.

In fact it is a mother saving her child from a fate she has just watched three people beg to avoid. She does not do it for gain and takes nothing for herself.

And the novel makes her pay for it twice. Her son treats her as a slave, and then sells her down the river himself, which is the crime the book cannot forgive.

How to use this in an answer. Say that Twain sets the law's description of the act against the human description, and that the gap between them is the subject of the novel.

What beginners get wrong

They call Roxy a villain. The novel's judgment is on the system that made her choice worth making.

They forget Tom is not the heir from the beginning. He is put in the cradle at seven months and knows nothing about it until chapter IX.

They skip chapter II. The threat of the river is the premise of everything, and an answer that starts at the substitution has left out why it happened.

A worked answer

Question. Reference to context: "by a fiction of law and custom a negro."

The two-sentence answer. These words are the narrator's, in chapter II of Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, describing Roxana's infant son, who is thirty-one parts white and indistinguishable from his master's child but is a slave nonetheless. Twain has just said that the one sixteenth of Roxy which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro, salable as such, and the phrase concedes that the classification is something the law assigns rather than anything that can be observed.

Why an examiner sets it. Because the whole plot depends on it. If identity were a natural fact the exchange in the cradle could not work, and it works precisely because the only difference between the two babies is a legal label and a set of clothes.

Quick revision

I: the joke about the dog; the nickname; the finger-print records.

II: the theft, the threat to sell all four down the river, three confessions, the master's satisfaction, and the passage on the one sixteenth.

III: Roxy exchanges the babies at five months and trains herself to believe it.

IV: the changelings grow; Tom is cruel and Chambers serves him.

V to VII: the twins arrive and are lionised; the calendar entry "Training is everything" heads chapter V; the unknown nymph in Tom's room is Tom in disguise.

VIII to X: Roxy returns ruined, is refused, and tells Tom who he is; Tom turns to theft and disguise. The public kicking is later, in chapter XI.

Test yourself

1. How does Wilson get his nickname, and what does it cost him? He says of a howling dog that he wishes he owned half of it so that he could kill his half. The town takes it literally and concludes he is a fool, and he gets no legal practice for twenty years.

2. What happens in chapter II, and why is it necessary to the plot? Percy Driscoll threatens to sell all four of his slaves down the river unless the thief confesses; three confess in terror; he sells them within the state instead and records his own generosity. It is necessary because it establishes what Roxy is trying to save her son from.

3. Quote and explain the passage on Roxy's status. That the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro, salable as such, and that her child, thirty-one parts white, was also a slave and by a fiction of law and custom a negro. It states that status is assigned by law rather than observed.

4. Why can Roxy's substitution succeed? Because the two children are the same age and indistinguishable in appearance, and because status depends on descent through the mother rather than on anything visible. The only difference between them is their clothes.

5. What does Roxy get for what she did? Her son treats her as a slave, refuses her when she is ruined, and later sells her down the river himself.

XXI, "Doom". The trial's second day, and the whole of it belongs to the next chapter of these notes.

The Conclusion, which the answer must reach

Wilson is made. The town that called him Pudd'nhead for twenty years serenades him, and one wit observes that he has resigned from the position and the rest of them are elected to it.

The twins go home. Cleared, but weary of Western adventure, they retire to Europe.

Roxy is broken. Twain's sentence is exact: "the spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land."

The real heir cannot use his inheritance. Rich and free at twenty-three, he can neither read nor write, his manners are the manners of a slave, he is miserable in the white man's parlour, and the gallery he used to sit in is closed to him. Twain declines to follow him further, saying it would be a long story, which is the coldest line in the book.

And the ending in law. Tom confesses and is sentenced to imprisonment for life. Then the creditors of the Percy Driscoll estate come forward. Their argument, which the town accepts, is that Tom was lawfully their property and had been for eight years, that they had lost his services all that time through an error in the inventory for which they were not to blame, and that if he had been delivered up in the first place they would have sold him and he could not have murdered anybody. Twain records the town's reasoning without comment.

Everybody granted that if "Tom" were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him, it would be no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life, that was quite another matter.

The Governor pardons him at once, and the creditors sell him down the river.

Why the Conclusion is the most important page in the novel

It reverses everything the trial achieved. The trial produced the truth. The Conclusion shows the law setting the truth aside because the truth is inconvenient to a property claim.

It makes the punishment fall on the value, not the wrong. A murderer is released from prison because imprisoning him would waste an asset, and the sentence he actually serves is slavery.

It closes the circle. The book opens with a threat to sell people down the river and ends with a man sold down the river, and the man is the one who sold his own mother there.

It is the answer to the question "is this a comedy?" The title page says The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the last page earns the word.

What beginners get wrong

They stop at the courtroom. The Conclusion is where the argument is.

They say Tom is executed. He is sentenced to imprisonment for life, pardoned, and sold.

They forget the real heir. His fate, unusable freedom, is Twain's judgment on the whole idea that changing a person's legal status changes their life.

They soften chapter XVI. Tom sells his own mother down the river by a trick, and the book's moral arithmetic depends on the reader holding that against him.

A worked answer

Question. "Was justice done at the end of Pudd'nhead Wilson?"

Paragraph one, what the trial achieved. Two innocent men were cleared, a murderer was identified beyond argument, and a fraud twenty-three years old was uncovered. On any ordinary measure the trial was a success, and it was achieved by a lawyer the town had treated as a fool.

Paragraph two, what the Conclusion did to it. The murderer confessed and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. Then the creditors of the Percy Driscoll estate claimed him as property wrongly omitted from an inventory eight years before, argued that they had already lost his services through no fault of theirs, and pointed out that had he been delivered to them he would have been sold and could not have killed anybody. Twain records that everybody saw reason in this, and that everybody granted that punishing a white and free man would be no loss to anybody, while shutting up a valuable slave for life was quite another matter. The Governor pardoned him and the creditors sold him down the river.

Paragraph three, the answer. So justice was done and then undone, and the thing that undid it was not corruption but property law working normally. The punishment that was finally inflicted attached to the man's status and not to his crime.

Paragraph four, the closing observation. The book opens with a threat to sell four people down the river and ends with a man sold down the river, and the man is the one who had earlier sold his own mother there. Twain leaves the arithmetic to the reader.

Quick revision

XI to XII: finger-prints of the twins taken; the kicking; the Judge fights the duel his nephew refused.

XIII to XV: Tom's debts, his thefts, Roxy's discovery.

XVI: Tom sells Roxy down the river.

XVIII to XIX: Roxy escapes and returns; Tom, disguised as a woman, robs Judge Driscoll and kills him with the twins' Indian knife.

XX: the twins are charged; Wilson defends them; the prosecution relies on the bloody finger-prints on the knife.

XXI: the proof in court.

Conclusion: Tom confesses and is sentenced to life; the creditors claim him as property left off an inventory; the Governor pardons him and they sell him down the river.

Test yourself

1. Why does Tom murder Judge Driscoll? For money. He needs it to buy his mother out of slavery after she escapes and forces him to act, and he is discovered while robbing his uncle's cash box and kills him with the stolen Indian knife.

2. What does Tom do to Roxy in chapter XVI? He sells his own mother into slavery, telling her it will be to a farmer up the river, and she is sold to a planter in the deep South.

3. What is the creditors' argument in the Conclusion? That Tom was lawfully their property for eight years, that they lost his services through an error in the inventory for which they were not to blame, and that had he been delivered up to them he would have been sold and could not have committed the murder.

4. Why does the Governor pardon a convicted murderer? Because as a slave he is a valuable asset belonging to the creditors, and imprisoning him for life would take that value away from people who had done nothing wrong. Twain reports that everybody saw the reason in this.

5. What happens to the real heir, and why does Twain include it? He is suddenly rich and free at twenty-three, cannot read or write, has the manners of a slave, and is at home nowhere. Twain includes it to show that reversing a legal status does not undo what the status did to a person.

Step three: he explains the science before he uses it. He tells the court that every human being carries from cradle to grave physical marks which do not change, by which he can always be identified without shade of doubt. They are, he says, a man's "physiological autograph", which cannot be counterfeited, disguised, hidden or worn away. Not the face, which age changes; not the hair, which falls out; not the height or the form, of which duplicates exist.

Step four: he makes the evidence visible. He has enlarged his glass-plate records ten times with a pantograph onto white cardboard and reinforced every line with ink, so that patterns which look alike to the naked eye can be told apart at a distance of many feet.

Step five: he lets the jury do the comparing. He hands the foreman a powerful magnifying glass. The jury compare the accused men's prints with the marks on the window panes, and report that they are identical. They compare the same cardboard with the signature on the knife handle, and report that they are exactly identical. Then he asks them to compare the prints of the accused with the prints left by the assassin, and the foreman answers: "They do not even resemble."

Step six: he turns from acquittal to accusation. "These men are innocent. I have no further concern with them. We will now proceed to find the guilty."

Step seven: the infant records. He produces the finger-prints of two children, called A and B, taken at five months and again at seven months. Each child's two sets tally. Then he produces prints of each at eight months, and neither tallies with that child's earlier ones. He gives the jury the explanation: somebody changed those children in the cradle, between seven months and eight months, and the person who did it is in this house.

Step eight: the identification. He produces A's print at the age of twelve, and asks the jury to compare it with the assassin's signature on the knife handle. The foreman answers: "To the minutest detail!" Wilson then names him.

The murderer of your friend and mine, York Driscoll of the generous hand and the kindly spirit, sits in among you. Valet de Chambre, negro and slave, falsely called Thomas à Becket Driscoll, make upon the window the finger-prints that will hang you!

Tom slides to the floor in a faint. Wilson's last words in the scene are "There is no need. He has confessed."

What is proved, and what is only guessed

An examiner will reward a candidate who separates them.

Proved by the records. That the marks on the knife are not the twins'. That the marks on the knife are the accused Tom's. That the two children were exchanged between seven and eight months. All three rest on the same physical evidence and are checked by the jury themselves.

Guessed, and admitted by Twain to be guessed. The motive of robbery. The person in the room beforehand. The man in woman's clothes at the back gate. Twain says explicitly that Wilson tried "a few hardy guesses" which could help if they hit and would probably do no harm if they missed.

The point worth making in an essay. Wilson wins by combining certainty with bluff, and Twain tells the reader which is which. That honesty is what makes the chapter a study of advocacy and not just a conjuring trick.

Would a court in 1830 have accepted it?

This is the best question that can be asked about the chapter, and the honest answer has three parts.

No court did. Fingerprint identification was developed as a system in the later nineteenth century, decades after 1830 and only shortly before Twain wrote in 1894. The novel is deliberately anachronistic.

The demonstration is designed to answer that objection. Notice that Wilson never asks the court to take the science on trust. He explains the principle, enlarges the marks so that they can be seen from across the room, and then has the jury perform every comparison themselves with a magnifying glass. It is proof by demonstration rather than by expert opinion, which is exactly how a court with no rule on the subject could have been persuaded.

And Twain knows what he is doing. The epigraph he puts at the head of chapter XX is "Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault." He heads the chapter of circumstantial evidence with a warning against it, and then supplies the one kind of evidence that is not.

What beginners get wrong

They say Wilson denies the prosecution's case. He grants its central claim, and that is the point.

They say he calls an expert. He is the expert, and he asks to be sworn and to testify himself, but the comparisons are made by the jury.

They think the finger-prints only identify the murderer. They also prove the exchange in the cradle, which is what turns an acquittal into a tragedy.

They forget the two children. A and B, at five, seven and eight months, are the second half of the proof and the half candidates omit.

A worked answer

Question. MU's own: "Discuss in detail the evidences presented by Puddn'head Wilson."

Paragraph one, the position. Wilson wins by conceding the prosecution's central claim and then proving that it destroys their case rather than his, and his evidence is of one kind only: finger-prints, made usable by enlargement and verified by the jury themselves.

Paragraph two, the concession. The prosecution urged persistently that the person whose blood-stained finger-prints were on the knife handle was the murderer. Wilson rose and granted it, to general astonishment, because once granted, the prosecution's own proposition acquits his clients the moment the prints are shown to be somebody else's.

Paragraph three, the explanation before the proof. He told the court that every human being carries from cradle to grave physical marks that never change, a physiological autograph that cannot be counterfeited, disguised, hidden or worn away by time, and which is not the face, the hair, the height or the form, because duplicates of all of those exist.

Paragraph four, the method. He had made pantograph enlargements ten times the natural size on white cardboard, with every line reinforced in ink, so that patterns which look identical to the naked eye can be distinguished across a courtroom. He then handed the foreman a magnifying glass and made the jury do every comparison.

Paragraph five, the four comparisons. The accused men's prints against the window panes: identical. The same against the knife handle: exactly identical. The accused men's prints against the assassin's: they do not even resemble. And then the infant records of two children marked A and B, tallying at five and seven months and not at eight, which proves that the children were exchanged in the cradle, followed by A's print at the age of twelve against the knife: to the minutest detail.

Paragraph six, the honest qualification. Not everything Wilson said was proved. Twain tells the reader that the motive of robbery, the person in the room beforehand and the figure in woman's clothes at the back gate were hardy guesses hazarded to fill gaps, and that Wilson watched Tom's face to see whether they had hit. A full answer separates the proof from the bluff, because the chapter is a study of advocacy and not only of science.

Quick revision

Prosecution: the twins' knife, found in the room, bloody prints on the handle left by the murderer, the twins standing over the body, motive, and the unclaimed reward.

Wilson grants that the prints on the handle are the murderer's.

He explains the physiological autograph: unchanging from cradle to grave, not counterfeitable, not the face or hair or height or form.

He enlarges the records ten times with a pantograph and inks the lines.

The jury compare: the twins' prints match the window panes, and do not even resemble the knife.

The infant records of A and B tally at five and seven months and not at eight: the children were exchanged in the cradle.

A's print at twelve matches the knife to the minutest detail. Tom faints, and Wilson says he has confessed.

Test yourself

1. Why does Wilson concede the prosecution's main claim? Because it makes their case depend entirely on the prints being the twins'. Once he shows the prints are somebody else's, the prosecution's own proposition proves his clients innocent.

2. What does Wilson mean by a physiological autograph? The pattern on the ball of a finger, which he says every human being carries from cradle to grave, which does not change, which cannot be counterfeited, disguised, hidden or worn away, and of which there is no duplicate among all the people in the world.

3. How does he make the evidence usable by a jury? By enlarging his glass-plate records ten times with a pantograph onto white cardboard and inking every line, so that patterns can be distinguished at a distance, and then having the jurymen make each comparison themselves with a magnifying glass.

4. What do the records of children A and B prove? That each child's prints at five and seven months tally with each other, that neither tallies with the print taken at eight months of the child bearing the same letter, and therefore that the two children were exchanged in the cradle between seven and eight months.

5. Distinguish what Wilson proved from what he guessed. Proved: that the knife prints are not the twins', that they are Tom's, and that the children were exchanged. Guessed: that the motive was robbery, that somebody was in the room before the twins, and that the figure at the back gate was a man in woman's clothes. Twain says the guesses were hazarded to fill gaps, and that Wilson watched Tom's face to see whether they had hit.

The sale of Roxy, chapter XVI. Tom sells his own mother. He can do it because she is saleable and because a sale is a transaction the law will support.

The Conclusion. Tom is convicted of murder and sentenced to imprisonment for life. Then the creditors of the Percy Driscoll estate claim him as an asset wrongly omitted from an inventory eight years earlier, and argue that they should not bear the loss of his services. Twain reports the town's reasoning without adding a word of his own.

Everybody granted that if "Tom" were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him, it would be no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life, that was quite another matter.

The Governor pardons him and the creditors sell him down the river.

What the ending actually says about law

Three propositions, and any of them will carry an essay.

One. Property beat crime. A murderer's punishment was set aside because carrying it out would have destroyed value belonging to innocent third parties. The criminal law simply gave way.

Two. Punishment attached to status, not to conduct. The same man, if white, would have gone to prison. Being a slave, he went to the plantations. The wrong he did made no difference to which happened.

Three. The law's own paperwork decided a life. The creditors' claim rests on an error in an inventory. A clerical omission eight years earlier is what stands between a man and a life sentence, and Twain lets that sit without comment.

Identity, and the nature-and-nurture question

An examiner may set this as a theme rather than a legal question, and the two overlap.

The novel's evidence for nurture. The false Tom, raised as a master's son, is spoiled, cowardly and cruel. The real heir, raised as a slave, is servile. When they are restored to their true positions, the real heir cannot use his freedom: he cannot read, his manners are a slave's, and Twain says he was at home nowhere. Twenty-three years of treatment produced two people, and their birth had nothing to do with it.

The novel's complication. Twain also writes lines that sound like the older view, that Tom's bad qualities came from "the nigger in him", and readers have argued about them for a century. The best position for a student is that these are Tom's own thoughts and the town's assumptions, reported by a narrator who spends the whole book demonstrating the opposite, and that the calendar entry heading chapter V settles Twain's own view: "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond."

What beginners get wrong

They describe the rule as "the one-drop rule" without checking. In this book the fractions are stated: one sixteenth for Roxy, thirty-one parts white for her son. Use Twain's own figures.

They think the pardon is mercy. It is an accounting decision, and Twain makes the reasoning explicit.

They treat the substitution as unbelievable. It is believable exactly because the law's categories had no physical content, which is the argument.

They leave the creditors out of an answer on the law. The creditors are the law's last word in this book.

A worked answer

Question. "How does the law of slavery drive the plot of Pudd'nhead Wilson?"

Step one, name the three rules the novel never states. That the status of a child follows the mother, so a slave woman's child is a slave whoever the father was; that a fraction of ancestry classifies a person regardless of appearance; and that a slave is chattel, capable of being bought, sold, mortgaged, inventoried on death and claimed by creditors.

Step two, show the first two producing the premise. Roxy is one sixteenth black and looks white. Her son is thirty-one parts white. Both are slaves, and Twain writes that the boy is a negro by a fiction of law and custom. Because nothing physical corresponds to the difference, two indistinguishable babies can be given opposite futures by changing their clothes.

Step three, show the third producing the plot's four turning points. Percy Driscoll can lawfully threaten to sell four human beings down the river for a small theft, which is what frightens Roxy into acting. Roxy can be sold by her own son in chapter XVI. And in the Conclusion the creditors can claim a convicted murderer as an asset left off an inventory.

Step four, state the conclusion. The law of slavery is not background in this novel; it is the mechanism. It supplies the motive for the substitution, the means of the worst act in the book, and the ending, in which a murderer is pardoned because imprisoning him would waste value belonging to somebody else.

Quick revision

Three rules assumed and never stated: status follows the mother; a fraction of ancestry classifies; a slave is chattel.

Twain's phrase: "by a fiction of law and custom a negro". Roxy one sixteenth black, her son thirty-one parts white, both slaves.

Four legal events: the threat to sell four slaves down the river; the exchange in the cradle; the sale of Roxy by her son; and the creditors' claim in the Conclusion.

The ending: convicted, sentenced to life, pardoned because he is a valuable asset, and sold down the river.

Nature and nurture: two boys shaped entirely by how they were treated, and a calendar entry that says training is everything.

Test yourself

1. State the three legal rules the plot assumes. That the status of a child follows the mother, so a slave woman's child is a slave; that a fraction of ancestry classifies a person as black regardless of appearance; and that a slave is chattel, capable of being sold, inventoried and claimed by creditors.

2. Quote and explain Twain's phrase about the fiction. That Roxy's child was "by a fiction of law and custom a negro". A legal fiction is something treated as true for legal purposes although known not to be true, and Twain is saying the classification is an assignment made by law rather than a description of the person.

3. Why does the exchange in the cradle succeed? Because the two babies are indistinguishable and the only things that separate them are their clothes and a legal label. Nothing physical corresponds to the difference the law makes.

4. Explain the legal position at the end of the novel. Tom confesses to murder and is sentenced to imprisonment for life. The creditors of the Percy Driscoll estate then claim him as their property, wrongly left off an inventory eight years before, and argue they should not lose his value. The Governor pardons him and the creditors sell him down the river.

5. What does the ending show about the relationship between property law and criminal law in that society? That property won. A man's punishment for murder was set aside because inflicting it would have destroyed an asset belonging to somebody else, so what happened to him was decided by his status as property and not by what he had done.

She is broken at the end, and Twain says so in one sentence. "The spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land."

What she is for. She is the human cost of the system, and the proof that the novel's real subject is not a detective puzzle. Any answer that treats Pudd'nhead Wilson as a mystery story has to explain away Roxy.

Tom Driscoll, that is, Valet de Chambre

Placing. Roxy's son, put into the master's cradle at seven months, raised as Thomas à Becket Driscoll, heir to Judge Driscoll, and revealed in court as a slave and a murderer.

He is thoroughly bad and the novel explains him. He is cruel to Chambers as a boy, a gambler and a thief as a young man, a coward at the public meeting, a man who robs his own uncle and kills him, and a son who sells his mother.

He was made, not born. He is thirty-one parts white and would have been Chambers if the blankets had not been swapped. The whole force of the character is that his qualities came from being told all his life that he could do as he liked.

He collapses instantly when the proof arrives. He does not deny the finger-prints, fight, or run. He faints, and Wilson says, "There is no need. He has confessed."

His end is the novel's argument. Sentenced to life imprisonment, pardoned because he is somebody's property, and sold down the river, which is where the book began.

Chambers, the real heir

Placing. Percy Driscoll's son, put into the slave's cradle at seven months, raised as Chambers, and restored to his name and fortune at twenty-three.

He is barely a character, and that is the point. He has almost no lines. Twain gives him a childhood of being beaten for Tom's faults and a servility that becomes second nature.

The restoration destroys him. Rich and free, he cannot read or write, his speech is the dialect of the slave quarter, his manners are a slave's, he cannot bear the white man's parlour, and the gallery where he used to sit in church is closed to him.

Twain refuses to follow him. "But we cannot follow his curious fate further, that would be a long story." A student should quote that line, because the refusal is a judgment.

The others, in short

Judge York Driscoll. The Judge, a man of the old code, who fights the duel his nephew would not and is murdered by him. Twain calls him, in Wilson's mouth, "York Driscoll of the generous hand and the kindly spirit".

Percy Driscoll. Tom's supposed father, whose threat to sell his slaves begins the plot and whose insolvent estate ends it.

Luigi and Angelo Capello. The Italian twins, lionised, then accused, then acquitted, then retired to Europe. They are the accident of the book's composition, and they carry the false accusation the plot needs.

Pembroke Howard. Friend of the Judge, and counsel for the prosecution at the trial.

Distinctions worth a table

What beginners get wrong

They call Wilson the hero and stop. He is vindicated, but the novel's last pages are about Roxy and Chambers, not about him.

They treat Roxy as a criminal. The novel makes the reader understand her before it lets anybody judge her.

They explain Tom by his ancestry. The whole design of the book contradicts that, and the calendar entry "Training is everything" is Twain's own answer.

They forget Chambers. He is the control in the experiment, and an answer that leaves him out has only half the argument.

A worked answer

Question. "Write a character sketch of Roxana."

A model answer. Roxana is a slave in Percy Driscoll's household, one sixteenth black and to all appearance white, nurse to two infants and mother of one of them, and she is the strongest presence in the novel. Twain introduces her as majestic in form and stature, with a noble and stately grace, easy and independent among her own people and necessarily meek before white ones, and gives her the liveliest speech in the book. Her decisive act is made out of terror rather than ambition: she has just watched three fellow slaves confess to a theft they did not commit rather than be sold down the river, and she exchanges the babies in the cradle to put her own son beyond that reach, taking nothing for herself. The novel then makes her pay for it in three instalments, and each is worse than the last: her son treats her as a slave because she has made him a master, he refuses her when she returns ruined, and in chapter XVI he sells her by a trick to a planter in the deep South. When it is over Twain does not describe her feelings but her bearing: the spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land. What she is for is to make the book a tragedy rather than a detective story, and any answer that treats Pudd'nhead Wilson as a puzzle has to explain her away.

Quick revision

Wilson: nicknamed for a joke, unemployed for twenty years, keeps finger-print records, wins the case by conceding the prosecution's claim, and is cheered by the people who mocked him.

Roxy: one sixteenth black, magnificent, exchanges the babies to save her son from the river, is treated as a slave by him, sold down the river by him, and broken at the end.

Tom: raised as an heir, cruel, cowardly, a thief, a murderer, sells his mother, faints when the prints are compared, and is pardoned and sold.

Chambers: raised as a slave, restored and useless, whose story Twain declines to tell.

Test yourself

1. Why does Wilson lose twenty years of his career? Because of a single remark in chapter I, that he wished he owned half of a howling dog so that he could kill his half, which the town took literally and treated as proof that he was a fool.

2. What is the strongest sentence in the book about Roxy's fate? "The spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land."

3. How does the novel explain Tom's character? By his upbringing. He is thirty-one parts white and was born a slave, and everything he becomes follows from being raised as a master's son who could do as he liked, which is why the calendar entry "Training is everything" heads a chapter of the book.

4. Why does Twain include Chambers's fate? Because Chambers is the control case. The same exchange made one boy a tyrant and the other a servant, and restoring the second to wealth and freedom cannot undo twenty-three years, which shows that the damage was done by treatment and not by birth.

5. Is Wilson's vindication a happy ending? Only for him, and Twain undercuts even that: the same town that called him a pudd'nhead for twenty years now cheers every word he says, and one of them observes that the title is not vacant because they have elected themselves to it.

Reference to context: the passages that are set

1. "It's so! Heavens, what a revelation! And for twenty-three years no man has ever suspected it!" Chapter XXI, in the section where Wilson works through the night. Spoken by David Wilson alone in his room, at the moment he realises from his own finger-print records that the two children were exchanged in the cradle twenty-three years earlier. MU set this in February 2026 and asked what the revelation was and who had hidden the truth: the revelation is the substitution, and the person who hid it is Roxana.

2. "To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro." Chapter II. The narrator, introducing Roxana. It continues that her child was thirty-one parts white and was also a slave, "by a fiction of law and custom a negro", and it is the passage on which every legal reading of the novel rests.

3. "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education." The epigraph to chapter V, from Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar. Twain's own comment, and the novel's clearest statement of the nature and nurture theme.

4. "Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault." The epigraph to chapter XX, from the Calendar. It heads the chapter in which the twins are charged on circumstantial evidence, and it is the warning the novel then answers with a different kind of proof.

5. "This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which Nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet." Chapter XXI. Part of Wilson's explanation to the court of what a finger-print is, in the speech in which he calls it a man's "physiological autograph" which cannot be counterfeited, disguised, hidden, or made illegible by time.

6. "The murderer of your friend and mine, York Driscoll of the generous hand and the kindly spirit, sits in among you." Chapter XXI. Spoken by Wilson in court, at the moment he turns from clearing the twins to naming the murderer, and immediately before he calls on Valet de Chambre, falsely called Thomas à Becket Driscoll, to make the finger-prints that will hang him.

7. "Everybody granted that if 'Tom' were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him, it would be no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life, that was quite another matter." The Conclusion. The narrator, reporting the town's reasoning on the creditors' claim. The Governor then pardons the murderer, and the creditors sell him down the river.

8. "The spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land." The Conclusion. The narrator, on Roxana after everything. It is the novel's last word on the person who set the plot in motion.

Three more the University has actually set

Note. Added by the past paper check. All three are from the trial in chapter XXI.

A. "I have other testimony, and better." Spoken by Wilson in court, after he has told the judge that he will not call the witnesses whose evidence has just been given against his clients. The room takes it for a surrender, and murmurs that he gives up without hitting a lick; the line is the hinge of the trial, because the better testimony he means is the finger-print record he has been keeping for twenty-three years.

B. "Between the ages of seven months and eight months those children were changed in the cradle, and the person who did it is in this house!" Spoken by Wilson at the climax of his address to the court, after one of what Twain calls his effect-collecting pauses. Roxy, sitting in the room, is the person he means, and the sentence turns a murder trial into the exposure of a substitution made twenty-three years earlier.

C. Mr Rogers and Mr Buckstone. Not a quotation but a question the University has set: who they are. They are the two townsmen who ran into the house behind Mrs Pratt on the night of the murder and found the twins standing over Judge Driscoll's body. The twins asked them to examine their hands and clothes for blood and no stains were found, and both men afterwards gave confirmatory evidence at the trial. Buckstone also appears earlier in the book as the local political organiser who takes the twins to the anti-rum meeting.

D. "De Lord have mercy on me, po' misable sinner dat I is!" Spoken by Roxy in court, flung on her knees with her face in her hands, at the moment Wilson names her as the person who changed the children in the cradle. It is her only utterance at the trial, it is her confession, and the clock strikes twelve immediately afterwards.

E. "We not only grant that claim, but we welcome it and strongly endorse it." Spoken by Wilson to the court, accepting rather than disputing the prosecution's contention about the knife. It is his method throughout the trial: he concedes everything that can be conceded, so that the one thing he does dispute, the identity of the hand that held the knife, carries the whole case.

How to place a passage from this novel

Names. Roxy, Roxana, Pudd'nhead, Wilson, Chambers, Driscoll, Luigi, Angelo, Dawson's Landing.

Vocabulary. Down the river, the calendar, finger-prints, pantograph.

Voice. The calendar epigraphs are aphorisms with a sting, unlike anything else on this paper. Roxy's dialect is American and unmistakable.

What beginners get wrong

They call it a detective novel. The reader knows who did the murder from chapter XIX. The book is about identity and slavery, and the detection is the instrument.

They quote the calendar without saying what it is. Name it: Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, one entry at the head of every chapter, Twain's own commentary.

They end at the courtroom. The Conclusion reverses it, and the argument is there.

They read the passages about Tom's ancestry as Twain's view. Attribute them to the town and to Tom, and set the design of the whole novel against them.

A worked answer

Question. "Discuss irony as the method of Pudd'nhead Wilson."

Paragraph one, define and claim. Irony is a gap between what is intended and what happens, created deliberately so that the reader sees it. In this novel it is not an occasional effect but the structure: almost every important intention produces its own reverse.

Paragraph two, the central case. Roxana exchanges the babies to save her son from being sold down the river. He grows up to sell her down the river, and at the end of the book he is sold down the river himself. One decision, taken out of love, produces both of those.

Paragraph three, the others in one sweep. Wilson's hobby makes him a laughing-stock for twenty years and then makes his reputation in a single morning. The exchange that gave Tom his position is the very thing that identifies him as the murderer, because it left two sets of infant prints that do not match. The trial produces the truth and the Conclusion sets the truth aside for a debt. And the real heir is restored to wealth and freedom he cannot use.

Paragraph four, the calendar. Twain reinforces it by heading every chapter with a maxim from Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, and by putting at the head of the chapter of circumstantial evidence the line "Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault", immediately before supplying the one kind of evidence that is not.

Conclusion. The irony is not decoration or wit. It is how Twain argues: a society whose categories are fictions will produce outcomes that reverse the intentions of everyone inside it.

Quick revision

Themes: identity as a legal fiction; nature and nurture; the town's unrevisable judgment; slavery and property; and irony as the novel's method.

The irony table: Roxy saved her son and he sold her; Wilson's folly made him; the exchange convicted the man it enriched; the trial found truth and the Conclusion set it aside.

Set passages: "what a revelation"; the one sixteenth; training is everything; circumstantial evidence; the physiological autograph; "sits in among you"; the creditors' reasoning; and the last sentence on Roxy.

Test yourself

1. Place: "It's so! Heavens, what a revelation! And for twenty-three years no man has ever suspected it!" David Wilson, alone in his room in chapter XXI, on realising from his own finger-print records that the two children were exchanged in the cradle. The revelation is the substitution, and the person who concealed it for twenty-three years is Roxana.

2. Explain the title's use of the word tragedy. The book's full title is The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson. The tragedy is not Wilson's, since he is vindicated: it is Roxana's, who saved her son and was sold by him; the false Tom's, who was made by an upbringing he did not choose; and the real heir's, who is restored to a life he cannot live.

3. Give three examples of irony in the novel. Roxy exchanges the babies to save her son from being sold down the river, and he sells her down the river and is himself sold there. Wilson's hobby makes him a laughing-stock for twenty years and then makes his reputation. And the exchange that gave Tom his position is the very thing that identifies him as the murderer.

4. What does the Calendar contribute? It supplies Twain's own voice as a running commentary. Each chapter is headed by a maxim which comments on it, and two of them state the novel's central positions: that training is everything, and that even the clearest circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault.

5. Why is the Conclusion essential to any answer on this novel? Because it reverses the justice the trial achieved. The murderer is pardoned because he is somebody's property and imprisoning him would waste value, and he is sold down the river. It is the point at which the novel says plainly that in this society property outranked crime.

Two consequences follow, and both are in the text. Socrates says that if there were a law at Athens, as there is in other cities, that a capital cause should not be decided in one day, he believes he would have convinced them. And because the court had to pick one of the two proposed penalties, the counter-penalty Socrates proposed was itself a decision about whether he lived.

The charge

Socrates has the affidavit read and states it.

Socrates is a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other new divinities of his own.

Break it into counts, as he does. First, corrupting the young. Second, not believing in the gods the city acknowledges. Third, introducing new divinities of his own. The second and third are in tension, and Socrates uses that tension to destroy Meletus in cross-examination.

The older accusers, which is the part students miss

Before he answers Meletus, Socrates says he must answer an older and more dangerous set of accusers: the reputation built up over many years, by people he cannot name and cannot cross-examine, that there is "one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause."

Why this matters. He is describing prejudice, and he says exactly why it is harder to fight than a charge: it began when the jurors were children, the case went by default because there was nobody to answer it, and he must "simply fight with shadows in my own defence, and argue when there is no one who answers."

The legal point. This is the clearest statement in ancient literature of something every lawyer meets: that the accusation on the paper is not always the accusation being tried.

What was really on trial

The Apology never says so, and a careful answer marks the difference between what the text states and what history supplies.

What the text gives. Socrates has made enemies by going to politicians, poets and artisans, showing each of them that they did not know what they thought they knew, and being hated for it.

What the background supplies. Athens had recently lost a war and endured an oligarchy, and men who had been close to Socrates had been prominent in the city's disasters. A prosecution on a charge of impiety was one of the few ways to reach a man whose real offence was influence.

How to use it. Say that the indictment charged impiety and the trial was about something else, and that Socrates himself points at the something else when he insists that his real accusers are old, anonymous and unanswerable.

Why a law syllabus sets it

It is the oldest surviving speech of defence. Everything on this paper about advocacy has a common ancestor here.

It poses the question of conscience against the State. Socrates says plainly that if the court offered to release him on condition that he stopped philosophising, he would refuse and obey God rather than them. That is civil disobedience stated at its source, and MU sets Gandhi two topics later.

It shows what a fair trial is by showing one that was not. No counsel, one day, no appeal, a jury of hundreds voting immediately, and a prejudice older than the charge.

And it is about a man who would not plead. He refuses to bring his family into court to weep, refuses to beg, and says he would rather die having spoken after his own manner than speak in their manner and live.

What beginners get wrong

They translate the title as an apology in the modern sense. It means a defence.

They think Socrates wrote it. He wrote nothing. Plato did.

They say he was tried for atheism. The charge as recorded has three counts, and the second and third contradict each other, which is the hinge of his cross-examination of Meletus.

They forget it is three speeches. Defence, counter-penalty, and last words, delivered at three different stages.

A worked answer

Question. "What was Socrates charged with, and was the charge the real reason for his trial?"

A model answer. The affidavit, as Socrates has it read in court, was that he is a doer of evil who corrupts the youth, and who does not believe in the gods of the state but has other new divinities of his own. That is a charge of impiety with a count of corrupting the young attached, and it is what the court formally tried. Socrates himself says that it was not the real reason. He devotes the first part of his defence to what he calls his older accusers: a reputation, built up over many years by people he cannot name and cannot cross-examine, that he speculated about the heavens and the earth and made the worse appear the better cause. Those accusers, he says, began when the jurors were children, and the case went by default because there was nobody to answer it, so that he must fight with shadows. Behind that lay the enmity he had earned by questioning politicians, poets and artisans in public until each was shown not to know what he claimed to know, and behind that again lay a city that had recently lost a war and suffered an oligarchy and had reason to distrust a man of his influence.

The sentence to close on. The indictment charged impiety; the trial was about a lifetime of asking people questions they could not answer, and Socrates is the first defendant on record to have said so in open court.

Quick revision

Apology means a defence, not an expression of regret.

Athens, 399 BC. Socrates is over seventy and in a court for the first time. Plato wrote the account and is named in it.

Accusers: Meletus, supported by Anytus and Lycon.

The charge: a doer of evil who corrupts the youth, does not believe in the gods of the state, and has other new divinities of his own.

The older accusers: an anonymous reputation that he searched the heaven above and the earth beneath and made the worse appear the better cause.

The court: a private prosecutor, a large citizen jury, no advocates, one day, no appeal, and a penalty chosen between the two proposed.

Three speeches: the defence, the counter-penalty, and the last words.

Test yourself

1. What does the word apology mean here? A defence, from the Greek apologia, meaning a speech made in answer to an accusation. Socrates expresses no regret at any point.

2. State the charge in the words Socrates has read out. That Socrates is a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth, and who does not believe in the gods of the state but has other new divinities of his own.

3. Who are the older accusers, and why does Socrates fear them more? The anonymous makers of his reputation, who told the jurors when they were children that there was one Socrates who speculated about the heaven above and searched the earth beneath and made the worse appear the better cause. He fears them more because he cannot name them or cross-examine them, and because the charge went unanswered for years.

4. Give three ways this trial differs from a modern criminal trial. The prosecutor was a private citizen rather than the State; the accused spoke for himself with no counsel; and the whole capital case was decided in a single day with no appeal, the penalty being chosen by the same jury between the two proposals put to it.

5. Why is this text on a law syllabus? Because it is the oldest surviving speech of defence, because it states the conflict between individual conscience and the authority of the State in its original form, and because it shows, from the inside, a trial in which prejudice older than the indictment decided the outcome.

The cross-examination of Meletus

This is the passage a law student should enjoy most, because it is an advocate's cross-examination conducted by the accused.

Point one, on corrupting the young. He gets Meletus to say that everybody in Athens improves the young except Socrates, who alone corrupts them, and then asks whether the same is true of horses: does everyone improve them and one man only spoil them? The comparison exposes the absurdity, since with horses it is the few trainers who improve and the many who do harm.

Point two, on doing harm knowingly. He argues that a man who corrupts his neighbours makes them worse, and worse neighbours do him harm, so nobody would corrupt those he lives among on purpose. Either he does not corrupt them, or he does it unintentionally, and unintentional faults are matters for instruction and not for a court, "which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment."

Point three, the contradiction in the indictment. He asks Meletus to say plainly whether the charge is that he teaches other gods, so that he does believe in gods, or that he is a complete atheist. Meletus takes the second: "I mean the latter, that you are a complete atheist," and adds that Socrates says the sun is stone and the moon earth. Socrates answers that Meletus is accusing Anaxagoras, whose books can be bought for a drachma at the most, and that the jury are not so illiterate as not to know it. Then he closes the trap: the affidavit itself charges him with introducing new divinities, and a man who believes in divine things must believe in divinities, and one who believes in divinities must believe in gods. The indictment therefore contradicts itself.

How to write about it. Say that Socrates does to Meletus exactly what he has spent his life doing to everyone else, and that the effect is to show that the prosecutor had not thought about his own charge. Then add the sharper point: it did not save him, because the case was never really about the indictment.

Why he will not stop

Asked whether he is not ashamed of a course of life that is likely to bring him to an untimely end, he answers that a man worth anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying, but only whether he is doing right or wrong. He compares himself to a soldier who has been given a post and must remain at it. God has ordered him to examine himself and others; leaving that post out of fear of death would be desertion.

And the argument about death itself. To fear death is to think oneself wise when one is not, since nobody knows whether death is the greatest good or the greatest evil. That is the very ignorance he has spent his life exposing.

The refusal in advance. He tells the court plainly that if they offered to acquit him on condition that he stopped philosophising, he would answer that he would obey God rather than them, and would go on doing exactly as before while he had life and strength.

The gadfly

The best-known image in the speech, and it is worth knowing exactly.

if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life.

He is fastening on the city all day long, arousing and persuading and reproaching it. If they kill him they will sleep on for the rest of their lives, unless God sends another. His proof that he was given to them by God, he says, is his poverty: he has neglected all his own concerns for years without ever taking pay, and even his accusers do not dare to say otherwise.

In an answer. Use the gadfly for the idea that a critic is a service to the State and not an enemy of it, and note that the image concedes that criticism is irritating.

The refusal to plead for pity

Athenian defendants commonly brought their weeping children into court and begged. Socrates refuses, and gives three reasons: it would be a disgrace to a man of his reputation, it would teach the jury that he thinks death an evil, and, most importantly, it would ask the judges to break their oath and decide by favour rather than by law.

The sentence to quote for that last point. He says that the judge is not there to make a present of justice, but to give judgment, and that he has sworn to judge according to the laws.

Why this matters to a law student. He is refusing to corrupt the tribunal in his own favour when his life is at stake, and he loses because of it.

A worked answer

Question. "How does Socrates use the oracle in his defence?"

A model answer. The oracle is the pivot of the whole speech, because it converts a lifetime of making enemies into an act of obedience. Chaerephon asked at Delphi whether any man was wiser than Socrates and was told there was none. Socrates, knowing he had no wisdom and knowing a god cannot lie, set out to refute the answer by finding a wiser man. He went to a politician of high reputation, and found that the man thought himself wise and was not; then to the poets, who could not explain their own finest passages and therefore wrote by inspiration and not by knowledge; then to the artisans, who knew real things but supposed that their skill made them wise about everything else. Each examination produced an enemy, and together they produced the reputation that put him on trial. His conclusion was that the god meant that human wisdom is worth little, and that he was wiser than the others only in this, that they knew nothing and thought they knew, while he neither knew nor thought he knew.

Why the answer scores. It gives the story in order, names the three classes examined, states the conclusion in Socrates's own terms, and connects the story to the charge, which is what the question is really asking.

Quick revision

The order: his manner, the older accusers, the oracle, Meletus, why he will not stop, the gadfly, and the commitment of his cause.

The oracle: Chaerephon at Delphi; the politician, the poets, the artisans; "he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know."

Meletus: the horses comparison; nobody corrupts his neighbours on purpose; a court is a place of punishment and not of instruction; and the indictment contradicts itself, because new divinities imply gods.

The soldier at his post: a man should ask only whether he acts rightly, not whether he will live or die.

The gadfly: a great and noble steed, tardy from its size, stirred into life; his poverty is his proof.

The refusal to plead: a judge has sworn to judge by the laws and is not there to make a present of justice.

Test yourself

1. What did the oracle say, and what did Socrates do about it? Chaerephon asked at Delphi whether anyone was wiser than Socrates and was told there was none. Socrates, believing he had no wisdom but that a god cannot lie, went to politicians, poets and artisans in turn to find a wiser man, and found that each thought himself wise and was not.

2. Give the three moves in the cross-examination of Meletus. That everyone improves the young except Socrates, which the comparison with horse trainers exposes as absurd; that nobody would knowingly corrupt the people he lives among, so the fault, if any, is unintentional and belongs to instruction rather than to a court; and that the indictment contradicts itself, since it charges him with introducing new divinities while Meletus claims he is a complete atheist.

3. Explain the gadfly image. Socrates says he is a gadfly given to the State by God, the State being a great and noble steed made sluggish by its own size, which he stings into life by questioning and reproaching it all day long. If they kill him they will sleep on unless God sends another.

4. Why does Socrates refuse to bring his family into court to beg? Because it would disgrace his reputation, because it would suggest he regards death as an evil when nobody knows whether it is, and above all because it would ask the judges to decide by favour when they have sworn to judge according to the laws.

5. What does he say he would do if acquitted on condition that he stopped? That he would obey God rather than the court, and would continue exactly as before while he had life and strength.

Why he rejects the ordinary penalties, one by one. Death he will not propose, because he does not know whether it is a good or an evil, and it would be irrational to propose something that might be an evil in place of something unknown. Imprisonment he rejects, because it would make him the slave of the magistrates of the year. A fine with imprisonment until it is paid comes to the same thing, since he has no money. Exile he rejects at length: if his own citizens cannot endure his conversation, others certainly will not, and he would be driven from city to city for the rest of his life.

The suggestion that he simply keep quiet. Somebody will say that he could go abroad and hold his tongue. He answers that to do so would be disobedience to God, and that this is the hardest thing of all to make them believe.

daily to discourse about virtue, and of those other things about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest good of man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living.

The final proposal. He would have offered what he could pay, but he has nothing, so he proposes one mina. Then his friends intervene: Plato, Crito, Critobulus and Apollodorus bid him say thirty minae and offer themselves as sureties, and he proposes that.

How to judge it. An answer should say both things. The proposal of maintenance in the Prytaneum made a sentence of death far more likely, and Socrates knew it. And the final proposal of thirty minae with named sureties was a serious offer that the court rejected.

Stage four: the last words to those who condemned him

Sentence of death is passed, and he speaks again.

The reproach. Not much time will be gained, he tells them, in return for the name they will get from those who wish to reproach the city, who will say that they killed Socrates, a wise man. He is far advanced in years, and their desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature.

The reason he was condemned. Not want of arguments, but want of the willingness to say what they wished to hear, with weeping and wailing and lamentations.

I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live.

The image that carries it. The difficulty is not to avoid death but to avoid unrighteousness, for that runs faster than death. He is old and slow, and the slower runner, death, has overtaken him; his accusers are quick, and the faster runner, unrighteousness, has overtaken them.

The prophecy. He tells them that punishment far heavier than they have inflicted awaits them, because there will be more accusers than before, whom he had restrained, and younger and therefore more severe. Killing men is not a way of escaping censure; the easiest and noblest way is not to be disabling others but to be improving yourselves.

Stage five: the last words to those who acquitted him

He calls these, and only these, his judges, and tells them a wonderful circumstance. The inner divine sign that has opposed him all his life, even about trifles, made no sign of opposition that morning: not when he left his house, not on his way to the court, not while he was speaking. He takes that silence as an intimation that what has happened to him is good.

The argument about death. Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, which would be like a dreamless sleep and a gain; or it is a migration of the soul to another place, where he could question the great dead as he has questioned the living, which would be an unspeakable happiness.

The closing lines of the work.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways, I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

A worked answer

Question. "Why did Socrates propose maintenance in the Prytaneum, and what does the proposal tell us about him?"

A model answer. He proposed it because the Athenian procedure required the convicted man to name an alternative to the penalty proposed by the prosecution, and Socrates refused to name anything he did not believe he deserved. Having neglected wealth, office and every private advantage in order to persuade his fellow citizens to care for virtue before their own interests, he says that what is due to him is a benefit fitting such a man, and that no benefit fits better than being fed at public expense in the Prytaneum, an honour reserved for victors at the games. He adds that he deserves it more than the winner of a chariot race, who gives the appearance of happiness while he gives the reality, and who has enough while Socrates is in want. He then explains why he will not propose anything else: he will not propose death, because nobody knows whether death is an evil and it would be irrational to choose a certain evil over an unknown; nor imprisonment, which would make him a slave of the magistrates; nor a fine he cannot pay; nor exile, since if his own city cannot bear his conversation no other will. Only at his friends' insistence does he propose thirty minae, with Plato, Crito, Critobulus and Apollodorus as sureties.

The judgment to end on. The proposal was consistent and it was fatal. It told the court that he did not accept the verdict, and a body asked to choose between death and a public dinner is unlikely to choose the dinner. He denies that he is braving them, and says only that he will not wrong himself, and both things can be true at once.

Quick revision

The verdict: a shift of thirty votes would have acquitted him; Meletus barely escaped the fine of a thousand drachmae for failing to obtain a fifth of the votes.

The procedure: the court chooses between the two proposed penalties and can invent no third.

Meletus proposes death. Socrates proposes maintenance in the Prytaneum, an honour for Olympic victors.

He rejects death, imprisonment, a fine he cannot pay, and exile, giving a reason for each.

"The unexamined life is not worth living" is spoken here, in this second speech.

He proposes one mina, then thirty minae with Plato, Crito, Critobulus and Apollodorus as sureties.

After sentence: he was condemned for want of willingness to beg, not want of arguments; unrighteousness runs faster than death; a prophecy of more accusers to come.

To those who acquitted him: the divine sign was silent all morning; death is either a dreamless sleep or a migration; "I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows."

Test yourself

1. How close was the verdict, and how do we know? Socrates says that had thirty votes gone the other way he would have been acquitted, and that without Anytus and Lycon the prosecutor would not have obtained a fifth of the votes and would have been fined a thousand drachmae.

2. Why was the counter-penalty so important? Because the court had to choose between the penalty proposed by the prosecution and the one proposed by the defendant, and could invent no third. Meletus had proposed death, so whatever Socrates named became the only alternative to it.

3. What is the Prytaneum, and why is the proposal provocative? The public hall where Athens fed certain citizens at its own expense as an honour, including victors at the games. Proposing it as his penalty amounts to saying he deserves a reward rather than a punishment, and it made a sentence of death far likelier.

4. Where does "the unexamined life is not worth living" occur, and in what argument? In the second speech, on the assessment of penalty, answering the suggestion that he might go abroad and keep quiet. He says that to stop would be disobedience to God, that daily discourse about virtue is the greatest good of man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living.

5. What are the two possibilities he offers about death? Either it is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, which would be like a dreamless sleep and therefore a gain; or it is a migration of the soul to another place, where he could go on questioning the great dead, which he calls an unspeakable happiness.

Where it is worked. The one-day rule, which he says he would have overcome if there had been time. The absence of counsel. The prejudice older than the charge. The all-or-nothing choice of penalty, which turned his refusal to beg into a death sentence. And the jurors' oath, which he refuses to ask them to break.

The conclusion available to you. That procedural regularity is not the same as justice, which is exactly the argument the Pickwick chapters make about a Victorian court and the Adam Bede chapters make about an English assize. Making that connection across three texts is the strongest thing a candidate can do with this paper.

Theme five: the fear of death

The proposition. Death should not be feared, because nobody knows what it is, and only unrighteousness should be feared.

Where it is worked. The soldier at his post. "The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death." The silence of the divine sign on the morning of the trial. And the two possibilities: a dreamless sleep or a migration in which he can question the great dead.

Reference to context: the six passages the University sets

Note. Added by the past paper check. This text is set for reference to context more often than any other in Module II, and the examiner returns to the same six places. Two sentences each is what the paper allows.

A. "There can be no reward so fitting as maintenance in the Prytaneum, O men of Athens." Spoken by Socrates after the verdict of guilty, when Athenian procedure required the convicted man to propose his own penalty. The Prytaneum was the public hall in which the city fed its greatest benefactors, Olympic victors among them, at public expense, so he is proposing not a punishment but a public honour, on the ground that a poor man who has spent his life urging his fellow citizens to seek virtue deserves it more than a winner of the chariot race.

B. "There are many reasons why I am not grieved, O men of Athens, at the vote of condemnation." Spoken immediately after the verdict. He says he expected it, and is surprised only that the votes were so nearly equal, since a change of thirty votes would have acquitted him. The line sets the tone of everything he says after conviction, which is that the outcome was foreseen and does not alter the argument.

C. "For if I tell you that to do as you say would be a disobedience to the God, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious." Spoken while he explains why he will not accept exile and silence as a penalty. He adds the sentence for which the whole speech is remembered, that daily discourse about virtue is the greatest good of man and that the unexamined life is not worth living, and he admits that his hearers are still less likely to believe him.

D. "And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and in the hour of death men are gifted with prophetic power." Spoken after the sentence of death, addressed to those who voted against him. The prophecy that follows is that his accusers will not be rid of criticism by killing him, because more critics will come and they will be harsher, since the way to escape censure is not to silence others but to improve oneself.

E. "He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance." Spoken to the friends who voted for his acquittal, as part of his argument that no evil can happen to a good man in life or after death. He is saying that his conviction is not an accident but the time at which it was better for him to die and be released from trouble, which is why he is not angry with those who condemned him.

F. "The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways: I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows." The last sentence of the Apology, spoken to the whole court as he leaves it. It refuses the consolation his friends want from him and returns instead to the position he has held throughout, that nobody knows what death is and that pretending to know is the ignorance he has spent his life exposing.

And a seventh, from the same page as E. Where a paper quotes "there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one is going into a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness", the context is his account of the two possibilities: that death is a dreamless sleep, which he calls an unspeakable gain, or that it is a migration of the soul to another place, where he could question the dead as he questioned the living.

Socrates: a character sketch in the form MU wants

Placing. Socrates is the accused and the speaker of the Apology, an Athenian in his seventies who wrote nothing and spent his life questioning his fellow citizens about what they claimed to know.

He is fearless without being theatrical. He refuses to bring weeping children into court, refuses to beg, and states plainly that he would rather die having spoken in his own manner than live having spoken in theirs.

He is a formidable examiner. The cross-examination of Meletus takes three moves and leaves the indictment contradicting itself, and it is conducted by a man with no legal training and no counsel.

He is obedient in a way that looks like defiance. Every refusal is grounded in obedience: to the god at Delphi, to the post he says he was given, to the oath the jurors swore.

He is poor and says so as evidence. His poverty is the proof he offers that he never taught for money and never sought anything for himself.

He is not humble in the ordinary sense. He proposes to be fed at public expense for life. A sketch that leaves this out has flattered him.

What he is for. He is the first figure in Western writing to state that a person may be right against everybody, and to accept the price of it in public.

The essay questions this text attracts, and how to open each

"The Apology is a defence of free speech." Discuss. Open by agreeing with a qualification: it defends the freedom to question rather than the freedom to say anything, and it grounds that freedom in a duty rather than a right, because Socrates claims to be obeying a god and not exercising a liberty.

"Was Socrates justly tried?" Open with the distinction between the regular and the just: every Athenian rule was observed, and the outcome is still remembered as a judicial murder. Then take the four features from theme four in order.

"Discuss Socrates as a character." Use the sketch above, and make sure the Prytaneum proposal is in it.

"What is the relevance of the Apology to a student of law today?" Three heads: the origin of the speech of defence; conscience against the State, which runs forward to Gandhi and to constitutional protections of belief; and the demonstration that a trial can be procedurally perfect and substantially wrong.

A worked answer

Question. "Discuss the conflict between individual conscience and State authority in the Apology."

Paragraph one, the position. Socrates presents the conflict at its sharpest and then resolves it in a way that most people who quote him do not notice: he disobeys the command and accepts the punishment, and it is the second half that makes the first half something other than lawlessness.

Paragraph two, the disobedience. He tells the court that if they offered acquittal on condition that he gave up philosophy, he would answer that he would obey God rather than them, and would continue exactly as before while he had life and strength. He compares himself to a soldier who has been given a post and may not desert it for fear of death.

Paragraph three, the submission. He does not deny the court's jurisdiction, does not flee, does not ask that the jurors be moved by pity, and expressly refuses to invite them to break the oath by which they have sworn to judge according to the laws. When sentence is passed he says he must abide by his award and lets his accusers abide by theirs.

Paragraph four, why the combination matters. Disobedience alone is defiance; submission alone is obedience; the two together assert that the individual may be right against the State while leaving the State's authority intact. That is the shape Gandhi later gave a method, and this syllabus sets Gandhi two topics after this one.

Paragraph five, the cost, and the conclusion. The position was fatal, and Socrates knew it: he says he was condemned not for want of arguments but for want of willingness to say what the court wished to hear. The Apology therefore does not argue that conscience will prevail. It argues that it should be maintained even when it will not, which is a harder claim and the reason the speech has lasted.

Quick revision

Five themes: conscience against the State; wisdom as knowing that you do not know; the critic as a service; the difference between a regular trial and a just one; and the fear of death.

The civil disobedience formula: disobey the command, accept the penalty, do not deny the court's authority.

The oracle produces the theory of wisdom; the gadfly produces the theory of criticism.

For the trial: one day, no counsel, prejudice older than the charge, an all-or-nothing penalty, and jurors under oath he will not ask to break.

For a character sketch: fearless, a formidable examiner, obedient in a way that looks like defiance, poor and using it as evidence, and not humble, since he proposes a public dinner as his sentence.

Test yourself

1. What exactly does Socrates do that makes his position civil disobedience rather than defiance? He refuses to obey a command that would silence him, and at the same time submits to the court's authority: he does not deny its jurisdiction, does not escape, does not ask the jurors to break their oath, and accepts the sentence.

2. State the theory of wisdom the oracle story produces. That human wisdom is worth little, and that the wisest person is the one who knows they do not know. Socrates concludes that he is better off than those he examined only in this, that they knew nothing and thought they knew, while he neither knew nor thought he knew.

3. Was the trial regular, and was it just? It was regular: a private prosecutor, a citizen jury, a defence delivered in person, a vote, and a choice between two proposed penalties, all as Athenian law required. It is nevertheless remembered as an injustice, because the prejudice that decided it was older than the indictment, because a capital case was decided in a day, and because the procedure turned a refusal to beg into a sentence of death.

4. How does this text connect to the others on your paper? Through the question a court cannot answer for itself: whether following its own rules is enough. Bardell against Pickwick is regular and worthless, Hetty Sorrel's trial is regular and merciless, and the Apology is the earliest and clearest statement of the problem.

5. What is the single detail most often left out of a character sketch of Socrates? That he proposed maintenance in the Prytaneum, a public honour, as his own penalty. A sketch that presents him only as humble and long-suffering has not accounted for it.

The objection a modern student should be ready to make. Judges do make law, and everybody now admits it: they decide cases no rule covers, they interpret ambiguous statutes, and in a common law system their decisions bind later courts. The interesting question is not whether Bacon was right but what he was warning against, and the answer is the judge who reaches the result he prefers and then dresses it as discovery. Read that way the sentence is a warning about honesty, not a description of what courts do.

The qualities Bacon wants in a judge

Three pairs, in one sentence, and each pair sets a virtue against its counterfeit.

Judges ought to be more learned, than witty, more reverend, than plausible, and more advised, than confident.

Read the pairs properly. Witty here means clever and quick, plausible means winning and easy to like, and confident means sure of oneself. Bacon is not against cleverness; he is saying that in a judge the quieter quality of each pair must be the stronger. And then he settles the matter in one clause: "Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue."

The landmark, and the fountain

Bacon then gives two images for the harm a corrupt judge does, and both are quotable.

The landmark. "Cursed (saith the law) is he that removeth the landmark." A landmark, or mere-stone, is the boundary stone between two properties. Moving one is a small and secret fraud with a large effect. Bacon says the man who mislays a mere-stone is to blame, but the unjust judge "is the capital remover of landmarks, when he defineth amiss, of lands and property."

The fountain. This is the sentence to memorise.

One foul sentence doth more hurt, than many foul examples. For these do but corrupt the stream, the other corrupteth the fountain.

What it means. A bad act by a private person is a pollution of the stream: real harm, but downstream and local. A bad judgment is a pollution of the source, because everything that comes afterwards flows from it. Bacon supports it with a line he attributes to Solomon: a righteous man falling down before the wicked is as a troubled fountain and a corrupt spring.

How a law student should use it. It is the best short statement of why judicial corruption is treated as worse than ordinary crime, and it is also, incidentally, an argument about precedent: a wrong decision does not stay in its own case.

The four heads, announced

The essay then divides itself, and the division is the structure of everything that follows.

The office of judges may have reference unto the parties that use, unto the advocates that plead, unto the clerks and ministers of justice underneath them, and to the sovereign or state above them.

Those four are the subject of the next chapter of these notes. Learning them in Bacon's own order is the single most useful thing to do with this essay, because almost any question on it can be answered by taking the relevant head and unpacking it.

The style: why it reads as it does

It is aphoristic. An aphorism is a short pointed statement of a general truth. Bacon writes in them, one after another, with very little connecting material, which is why the essay is so quotable and why it can feel abrupt.

It is dense with Latin and Scripture. Bacon quotes the Vulgate, Solomon, and the Roman Twelve Tables, and usually translates or paraphrases in the same breath. A student should quote the Latin only where the English is given beside it in the essay itself.

It is addressed to judges, not about them. The mood is advisory throughout: judges "ought to remember", "ought to beware", "must beware". It belongs to a very old form, the book of advice to those in office.

A sentence you can use about the style. Bacon compresses a whole doctrine into a clause and then moves on, so that the essay reads less like an argument than like a set of rules cut in stone.

What beginners get wrong

They translate jus dicere and jus dare wrongly, or not at all. Bacon translates them himself in the same sentence: to interpret law, and not to make law or give law.

They date the essay after Bacon's fall. It was written in 1612; the impeachment was in 1621.

They quote "one foul sentence" without the second half. The image only works with the stream and the fountain.

They treat the essay as a general piece on justice. It is specifically about the office of a judge, under four heads, and an answer that does not use the four heads has not used the essay.

A worked answer

Question. Reference to context: "Judges ought to remember, that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare."

The two-sentence answer. These are the opening words of Francis Bacon's essay Of Judicature, essay 56 of the Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, written in 1612 while Bacon was a law officer of the Crown and six years before he became Lord Chancellor. Bacon translates the Latin himself in the same sentence, to interpret law and not to make law or give law, and he supports the rule by comparing a law-making judge with the authority claimed by the Church of Rome, which under pretext of expounding Scripture adds and alters and introduces novelty under a show of antiquity.

If the examiner asks for comment as well. Add that modern courts openly accept that judges make law in interpreting statutes and developing precedent, so that Bacon's rule is best read today not as a description of what judges do but as a warning against the judge who decides what he prefers and then presents the choice as a discovery.

Quick revision

Francis Bacon, 1561 to 1626, Lord Chancellor 1618 to 1621. Of Judicature written 1612, essay 56 in the 1625 edition of fifty-eight essays.

The opening: the office of a judge is jus dicere and not jus dare, to interpret law and not to make law, and the Church of Rome is the comparison.

The qualities: more learned than witty, more reverend than plausible, more advised than confident, and above all integrity.

The landmark: the unjust judge is the capital remover of landmarks.

The fountain: one foul sentence does more hurt than many foul examples, because the examples corrupt the stream and the sentence corrupts the fountain.

The four heads: the parties that sue, the advocates that plead, the clerks and ministers underneath, and the sovereign or State above.

The style: aphoristic, dense with Latin and Scripture, and advisory in mood.

Test yourself

1. Translate jus dicere and jus dare, and say who supplies the translation. To declare or state the law, and to give or make law. Bacon supplies both translations himself in the opening sentence: to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.

2. Why does Bacon bring in the Church of Rome? As the example of an authority which, while claiming only to expound a text, adds to it and alters it, pronounces what it does not find there, and passes off novelty as antiquity. That is what he says a law-making judge does.

3. Explain the image of the stream and the fountain. Bad conduct by private persons corrupts the stream, doing real but local harm downstream. A single unjust judgment corrupts the fountain, the source from which everything afterwards flows, and so does more damage than many bad examples.

4. When was the essay written, and why does the date matter? In 1612, for the second edition of the Essays. It matters because Bacon became Lord Chancellor only in 1618 and was impeached in 1621 for taking gifts from suitors, so he set out the standard years before he failed it, and the essay is not a defence written after the event.

5. What are the four heads under which Bacon organises the judge's duty? To the parties who sue, to the advocates who plead, to the clerks and ministers of justice underneath him, and to the sovereign or State above him.

On capital cases. The sentence to know for any question about mercy:

In causes of life and death, judges ought (as far as the law permitteth) in justice to remember mercy; and to cast a severe eye upon the example, but a merciful eye upon the person.

How to explain that last clause. Be severe about the conduct, because the sentence is a public example; be merciful about the human being in front of you. It is the same distinction the trial chapters of this paper keep running into, and it is worth setting beside Portia's mercy speech and beside the jury in Adam Bede who added no recommendation to mercy.

Head two: the advocates who plead

The governing sentence.

Patience and gravity of hearing, is an essential part of justice; and an overspeaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal.

What an overspeaking judge does wrong. Bacon lists it: it is no grace to a judge to find out for himself what he might have heard in due time from the bar; to show quickness of wit by cutting off evidence or counsel too short; or to forestall information by asking questions, even pertinent ones.

The second set of four, and this is the one candidates confuse. The parts of a judge in hearing are four:

1. To direct the evidence.
2. To moderate length, repetition, or impertinency of speech.
3. To recapitulate, select, and collate the material points of what has been said.
4. To give the rule or sentence.

"Whatsoever is above these is too much", and Bacon says the excess comes from one of four causes: from glory and a willingness to speak, from impatience to hear, from shortness of memory, or from want of a staid and equal attention.

On advocates who overbear the court. It is strange, he says, that the boldness of advocates should prevail with judges, who should imitate God, "who represseth the presumptuous, and giveth grace to the modest". And it is stranger still that judges should have noted favourites among counsel, which cannot but cause multiplication of fees and suspicion of by-ways.

On praising and rebuking counsel. The judge owes an advocate some commendation where a cause is well handled and fairly pleaded, "especially towards the side which obtaineth not", because it preserves the client's confidence in his counsel and lowers his own opinion of his case. He also owes the public a civil reprehension of advocates where there is cunning counsel, gross neglect, slight information, indiscreet pressing or an overbold defence.

On the moment of decision. Counsel must not "chop with the judge", that is, bandy words with him, nor try to reopen the case after sentence has been declared; and on the other side the judge must not meet the cause half way, nor give a party occasion to say that his counsel or his proofs were not heard.

Head three: the clerks and ministers of justice

The principle. "The place of justice is an hallowed place", and not only the bench but the floor and the precincts of it ought to be preserved without scandal and corruption. Justice cannot yield her fruit, he says, among "the briars and brambles of catching and polling clerks, and ministers." To poll means to fleece.

The four bad instruments. This is a list an examiner can ask for by itself.

The image for the last one. It "justifies the common resemblance of the courts of justice, to the bush whereunto, while the sheep flies for defence in weather, he is sure to lose part of his fleece." A person who runs to a court for shelter leaves some of himself behind in the branches. That is the most quotable sentence in this part of the essay.

And the good officer. Bacon balances it: "an ancient clerk, skilful in precedents, wary in proceeding, and understanding in the business of the court, is an excellent finger of a court; and doth many times point the way to the judge himself."

Head four: the sovereign and the State

The governing maxim. "Salus populi suprema lex", the safety of the people is the supreme law, which Bacon attributes to the conclusion of the Roman Twelve Tables. Laws that are not directed to that end, he says, are "but things captious, and oracles not well inspired."

Consultation, both ways. It is a happy thing in a State when kings and states often consult with judges, and when judges often consult with the king and state: the first where a matter of law arises in business of state, the second where a consideration of state arises in a matter of law.

Where the line falls. Many things brought to judgment may be meum and tuum, mine and thine, that is, an ordinary private dispute, while the reason and consequence of them may touch a point of state. By matter of state Bacon means not only the parts of sovereignty but whatever introduces a great alteration or a dangerous precedent, or manifestly concerns a great portion of the people.

That just laws and policy are not enemies. "Let no man weakly conceive, that just laws and true policy have any antipathy; for they are like the spirits and sinews, that one moves with the other."

The most famous image in this part.

let judges also remember, that Solomon's throne was supported by lions on both sides: let them be lions, but yet lions under the throne.

What it means, and the argument about it. A judge should be a lion, that is, strong, and a lion under the throne, that is, not setting himself against the sovereign power. Bacon adds that judges should be "circumspect that they do not check or oppose any points of sovereignty."

This is the part of the essay a modern law student should argue with. Judicial independence, as it is now understood, requires exactly the capacity to check the executive that Bacon warns against. A good answer states Bacon's position, notes that he wrote under a king who claimed to rule by divine right, and observes that his own contemporary Sir Edward Coke fell out with James I precisely by refusing to be a lion under the throne. An answer that simply praises the image has not thought about it.

And the closing balance. Bacon does not leave judges powerless. He tells them not to be ignorant of their own right, since there is left to them "as a principal part of their office, a wise use and application of laws", and he ends on a line of Paul's: we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully.

A worked answer

Question. "Set out the four parts of a judge's duty according to Bacon."

A model answer. Bacon divides the office of a judge by the people to whom the duty is owed. First, to the parties who sue: his principal duty is to suppress force and fraud, to spew out contentious suits, to make inequality equal where one side comes with power and great counsel, to avoid hard constructions and strained inferences because there is no worse torture than the torture of laws, to see that penal laws meant for terror are not turned into rigour, and in causes of life and death to cast a severe eye upon the example but a merciful eye upon the person. Second, to the advocates who plead: patience and gravity of hearing are an essential part of justice, and an overspeaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal; his parts in hearing are four, to direct the evidence, to moderate length and repetition, to recapitulate and collate the material points, and to give the rule or sentence, and whatever is above these is too much. Third, to the clerks and ministers below him: the place of justice is a hallowed place, and he must keep it free of the four bad instruments, the sowers of suits, those who engage courts in quarrels of jurisdiction, the officers full of sinister tricks, and the exacters of fees, while valuing the ancient clerk who is an excellent finger of a court. Fourth, to the sovereign and State above him: the safety of the people is the supreme law, kings and judges should consult one another, and judges should be lions, but lions under the throne.

The mark of a first-class answer. It gives the heads in Bacon's own order and quotes one phrase under each, and it does not confuse the four heads with the four parts of a judge in hearing, which belong under the second head only.

Quick revision

Head one, the parties: injustice makes judgment bitter and delay makes it sour; suppress force and fraud; spew out contentious suits; make inequality equal; no hard constructions, for there is no worse torture than the torture of laws; penal laws meant for terror not turned into rigour; in life and death, a severe eye on the example and a merciful eye on the person.

Head two, the advocates: patience and gravity of hearing; an overspeaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal; the four parts in hearing are to direct the evidence, moderate speech, recapitulate and collate, and give sentence; no noted favourites; commend the losing counsel; counsel must not chop with the judge.

Head three, the officers: the place of justice is a hallowed place; the four bad instruments; the sheep that loses part of its fleece in the bush; the ancient clerk as an excellent finger of a court.

Head four, the State: salus populi suprema lex; mutual consultation; meum and tuum against matter of state; just laws and true policy like spirits and sinews; lions, but lions under the throne; and a wise use and application of laws is still the judge's own.

Test yourself

1. Distinguish Bacon's two sets of four. The four HEADS of duty are owed to the parties, the advocates, the clerks and ministers, and the sovereign or State. The four PARTS of a judge in hearing, which fall under the second head only, are to direct the evidence, to moderate length, repetition or impertinency of speech, to recapitulate, select and collate the material points, and to give the rule or sentence.

2. What does Bacon mean by making inequality equal? That where one party comes to court with power, money, cunning advantages and great counsel, the judge must correct the imbalance, as God prepares his way by raising valleys and taking down hills, so that judgment can be planted on even ground.

3. Explain "there is no worse torture, than the torture of laws". It follows his warning against hard constructions and strained inferences. To torture the law is to twist its words or force an inference until it yields the answer one wants, and Bacon says this is the worst form of torture a court can practise.

4. List the four bad instruments and give the image Bacon attaches to the fourth. Sowers of suits; those who embroil courts in quarrels of jurisdiction, who are parasites of the court rather than friends of it; officers full of sinister tricks who bend straight proceedings into labyrinths; and the exacter of fees. Of the last, Bacon says courts are like the bush to which a sheep runs for shelter in bad weather and is sure to lose part of its fleece.

5. What does "lions, but yet lions under the throne" mean, and what can be said against it? That judges should be strong but should not set themselves against the sovereign power or check any point of sovereignty. Against it, a modern student should say that judicial independence now requires precisely that capacity to check the executive, that Bacon wrote under a king claiming divine right, and that his contemporary Sir Edward Coke fell from office for refusing to be such a lion.

How to use this in an essay, without moralising

Four positions are available. Take one and argue it.

Position one: the essay is discredited by the author's conduct. The weakest of the four, and easy to attack: rules are not falsified by being broken, or every law would fail the moment somebody disobeyed it.

Position two: the essay is strengthened by it. Bacon knew the temptations of judicial office better than most people who write about them, and the specificity of his warnings, about noted favourites among counsel, about the multiplication of fees, about the suspicion of by-ways, reads like a man describing pressures he had felt.

Position three: the gap is the lesson. A code of conduct that depends on the character of the person applying it will fail, and what the seventeenth century lacked was not good advice but enforcement. Bacon's fall is an argument for institutions rather than for aphorisms.

Position four, the sharpest. Read the essay's fourth head against the Coke episode. Bacon told judges to be lions under the throne, and helped remove from office the judge who would not be one, and was himself destroyed four years later by the Parliament he had told judges not to check. The essay's weakest doctrine, judicial deference to sovereignty, is the one its author enforced, and its strongest, integrity, is the one he failed.

The Coke comparison, which is worth a paragraph on its own

What the table is for. It lets a candidate say something exact rather than general: the two greatest lawyers of the age disagreed about the fourth head of this essay, one wrote it and lost office for corruption, the other defied it and lost office for independence, and the modern law of judicial independence follows Coke.

The essay's value to a law student today, in three sentences

It supplies the vocabulary. Jus dicere and not jus dare, the fountain and the stream, the torture of laws, a severe eye on the example and a merciful eye on the person, and lions under the throne are phrases that turn up in judgments and in argument to this day.

It states the duties in a form that can be remembered under examination conditions, which is exactly what a set of aphorisms is for.

And it is a warning that comes with its own evidence, because its author is the proof that writing the rule is not the difficult part.

What beginners get wrong

They say Bacon wrote the essay to justify himself. He wrote it in 1612 and fell in 1621.

They say he was convicted of selling judgments. He was impeached for taking gifts from suitors, and confessed to that; in the cases complained of he had decided against the givers.

They present the fall as the end of the argument. It is the beginning of it. The question is what a code of judicial conduct is worth, and there are at least four defensible answers.

They leave Coke out. The comparison is the single most useful piece of context available on this essay.

A worked answer

Question. "Bacon preached what he did not practise. Does that destroy the value of Of Judicature?"

Paragraph one, the position. No, but it changes what the essay is good for. It is worth less as the testimony of a good judge and considerably more as evidence that good rules do not enforce themselves.

Paragraph two, the facts, stated fairly. Bacon wrote in 1612 that above all things integrity is a judge's portion and proper virtue, and that one foul sentence corrupts the fountain. He became Lord Chancellor in 1618. In 1621 Parliament impeached him for taking gifts from suitors; he did not defend himself but confessed, and was fined forty thousand pounds, imprisoned at the king's pleasure, and barred from office and from Parliament, though the fine was never collected and the imprisonment lasted about three days.

Paragraph three, what is said for him. That gifts from suitors were then usual among poorly paid judicial officers; that in the cases complained of he decided against the men who had given; and that Parliament was in truth pursuing the king's favourite and reached Bacon because it could not reach Buckingham.

Paragraph four, why none of that saves him on his own terms. He had himself written that a judge must avoid even the suspicion of by-ways and that the precincts of justice must be preserved without scandal. Deciding against a man whose gift you have taken does not answer a standard pitched at suspicion.

Paragraph five, the argument that matters. The proper conclusion is not that Bacon was a hypocrite, which is cheap, but that a system relying on the character of individual judges will fail, and that what the age lacked was not advice but institutions: fixed salaries, rules against gifts, and a means of enforcement. Bacon's fall is the best available argument for the machinery that later replaced his aphorisms.

Paragraph six, the sharpest point available. The essay's fourth head tells judges to be lions under the throne. Bacon helped drive Sir Edward Coke from office in 1616 for refusing to be one, and was himself brought down by Parliament five years later. The doctrine he enforced is the one modern law has abandoned, and the doctrine he failed, integrity, is the one it has institutionalised.

Quick revision

1612 the essay; 1616 Coke dismissed for refusing to delay a case at the king's command, Bacon among those who worked for it; 1618 Lord Chancellor; 1621 impeached for taking gifts from suitors, confessed.

The sentence: forty thousand pounds, imprisonment at the king's pleasure, barred from office and Parliament, kept twelve miles from court. The fine was never collected; the imprisonment lasted about three days.

For him: gifts were usual; he decided against the givers; Parliament was really pursuing Buckingham.

Against him: his own standard was suspicion, not proof.

Four positions on the gap: it discredits the essay; it strengthens it; it argues for institutions rather than aphorisms; or, read against Coke, it shows him enforcing his weakest doctrine and failing his strongest.

Test yourself

1. When did Bacon write the essay, and when did he fall? He wrote Of Judicature in 1612 for the second edition of the Essays, became Lord Chancellor in 1618, and was impeached in 1621.

2. What exactly was he impeached for, and what did he do? For bribery and corruption, in the form of taking gifts from suitors who had cases before him. He did not defend himself; he confessed.

3. Give the sentence and say how much of it was carried out. A fine of forty thousand pounds, imprisonment at the king's pleasure, exclusion from office and from Parliament, and a bar on approaching within twelve miles of the court. The fine was never collected and he was in the Tower about three days, but he never held office or sat in Parliament again.

4. Why is the Coke episode worth knowing here? Because Coke, as Chief Justice, refused in 1616 to halt a case at the king's command, saying the stay was a delay of justice contrary to law and the judges' oath, and was dismissed for it, partly through Bacon's efforts. He is the contemporary who refused to be a lion under the throne, and modern judicial independence follows him rather than Bacon.

5. State the strongest position on the gap between the essay and the man. That the failure argues for institutions rather than against the rules: a code that depends on individual character will be broken, and Bacon's fall is the best evidence for the fixed salaries, prohibitions on gifts and enforcement machinery that later replaced his advice.

The warning he gave every new client. This is the sentence to quote for any question on professional ethics.

I warned every new client at the outset that he should not expect me to take up a false case or to coach the witnesses.

And the result he reports. That he built up such a reputation that no false cases came to him, and that some clients "would keep their clean cases for me, and take the doubtful ones elsewhere."

The temptation he says he resisted. He knew that his opponents had tutored their witnesses, and that if he encouraged his own client or witnesses to lie he could win. He says he always resisted it.

The case that was a severe trial

The facts, and they are worth getting exactly. The case came from one of his best clients. It involved highly complicated accounts and had gone on a long time, having been heard in parts before several courts. The book-keeping part of it was finally referred by the court to the arbitration of qualified accountants.

The award. It was entirely in favour of Gandhi's client. But the arbitrators had made an error in calculation, small but serious, because an entry that should have been on the debit side had been put on the credit side.

The position. The opponents were opposing the award, but on other grounds. Nobody had noticed the error. Gandhi was junior counsel.

The disagreement. When the senior counsel became aware of the error, he took the view that their client was not bound to admit it, and that no counsel was bound to admit anything against his client's interest. Gandhi said they ought to admit it.

The senior counsel's argument, which deserves to be stated fairly. If they admitted it, the court would very likely cancel the whole award; no sane counsel would imperil his client's case to that extent; and if the matter went back for a fresh hearing there was no telling what the client would have to spend or how it would end.

Gandhi's answer. Where is the certainty that the court will uphold a wrong award simply because we do not admit the error? And if the admission brings the client to grief, what harm is there? And then the practical question that settles it: "Where is the surety of the court not detecting the error or our opponent not discovering it?"

The senior counsel withdraws. "Well then, will you argue the case? I am not prepared to argue it on your terms." Gandhi answers that he will argue it if the client wishes, and that he will have nothing to do with the case if the error is not admitted.

The client decides. The client is present throughout. He is a little embarrassed, but he trusts Gandhi and has known him from the first, and he says: "Well, then, you will argue the case and admit the error. Let us lose, if that is to be our lot. God defend the right."

And there the chapter stops. "What happened in the court we shall see in the next chapter."

What happened, from chapter 45

This is the following chapter, "Sharp Practice?", and not the prescribed piece. It is given because every question about the outcome requires it, and because MU's own topic label names only chapter 44.

Gandhi appeared before the Supreme Court "in fear and trembling". As soon as he referred to the error, one of the judges said: "Is not this sharp practice, Mr. Gandhi?" He says he boiled within, but answered that he was surprised his Lordship should suspect sharp practice without hearing him out. The judge said it was no charge but a mere suggestion. Gandhi replied that the suggestion amounted to a charge, and asked to be heard out and then arraigned if there were occasion. The judge apologised for the interruption and asked him to go on.

The interruption turned out to help him: it fixed the court's attention on his argument from the start. He explained the discrepancy in detail, the court heard him patiently, and the judges were satisfied that it was due entirely to inadvertence, so that they were not disposed to cancel an award that had cost so much labour.

When opposing counsel tried to attack the award, the judges interrupted him, and the very judge who had begun with the suspicion asked him: "Supposing Mr. Gandhi had not admitted the error, what would you have done?" The objection was overruled, and the court either confirmed the award with the error rectified or directed the arbitrator to rectify it; Gandhi says he forgets which.

The conclusion he draws. That he was confirmed in his conviction "that it was not impossible to practise law without compromising truth."

And the caveat he adds, which candidates always leave out.

Let the reader, however, remember that even truthfulness in the practice of the profession cannot cure it of the fundamental defect that vitiates it.

Not this text: the trial of 1922, and why it turns up

Note. Added by the past paper check. Two papers on this text list, and many on the older one, have set "Discuss Gandhi's defence at his trial" or "Trial of Mahatma Gandhi". That is a different piece, which the older prescribed list carried and this syllabus does not, and a candidate who has read only the prescribed chapter would be stranded by it. The outline below is enough to answer such a question or to recognise it and choose another.

What it was. On 18 March 1922, at Ahmedabad, Gandhi was tried for sedition under section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, which punished bringing or attempting to bring into hatred or contempt, or exciting disaffection towards, the Government established by law in British India. The charge rested on three articles he had published in his weekly Young India: "Tampering with Loyalty", "The Puzzle and its Solution" and "Shaking the Manes". Shankarlal Ghelabhai Banker, the printer and publisher of the paper, was tried with him.

What Gandhi did. He pleaded guilty. He then made a statement in which he said that he had deliberately preached disaffection, that non-cooperation with evil was as much a duty as cooperation with good, and that he was there to invite and cheerfully submit to the highest penalty that could be inflicted on him. He offered the judge a choice: to resign the post if he believed the system he administered was good for the people, or to inflict on him the severest penalty if he believed the law was one Gandhi had rightly broken.

What the court did. The judge, C.N. Broomfield, District and Sessions Judge of Ahmedabad, said that it was impossible to ignore that Gandhi was in a different category from any person he had ever tried or was likely to try, and sentenced him to six years' simple imprisonment, adding that if the Government later thought fit to reduce it nobody would be better pleased than he. Banker was given a year.

How it connects to the prescribed chapter. The man who told a South African court about an error in his own client's favour is the same man who, twenty years later, refused to let his counsel put up any defence and asked for the maximum sentence. Both are the same argument about truth in a courtroom, made first as an advocate and then as an accused, and a question on either can borrow from the other.

A worked answer

Question. "Describe the incident of the arbitration award and say what it shows."

A model answer. The case was brought to Gandhi by one of his best clients and concerned highly complicated accounts, and after long proceedings the court referred the book-keeping to arbitration by qualified accountants. The award came back entirely in the client's favour, but it contained a calculation error, small in amount and serious in nature, because an entry that belonged on the debit side had been placed on the credit side. Nobody had noticed it: the opponents were attacking the award on other grounds. The senior counsel took the view that no counsel is bound to admit anything against his client's interest, and warned that an admission would probably lead the court to cancel the whole award and expose the client to the cost of a fresh hearing. Gandhi answered that there was no certainty the court would uphold a wrong award merely because they kept silent, and asked where the surety was that the court or the opponent would not discover the error themselves. The senior counsel refused to argue on those terms, Gandhi said he would argue it himself or leave the case, and the client, who was present, chose Gandhi: "Let us lose, if that is to be our lot. God defend the right."

What it shows, in three propositions. That a lawyer's duty not to mislead the court can conflict directly with the client's immediate interest. That the conflict is real and not imaginary, because the senior counsel's advice was competent and cautious rather than dishonest. And, from the following chapter, that the honest course was also the successful one, since the court accepted that the error was inadvertent and refused to cancel the award, though Gandhi is careful not to claim that honesty always pays.

What beginners get wrong

They give the outcome as part of this chapter. The prescribed piece ends before the hearing. Say so, and then give the outcome from the next chapter.

They make the senior counsel a villain. He gives cautious, competent advice in the client's interest, and Gandhi records it without contempt. The value of the incident depends on the opposing view being reasonable.

They forget the client. The decision was the client's, made in the room, and he made it knowing he might lose.

They leave out the final caveat. Gandhi ends by saying that truthfulness cannot cure the profession of the fundamental defect that vitiates it, and an answer that presents him as a straightforward admirer of the bar has misread him.

Quick revision

Chapter 44 of Part V of An Autobiography; MU cites it from The Law and the Lawyers, ed. S. B. Kher, which reprints it.

He recalls only those experiences bearing upon the practice of truth.

As a student he heard that the lawyer's profession was a liar's profession, and it did not influence him.

He warned every new client that he would not take a false case or coach the witnesses, and no false cases came to him.

The case: complicated accounts, arbitration, an award wholly in his client's favour containing a calculation error, an entry on the credit side that belonged on the debit side.

The senior counsel: no counsel is bound to admit what goes against his client. Gandhi: where is the surety that the court or the opponent will not find it?

The client chose Gandhi. "Let us lose, if that is to be our lot. God defend the right."

The outcome, in chapter 45: the judge's question "Is not this sharp practice, Mr. Gandhi?", the patient hearing, the finding of inadvertence, and the award upheld with the error rectified.

The caveat: truthfulness cannot cure the profession of the fundamental defect that vitiates it.

Test yourself

1. Where does the piece come from, and how does MU cite it? It is chapter 44 of Part V of Gandhi's An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth. MU's syllabus cites it from The Law and the Lawyers, edited by S. B. Kher, which is a compilation that reprints it.

2. What exactly was the error in the award? An error in calculation by the arbitrators, small in amount but serious in kind, in which an entry that ought to have been on the debit side was placed on the credit side. The award as a whole was entirely in favour of Gandhi's client.

3. State the senior counsel's argument. That no counsel is bound to admit anything that goes against his client's interest; that admitting the error would very likely lead the court to cancel the whole award; and that a fresh hearing would expose the client to unknown expense and an unknown result.

4. How did the case end? In the following chapter, the judge asked whether this was not sharp practice, then apologised and heard Gandhi fully. The court accepted that the error was due to inadvertence, refused to cancel an award that had cost so much labour, overruled the opponents' objection, and either confirmed the award with the error rectified or directed the arbitrator to rectify it.

5. What is Gandhi's final caution about the profession? That even truthfulness in the practice of the profession cannot cure it of the fundamental defect that vitiates it, so that his own success is not offered as a defence of the bar as such.

The senior counsel resolved it one way. No counsel is bound to admit anything against his client's interest, and the risk to the client of an admission is real and large.

Gandhi resolved it the other way, and gave a practical reason as well as a moral one. The moral reason is that he would not be party to a wrong award. The practical reason is the one that persuades: there is no certainty that the court will uphold a wrong award simply because nobody mentions it, and no surety that the court or the opponent will not find the error themselves.

The point to make about that. Gandhi does not present honesty as a sacrifice of the client's interest. He argues that concealment was also the riskier course, and the outcome bore him out. An answer that treats him as choosing principle over prudence has missed half his argument.

Where this stands in Indian professional ethics today

One paragraph, no more.

An advocate in India is enrolled and governed under the Advocates Act 1961. Section 49(1)(c) of that Act empowers the Bar Council of India to make rules prescribing the standards of professional conduct and etiquette to be observed by advocates, and those rules are contained in Part VI, Chapter II of the Bar Council of India Rules. The first section of that chapter is headed as the advocate's duty to the court, and the rules that follow deal in turn with duties to the client, to the opponent and to colleagues.

What a student may safely say. That the three rules Gandhi set himself, before any of this machinery existed, correspond to duties an Indian advocate now owes as a matter of professional obligation rather than of private conscience, and that the duty to the court is placed first in the modern rules just as Gandhi placed it first in practice.

Do not cite rule numbers in an English paper unless you are certain of them. Naming the Act and the rule-making power is enough, and the detailed rules are the subject of the Professional Ethics paper later in this course.

The line about the profession, and how to handle it

Gandhi ends the sequence with a caution.

Let the reader, however, remember that even truthfulness in the practice of the profession cannot cure it of the fundamental defect that vitiates it.

What is the defect he means? He does not say in this chapter. Elsewhere in his writing he is critical of a profession that lives on other people's quarrels, prospers when litigation multiplies, and can be afforded only by those with money. A candidate may say this much and should mark it as inference, not quotation.

Why an answer should include the line. Because it stops the piece being a comfortable story. Gandhi is not saying that a good lawyer redeems the bar. He is saying that he found it possible to practise honestly, and that this does not settle the larger question.

How to use it in an essay. As the final paragraph. State what he proved, that law can be practised without compromising truth, and then state what he refused to claim, that practising it honestly makes the profession itself sound.

Comparison worth making

The sentence that uses the table. These two topics, set side by side by MU, give a student both halves of professional ethics: the rules stated by a man who broke them, and a rule tested by a man who kept it.

A worked answer

Question. "What does Some Reminiscences of the Bar teach a student of law?"

Paragraph one, the position. It teaches that the duties of an advocate can conflict, that the conflict is real rather than academic, and that the resolution Gandhi chose was defensible on prudential as well as on moral grounds.

Paragraph two, the rules. Gandhi set himself three: he would not take a false case, would not coach a witness, and would not make his fee conditional on winning. He told every new client the first of these at the outset, and reports that as a result no false cases came to him, some clients keeping their clean cases for him and taking the doubtful ones elsewhere.

Paragraph three, the conflict. In the case of the arbitration award his duty to the client pointed one way and his duty to the court another. His senior counsel took the orthodox view that no counsel is bound to admit what goes against his client, and warned that an admission might cause the whole award to be cancelled at heavy cost. Gandhi said the error must be admitted, and would have withdrawn from the case rather than conceal it.

Paragraph four, the argument that persuades. He did not rest on conscience alone. He asked where the certainty was that a court would uphold a wrong award simply because nobody mentioned it, and where the surety was that the court or the opponent would not discover it. Concealment carried its own risk, and the court in the event accepted that the error was inadvertent and upheld the award with it corrected.

Paragraph five, the modern frame. What Gandhi set himself as private rules are today professional obligations: an advocate in India is governed by the Advocates Act 1961, under which the Bar Council of India prescribes standards of professional conduct and etiquette, and those rules place the duty to the court first, as Gandhi did in practice.

Paragraph six, the honest ending. He closes by warning that truthfulness in practice cannot cure the profession of the fundamental defect that vitiates it. The lesson is therefore not that an honest lawyer vindicates the bar, but that honesty is possible in it, which is a smaller and more useful claim.

Quick revision

Three rules: no false case, no coaching of witnesses, no fee conditional on the result.

The conflict: duty to the client against duty to the court, with the senior counsel taking the orthodox view.

Gandhi's two reasons: the moral one, that he would not be party to a wrong award; and the practical one, that there was no surety the error would stay hidden.

The link to Pickwick: a fee that depends on winning gives the lawyer a personal stake, which is what Dodson and Fogg have.

Modern India: the Advocates Act 1961, under which the Bar Council of India prescribes standards of professional conduct and etiquette; duty to the court comes first.

The closing caution: truthfulness cannot cure the profession of its fundamental defect.

Test yourself

1. State Gandhi's three rules. That he would not take up a false case; that he would not coach witnesses; and that he would not make his fee conditional on winning, expecting neither more nor less whether his client won or lost.

2. Is refusing a false case the same as refusing to defend a guilty person? No. Gandhi is refusing to have a false story told, not refusing representation to a person whose case is weak or who may have done what is alleged. The distinction is essential, because everyone is entitled to be represented and nobody is entitled to have lies told for them.

3. Give Gandhi's practical argument for admitting the error. That there was no certainty the court would uphold a wrong award merely because the error was not mentioned, and no surety that the court itself or the opponent would fail to discover it, so that concealment carried its own and possibly greater risk.

4. How do Gandhi's rules relate to Indian professional ethics today? They correspond to duties that are now imposed rather than self-imposed. An advocate is governed by the Advocates Act 1961, under which the Bar Council of India prescribes the standards of professional conduct and etiquette, and the duty to the court is placed first among them.

5. Why should an answer include his final caution? Because without it the piece reads as a defence of the profession, which Gandhi expressly declines to give. He says that even truthfulness in practice cannot cure the profession of the fundamental defect that vitiates it, so his claim is only that honest practice is possible.

The books he names

The essay's centre is a short list of the books that shaped him, and a student should be able to name them and say what each gave him.

The one with a story attached is Light from Many Lamps. Kalam describes finding it in 1953 in a second-hand bookshop in Madras, and reading and rereading it so often that the copy had to be bound and rebound to hold together. It is a collection of inspirational passages with commentary, and he says it brought him solace in hours of sadness and balance when his own emotions threatened to carry him away. A question asking about "the various books" wants that detail, because it shows you have read the essay rather than a list.

The Thirukkural is the one to be able to say something about, because it is the Indian text in the list and the one an Indian examiner is most likely to ask about. It is a Tamil classic of 1,330 couplets, traditionally attributed to the poet Thiruvalluvar, arranged in three parts on virtue, on wealth or polity, and on love. Kalam quoted it constantly in his speeches.

The home library proposal

What he asks for. That every family keep books at home, so that children see reading as an ordinary domestic activity rather than a school exercise.

The reasoning. A child who grows up in a house with books becomes a reader without being made to. The habit is formed by the environment rather than by instruction, which is why the proposal is about furniture and not about schooling.

The oath, which is the part to quote. Kalam did not leave the proposal general. He asked audiences to take an oath in three generations: that they would start a home library of twenty books, of which ten would be children's books; that their sons and daughters would enlarge it to two hundred; and that their grandchildren would build a library of two thousand. The library, he said, becomes a lifelong treasure and the precious property of the family.

And the detail that proves he meant it literally. He administered the oath at book fairs, and the reported effect was that the audience went straight to the stalls and cleared most of the books within the hour.

Why it is characteristic of him. Kalam's public life was full of proposals of this shape: small, concrete, addressed to families and children rather than to governments, and expressed as something anybody could begin doing that evening.

The two stories the essay tells

The essay does not argue in the abstract. It proves its claim twice, with two people, and MU examines both by name.

V. Kathiresan, the driver who became a professor

The facts, which are on the public record. V. Kathiresan joined Kalam as his driver in January 1982 at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory at Hyderabad, where Kalam was then director, and worked with him for about nine years. Kalam noticed that in every free hour the man was reading: newspapers, magazines, whatever came to hand. He had failed English in his tenth standard examination.

What Kalam did. He urged him to continue his studies, arranged for him to rewrite the paper he had failed, helped him with his English, bought him books and paid his fees.

What Kathiresan then did, which is the point of the story. He cleared the tenth standard in 1982, then the twelfth with history, then a bachelor's degree and a master's in history by correspondence, then a bachelor's and a master's in education, and in 2002 a doctorate in history from Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, on the zamindari system in the Tirunelveli district. He became a teacher of history in a government college and now guides research scholars of his own.

The meeting that produced the story. In January 2011 Kalam went to Madurai to inaugurate a paediatric oncology unit at a hospital there. A man came up to him afterwards whose face he half recognised, and it was Kathiresan, by then a doctor of philosophy. It is that meeting the essay recounts.

What the story is doing in an essay about reading. It is the strongest form of Kalam's claim. Reading in the free hours of a working life, with no institution behind it and no examination in view, changed what the man was able to become. A student writing on this should end there rather than on the qualifications, because the qualifications are the evidence and the habit is the argument.

Steven, the boy who was not expected to speak

Note. Give the outline and do not invent detail. What follows is the course of the story as published accounts of the essay describe it.

The situation. A boy named Steven suffered a brain injury, and the family was told that he would not speak. They refused to accept it and set out to teach him anyway, working at it daily.

What the family did. They read to him constantly, and the reading was done in his presence rather than at him, so that books and voices became the ordinary furniture of the room. His mother and sister played the piano where he could hear it. They exercised the muscles he would need, in ways as homely as dabbing peanut butter on his lips so that licking it off worked his tongue and jaw.

The turning point. After about three months, Steven moved of his own accord towards the children's books and turned the pages until he came to one filled with pictures of animals. On a later night he crawled to the same book and opened it at the same page, which showed that he was remembering. In time he began to make new sounds, humming the music he had been hearing.

What Kalam takes from it. That the capacity to learn is not settled by a prognosis, and that books, offered patiently and long before there is any sign of a result, are what reach a mind nobody else can reach. It is the same claim as the Kathiresan story made at the other end of a life.

How to answer it for thirteen marks. Place the story in the essay, give the situation, give what the family did in three specific things, give the turning point with the detail of the same page opened twice, and then say what the story proves and why Kalam chose it. Close by connecting it to the home library proposal, since both say that the presence of books in a room does the work.

How MU examines this essay

This is the practical part of the chapter, and it is unusual.

It is examined in two ways, and both appear regularly.

The first is a question about your own reading. In February 2026 the paper set, worth thirteen marks, "Write a review of a book that has been source of inspiration to you", and in January 2025 the same idea appeared as "Books can be sources of inspiration, writes Dr Kalam. In about 300 words, write a review of a book which has been a source of inspiration to you." That is the essay's method turned back on the candidate, and the book review chapter that follows is the preparation for it.

The second is a direct question, and it comes in four forms.

A quotation from the essay has also been set for reference to context, on 22 April 2024: "Another book that I have cherished is Man the Unknown by Dr Alexis Carrel, a doctor turned philosopher and a Nobel Laureate", with the follow-up asking the central theme of that book, which is that body and mind must be treated together because the human being is a whole. On 11 May 2026 the Kathiresan passage was set the same way, asking who is addressed and by whom.

What follows for revision. This essay is examined more often and at greater length than its two pages suggest. Learn the four books, the two stories and the oath, and you have covered every question the University has asked on it.

Themes worth naming

Reading as self-education. Kalam is largely describing what books did for him outside a classroom, which is why the essay appeals to students who feel that their real education is their own responsibility.

The ordinary origin. He came from a small town and a family without money, and his account of reading is the account of a person for whom books were the available road. That is the part Indian students find nearest to themselves.

Books and character. The claim is not that reading makes you clever but that it makes you a particular kind of person, which is why the three books he names are about conduct and human capacity rather than about engineering.

Continuity with the rest of Module 2. Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living; Kalam says the unread life is a poorer one. Both are claims that a person has a duty to their own mind, and an essay may connect them.

A worked answer

Question. "Write a short note on Kalam's Joy of Reading." Six marks, roughly a page.

A model answer. Joy of Reading is an essay by Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, aerospace scientist and President of India, collected in The Very Best of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam: The Righteous Life. Its argument is that books are lifelong companions rather than instruments of study, and that a person can be formed by particular books at particular moments. Kalam proves the claim from his own life rather than in the abstract, naming the works that shaped him: Lillian Eichler Watson's Light from Many Lamps, Thiruvalluvar's Thirukkural, the Tamil classic of couplets on virtue, wealth and love, and Alexis Carrel's Man the Unknown. From reading he traces a chain to imagination, from imagination to creativity, and from creativity to what a country becomes, which is why the essay reads as practical rather than literary. It ends in a proposal that is characteristically small and concrete: that every family should keep a library at home, so that children grow up among books and acquire the habit from their surroundings rather than from instruction. The essay's place on this syllabus is easy to justify, since every skill the course tests, from reference to context to precis to critical analysis, depends on the habit it recommends.

Why this scores. It places the author and the source, states the argument in stages, names the three books with a word about the Indian one, gives the proposal, and ends with a judgment rather than a summary.

Quick revision

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, 1931 to 2015, aerospace scientist, President of India 2002 to 2007, born at Rameswaram.

The essay is in The Very Best of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam: The Righteous Life.

Four propositions: books are companions; particular books make particular people; reading produces imagination and imagination everything else; therefore build a home library.

The books: Light from Many Lamps by Lillian Eichler Watson, found in a second-hand shop in Madras in 1953 and rebound from rereading; the Thirukkural of Thiruvalluvar, 1,330 Tamil couplets in three parts on virtue, wealth and love; Man the Unknown by Alexis Carrel, a doctor turned philosopher and Nobel laureate; and the Holy Quran, a constant companion.

The oath: twenty books at home of which ten are children's books, two hundred in the next generation, two thousand in the one after.

The two stories: V. Kathiresan, the driver at Hyderabad who read in his free hours and became a doctor of history; and Steven, the boy who was not expected to speak and who was read to until he began to remember and to sound.

MU examines this essay both through the book review and directly, by name, on the two stories, the books and the home library.

Test yourself

1. Who was Kalam, and when did he live? Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, 1931 to 2015, an aerospace scientist who worked at ISRO and DRDO and was President of India from 2002 to 2007. He was born at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu and died while lecturing to students at Shillong.

2. State the argument of the essay in four steps. That books are companions for life rather than tools for examinations; that particular books form particular people, which he proves from his own reading; that reading produces imagination and imagination produces creativity and national development; and that therefore every family should keep a library at home.

3. Name the three books he identifies and say what the Indian one is. Light from Many Lamps by Lillian Eichler Watson, the Thirukkural of Thiruvalluvar, and Man the Unknown by Alexis Carrel. The Thirukkural is a Tamil classic of 1,330 couplets arranged in three parts, on virtue, on wealth or polity, and on love.

4. What is the home library proposal, and why is it typical of Kalam? That every household should keep books, so that children grow up among them and take up reading from their surroundings rather than from instruction. It is typical because his proposals were characteristically small, concrete, addressed to families and children, and capable of being started at once.

5. Who was V. Kathiresan, and why is he in an essay about reading? Kalam's driver at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory at Hyderabad from 1982, who read in every free hour and had failed English in the tenth standard. Kalam had him rewrite that paper, helped him with English, bought him books and paid his fees, and Kathiresan went on to a master's degree, a doctorate in history in 2002 and a college teaching post. He is in the essay because he is the claim proved: reading done in the spare hours of a working life changed what the man could become.

6. Give the outline of the story of Steven. A boy who suffered a brain injury and was not expected to speak. His family refused the prognosis, read to him constantly, played the piano in his hearing and exercised the muscles he would need, using such homely means as peanut butter on his lips to make him work his tongue. After about three months he moved by himself to the children's books and stopped at a page of animal pictures, and later returned to the same page, which showed that he remembered; in time he began to hum. Kalam uses it to show that books reach a mind before anything else does.

7. How is this essay usually examined? Not by a direct question but through the skill it recommends. The February 2026 paper set an essay of thirteen marks asking the candidate to write a review of a book that had been a source of inspiration, which is the same task Kalam performs for his own three books.

Writing about the author instead of the book. A paragraph on the author's life is worth one sentence at most, unless the book is about the author's life.

Forgetting the instruction. If the question says a book that inspired YOU, a review of a book you have not read will show, because you will have nothing specific to say about its effect.

No verdict. An answer that describes and never judges has not written a review.

The vocabulary of judgment

Reviewers need verbs and adjectives that make a claim. Learn a few and use them precisely.

A worked answer

Question. MU's own, February 2026: "Write a review of a book that has been source of inspiration to you." Thirteen marks.

A model review.

Wings of Fire: An Autobiography. By A.P.J. Abdul Kalam with Arun Tiwari.

Wings of Fire is the autobiography of a scientist who became President of India, and it is the rare inspirational book that inspires by showing work rather than by giving advice. Kalam sets out to explain how a boy from a boatman's family in Rameswaram came to lead India's missile programme, and the answer the book gives is neither talent nor luck but a long series of ordinary days.

The narrative runs from his childhood in a small coastal town, through his education and his failure to qualify as a fighter pilot, to his years at the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Indian Space Research Organisation, and the projects he led there. Roughly the first half is a life and the second half is an account of how large technical projects are actually run in India.

Its greatest strength is its honesty about failure. Kalam describes the disappointment of missing selection as a pilot, and the collapse of a satellite launch vehicle for which he was responsible, and he describes them without the softening that autobiographies usually apply. The account of the failed launch, and of the press conference that followed it, teaches more about responsibility than any number of exhortations, because the reader sees a man take the blame in public and go back to work.

Its second strength is that it names the people who made the work possible: teachers, colleagues, and his elder brother and his father. The book is unusual among success stories in giving so much space to other people's contributions.

The weaknesses are real. The technical chapters assume more patience with organisational detail than a general reader may have, and the later sections, which move between projects and committees, lose the shape that the early chapters possess. A reader who comes for the childhood and the philosophy will find the middle heavy going.

I recommend it to any student who suspects that achievement belongs to other kinds of people. Its usefulness to me was not encouragement but information: it showed what a working life looks like from the inside, which is a more durable thing to be given than confidence.

Why the model scores. It has a heading, a verdict in the first paragraph, an account of the contents that gives away nothing gratuitously, two strengths each proved by a specific episode, a genuine weakness, and a recommendation that says what the book did rather than how it felt.

If the question names the book

Sometimes the examiner will set a book rather than let you choose. The structure does not change. What changes is that you must have something specific to say about that book, which is an argument for reading at least one book on the reading list properly rather than skimming several.

A safe preparation. Prepare one book thoroughly, of any kind, so that you can produce two strengths, one weakness and one recommendation, each with an example attached. That preparation answers the question whether or not the book is named.

Quick revision

A review is not a summary, a report, an essay on the subject, or a list of compliments.

Six parts: heading; what the book is and your verdict; what it contains; what it does well with evidence; what is weak; and the recommendation.

The verdict goes in the first paragraph, not the last.

Every judgment carries an example.

Never give away the ending of a novel.

Prepare one book completely: two strengths, one weakness, one recommendation, each with an example.

Test yourself

1. What is the difference between a review and a summary? A summary reports what is in the book. A review judges it: it says what the book is trying to do, how well it does it, and whether the reader should read it, with the judgment supported by evidence from the book.

2. Where does the verdict belong? In the opening paragraph. A reader should know your view before they know your reasons, and an answer that withholds the judgment until the last line reads as a summary with an opinion attached.

3. Why must a review contain a criticism? Because a review that finds nothing to fault reads as advertising rather than assessment. If you genuinely think the book has no faults, say instead what it does not attempt, or which readers will not enjoy it.

4. How do you prove a strength? By attaching it to something specific: an episode, a chapter, a character, a passage. "The book is honest about failure" is an assertion; "the book is honest about failure, as in the account of the launch that failed and the press conference afterwards" is a review.

5. What preparation answers this question whether or not the book is named? Knowing one book thoroughly enough to produce two strengths, one weakness and one recommendation, each with an example attached, since that material fits the six-part structure whatever book the paper allows you to use.

Notice what he does not do. He does not attack the Quit India movement by name at this point, and he does not deny that the opposition exists. He states it as a fact to be explained, and then spends the whole speech explaining it.

And the disclaimer he makes at once. Labour has secured gains during the war, security through legislation and conditions of welfare enforced on employers, and more will follow. But, he says, if labour is determined to accelerate the war effort, "it is not simply because of the lure of these immediate gains. There arc other and stronger reasons which are at the base of this determination."

Why that disclaimer is the hinge of the speech. He is answering, before anybody makes it, the obvious charge: that labour supports the war because the government has bought it. He concedes the gains and then says the reason lies elsewhere, and the rest of the broadcast is that elsewhere.

What labour wants: fair conditions of life

The first substantive section, and the source of the speech's most quoted material.

Labour is not content with securing merely fair conditions of work. What Labour wants is fair conditions of life.

He then defines the three terms of the French revolutionary formula in his own way, and the definitions are the part to learn.

Liberty. Not merely the negative idea of the absence of restraint, and not confined to the right to vote. Labour's conception is positive and involves government by the people, and he adds a sharp qualification: government by the people does not mean parliamentary democracy, because "Parliamentary Democracy is a form of Government in which the function of the people has come to be to vote for their masters and leave them to rule." Liberty also includes the right to equal opportunity and the duty of the State to provide the fullest facilities for growth to every individual according to his needs.

Equality. The abolition of privileges of every kind, "in law, in the civil service, in the Army, in taxation, in trade and in industry: in fact the abolition of all processes which lead to inequality."

Fraternity. An all-pervading sense of human brotherhood, unifying all classes and all nations, with peace on earth and goodwill towards man as its motto.

How to use these in an answer. Quote the definition of liberty in particular, because the criticism of parliamentary democracy inside it is unexpected and shows the candidate has read the speech rather than a summary. And note that the same three words, liberty, equality and fraternity, are the ones Ambedkar would later place at the centre of the Constitution's Preamble and of his final speech to the Constituent Assembly.

The Nazi order, and the argument about race

The structure of the argument. These three things are labour's ideals, and they constitute the New Order. The New Order cannot be established if the Allies lose. If the Allies fail there will still be a new order, but it will be the Nazi order, "an Order in which liberty will be found to be suppressed, equality denied, and fraternity expurgated as a pernicious doctrine."

Then the part addressed specifically to Indians, and this is what MU asked about in February 2026. He says the most important part of the Nazi order is the creed of racial gradation. The Nazis regard the German race as the race of supermen, place the other white races below them, and give the last place to the brown races, in which Indians are included. And, he says, they have declared that the brown races shall be the serfs of the German and white races, without education and without liberty, political or economic.

The evidence he offers. That the fury with which Hitler denounced the British government in Mein Kampf for having given Indians education and political liberty is well known.

The conclusion he draws. "The Nazi ideology is a direct menace to the liberty and freedom of Indians." Given that fact, there is the strongest reason why Indians should come forward to fight Nazism.

Why the argument is well made. It is addressed to the self-interest of the audience rather than to abstract virtue, and it turns the nationalist objection round: a person who wants Indian freedom has more reason to fight Nazism than anybody, because Nazism is explicitly committed to denying it.

A worked answer

Question. MU's own, February 2026: "What is Dr. Ambedkar's attitude to Hitler and his ideology?" Six marks, a short note.

A model answer. Ambedkar treats Nazism not as a distant European quarrel but as a direct threat to Indians, and he argues the point from the content of the ideology itself rather than from loyalty to Britain. The most important part of the Nazi order, he says, is the creed of racial gradation: the Nazis hold the German race to be a race of supermen, place the other white races below it, and assign the last place in the gradation to the brown races, among which they include Indians. He adds that the Nazis have declared that the brown races shall be the serfs of the German and white races, denied education and denied liberty, both political and economic. As evidence that this is not speculation, he points to the fury with which Hitler denounced the British government in Mein Kampf for having given Indians education and political liberty. His conclusion is stated flatly: the Nazi ideology is a direct menace to the liberty and freedom of Indians, and given that fact there is the strongest reason why Indians should come forward to fight it. The attitude is therefore neither neutral nor merely dutiful but actively hostile, and the hostility rests on an Indian interest: a movement whose declared programme is the permanent servitude of brown people cannot be a matter of indifference to a country demanding its own freedom.

Why it scores. It gives the doctrine, the gradation, the specific consequence for Indians, the evidence from Mein Kampf, and the conclusion, and it ends by naming what kind of argument Ambedkar is making.

Quick revision

Dr B.R. Ambedkar, 1891 to 1956, born a Mahar, educated at Columbia and the London School of Economics, called to the bar at Gray's Inn, later chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution and first Law Minister of India.

Speaking as Labour Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council, an office held from July 1942 to October 1946.

Broadcast from the Bombay station of All India Radio, published in Indian Information on 1 January 1943.

The context: the war going badly in Asia, and the Quit India movement under way since August 1942 with Congress leaders in prison.

The opening: labour is co-operating in the war effort in the midst of a surge of non-co-operation, and the reason is not the immediate gains.

Fair conditions of life, not merely of work: liberty defined positively and against parliamentary democracy; equality as the abolition of all privilege; fraternity as human brotherhood across classes and nations.

The Nazi order: racial gradation, brown races last and to be serfs, Hitler's denunciation of Britain in Mein Kampf for educating Indians, and therefore a direct menace to Indian freedom.

Test yourself

1. In what capacity was Ambedkar speaking, and when? As Labour Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council, the office he held from July 1942 to October 1946. The broadcast was made from the Bombay station of All India Radio and published in Indian Information on 1 January 1943.

2. Why does the occasion matter? Because the Quit India movement had begun in August 1942, weeks after he took office, and Congress leaders were in prison. He is a member of the wartime government explaining on government radio why one section of the country is co-operating while much of it is not, and every argument in the speech is shaped by that position.

3. How does he define liberty? Positively, not merely as the absence of restraint and not confined to the right to vote. It involves government by the people, which he says is not the same as parliamentary democracy, since under that form the function of the people has become to vote for their masters and leave them to rule. It also includes equal opportunity and a duty on the State to provide the fullest facilities for growth to each individual according to his needs.

4. What is his answer to the charge that labour has simply been bought? He concedes the gains at once, security through legislation and welfare conditions enforced on employers, and says that labour's determination is not simply because of the lure of these immediate gains, and that other and stronger reasons lie at the base of it. The rest of the speech supplies those reasons.

5. Why, on his argument, should an Indian nationalist in particular oppose Nazism? Because the Nazi creed of racial gradation places the brown races last and declares that they shall be serfs of the German and white races, without education or liberty, and because Hitler denounced Britain in Mein Kampf precisely for giving Indians education and political liberty. A person who wants Indian freedom therefore has the strongest of all reasons to fight it.

Labour and nationalism

The nationalists make two charges: that labour's attitude is inconsistent with and injurious to Indian nationalism, and that labour is willing to fight without securing assurances about India's independence.

His answer on nationalism, and this is the passage MU is most likely to set.

Labour is not prepared to make a fetish of nationalism. If nationalism means the worship of the ancient past, the discarding of everything that is not local in origin and colour, then Labour cannot accept nationalism as its creed.

He follows it with two sentences that a student should be able to quote or paraphrase closely. That labour "cannot allow the living faith of the dead to become the dead faith of the living". And that it will not allow the ever expanding spirit of man to be strangled by the hand of a past which has no meaning for the present and no hope for the future, nor cramped in a narrow jacket of local particularism. Labour must be ready to borrow in order to repair, transform and recreate the body politic, and if nationalism stands in the way of that rebuilding, labour must deny nationalism.

The positive statement. "Labour's creed is internationalism." Labour is interested in nationalism only because the machinery of democracy, representative parliaments, responsible executives, constitutional conventions, works better in a community united by national sentiment. Nationalism is therefore a means and not an end.

How to read the passage fairly. He is not attacking the demand for Indian freedom. He is attacking a particular content given to nationalism: the worship of the ancient past and the refusal of anything foreign in origin. A man who had spent his life arguing that Indian society's own traditions were the chief obstacle to the equality of its lowest castes had a reason for that suspicion which was not borrowed from the British.

And the criticism a student may fairly make. That the argument was extremely convenient for a member of the wartime government, and that a person in his office had every incentive to find nationalism a fetish. An honest answer states both the reason and the convenience, and says which it thinks weighs more.

Independence: a wrong approach

His answer on the second nationalist charge is the sharpest thinking in the speech.

The distinction. Independence, he says, does not by itself determine the form of government or the organisation of society. "External independence is quite compatible with internal slavery." The worth of independence depends on the kind of government and the kind of society that is built up, and "There is not much value in independence if the form of government and the order of society are to be those against which the world is fighting today."

The slogan he proposes instead. "Labour thinks that more emphasis ought to have been placed on New India and less on 'Quit India'." A vision of a new order in a new India, he says, would have a greater appeal than independence alone, and would have prevented the embarrassing questions being asked, "namely, freedom for what and freedom for whom."

Why those five words matter. "Freedom for what and freedom for whom" is the question Ambedkar put to the national movement all his life, and it is the whole of his position in one clause: independence that leaves the internal order untouched changes the rulers and not the ruled.

His second answer. That making immediate independence a condition of supporting the war could only be justified if there were a sudden conspiracy to rob India of her right to freedom, and there is no evidence of one, and no such conspiracy could succeed anyway. "If India's independence is in the balance, it is because of disunity among Indians. The enemies of India's independence are Indians and no others."

The new social order, and the close

The formula that gives the speech its most quoted line.

Labour is aware that the only compensation for the cost of this war is the establishment of a New Order in which liberty, equality, and fraternity will not be mere slogans but will become facts of life.

And the condition attached to it.

Without success in the war there can be no self-government and self-determination for India. Without victory in the war, independence will be idle twaddle. This is the reason why Labour is determined to win this war.

The two features that make this war different, in his account. First, it is not merely a war for the division of the world's territory among the most powerful nations, as previous wars were, but a conflict of ideologies about the forms and systems of government under which humanity is to live. Second, it is not merely a war but also a revolution, one which demands a fundamental change in the terms of associated life, a replanning of society. In that sense, he says, it is a people's war, "and if it is not, it could and should be made into a people's war."

The warning from history. Efforts to establish a new order have been frustrated before "because democracy, after it was brought into being, was left in Tory hand." If the world takes care that this mistake is not repeated, the world can be made safe for democracy.

The claim to leadership, which is how he ends. The country needs a lead, and labour can give it, because correct leadership requires idealism and free thought. Idealism is possible for the aristocracy, though free thought is not; both are possible for labour; and neither is possible for the middle class, which lacks the liberality of the aristocracy and the hunger for a new order on which the labouring classes live. Labour's lead to India, he concludes, "is to get into the fight and be united. The fruits of victory will be independence and a New Social Order."

The rhetoric: how the speech is built

A question may ask you to analyse the speech as a piece of writing, and MU's own note under Module 3 asks for analysis "with respect to its themes, character analysis and language".

It is built on objections. After the opening, almost every section begins with somebody else's position, states it fairly, and answers it. That is the structure of an argument rather than of an appeal, and it suits a speaker who knows his audience disagrees with him.

It concedes early and often. Labour has secured gains. It is true that wars have devastated civilisation. There is perhaps room for the pessimism. Each concession buys credibility for the refusal that follows.

It defines its terms. Liberty, equality, fraternity, self-government, self-determination, matter of state: he stops to define each. This is a lawyer's habit and an economist's, and it is what makes the speech quotable.

Its sentences are short and its paragraphs are declarative. There is very little imagery. The two figures that do appear stand out for that reason: the living faith of the dead becoming the dead faith of the living, and the narrow jacket of local particularism.

It repeats a single formula. Liberty, equality and fraternity appear at the start as definitions and at the end as facts of life. The speech is framed by them.

A worked answer

Question. "Discuss Ambedkar's attitude to nationalism in this broadcast."

Paragraph one, the position. Ambedkar does not reject the demand for Indian independence. He rejects a particular content given to nationalism, and he subordinates nationalism to something he thinks more important, namely the social order that independence will produce.

Paragraph two, what he says. Labour is not prepared to make a fetish of nationalism. If nationalism means the worship of the ancient past and the discarding of everything not local in origin and colour, labour cannot accept it as a creed, because it will not let the living faith of the dead become the dead faith of the living, or the spirit of man be cramped in a narrow jacket of local particularism. Labour's creed, he says, is internationalism, and it is interested in nationalism only because parliaments, responsible executives and constitutional conventions work better in a community united by national sentiment. Nationalism is a means and not an end.

Paragraph three, the argument about independence. He then distinguishes external independence from internal freedom: independence does not by itself settle the form of government or the order of society, and external independence is quite compatible with internal slavery. There is not much value in independence, he says, if the form of government and the order of society are to be those the world is then fighting against. He proposes that more emphasis should have been placed on New India and less on Quit India, and asks the question that runs through his whole public life, freedom for what and freedom for whom.

Paragraph four, judging it. The position has a serious foundation. A man who had spent his life showing that Indian society's own traditions were the chief obstacle to the equality of its lowest castes had reason to distrust a nationalism defined as reverence for the past, and his question about freedom for whom was answered, five years later, by the Constitution he helped to draft.

Paragraph five, the objection. It must also be said that the argument was convenient. He held office under the wartime government, made the broadcast on government radio while the leaders of the Quit India movement were in prison, and a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council had every professional reason to find nationalism a fetish. The best answer states both, and concludes that the argument survives the convenience because Ambedkar had been making it before he took office and went on making it after he left.

Quick revision

Four objections answered: those indifferent to a Nazi victory, dismissed as embittered politicians whose motto is all or nothing; the pacifists, answered by the claim that peace obtained by surrender is suicide and that war is abolished by winning it and making a just peace; the pessimists, answered by a call for vigilance and victory over the Old Order wherever found; and the nationalists.

On nationalism: no fetish of it; the living faith of the dead must not become the dead faith of the living; labour's creed is internationalism; nationalism is a means, not an end.

On independence: external independence is compatible with internal slavery; more emphasis on New India and less on Quit India; freedom for what and freedom for whom; the enemies of India's independence are Indians and no others.

The formula: the only compensation for the cost of the war is a New Order in which liberty, equality and fraternity are facts of life and not slogans; without victory, independence will be idle twaddle.

Two features of this war: a conflict of ideologies rather than of territory, and a revolution demanding a replanning of society, therefore a people's war.

The rhetoric: built on objections, concedes early, defines its terms, short declarative sentences, two memorable figures, and framed by the three words.

Test yourself

1. What does Ambedkar mean by refusing to make a fetish of nationalism? That he will not treat nationalism as an object of worship or as an end in itself. If it means reverence for the ancient past and the rejection of everything not local in origin, labour cannot accept it, because that would let the living faith of the dead become the dead faith of the living and confine the spirit of man in a narrow jacket of local particularism.

2. Give his answer to the pacifists. He accepts that wars have devastated civilisation, but denies that refusing to fight abolishes them. Peace obtained by surrender to violence is not peace but suicide. War is abolished by two things only, winning it and making a just peace, since the origin of war lies in the vile peace that victors impose on the vanquished; so a pacifist should be active both during the war and when the terms of peace are settled.

3. Explain "external independence is quite compatible with internal slavery". That a country may be free of foreign rule and still leave its own people unequal and unfree, because independence settles who governs and not how society is ordered. This is why he says there is little value in independence if the resulting order is the kind the world was then fighting against.

4. What does he propose instead of the slogan Quit India? New India. He argues that a vision of a new order in a new India would appeal more strongly than independence by itself, and would forestall the questions being asked, freedom for what and freedom for whom.

5. Name two features of the speech's style with an example of each. It is built on objections, each stated fairly before it is answered, as with the pacifists whose premise he concedes before refusing their conclusion. And it defines its terms rather than assuming them, as when he stops to give positive definitions of liberty, equality and fraternity before using the three words as the measure of the New Order.

Irony. A gap between what is said and what is meant, or between what a person intends and what happens. Example: Soapy commits six offences to get himself arrested and fails, and is then arrested for standing quietly outside a church.

Situational irony. Where the outcome is the reverse of what was intended. That is Soapy's whole story, and it is also the ending of Murder!, where the most brilliant detective in England proves the murder was a suicide.

Understatement. Saying less than the situation warrants, so that the reader supplies the rest. Bennett writes of a man who has just shot another: "He was dead." Three words for the central event of the story.

Mock-heroic, or high style for low matter. O. Henry describes a homeless man's plan for the winter in the language of statecraft and travel brochures: a "Committee of Ways and Means", an "annual hegira", "hibernatorial ambitions". The joke is in the distance between the words and the bench in the park.

Diction. Simply the choice of words. Saying that a writer's diction is "formal" or "colloquial" or "legal" is a real observation if you give an example.

Tone. The attitude the writing takes to its subject: amused, cold, indignant, affectionate. Bennett's tone in the opening section of Murder! is that of a man discussing a public statistic; the effect is chilling precisely because it is calm.

Point of view. Who is telling it, and how much they know. Bennett's narrator can see inside Harder's mind, which is why we know what the police never learn.

Structure. The order of the parts. Murder! is in seven numbered sections and the detection comes after the escape, so the reader knows the answer while the police do not, which converts a detective story into something else.

Imagery. A picture used to carry a meaning: Jack Frost's visiting card in the first paragraph of The Cop and the Anthem.

The shape of a critical analysis answer

Six paragraphs for a thirteen-mark question.

1. One sentence placing the text, and one stating what you will argue.
2. The story in outline, four or five sentences at most. Enough to make the rest intelligible.
3. Theme one, stated and proved.
4. Theme two, or the principal character, stated and proved.
5. Language: two devices, each named and illustrated.
6. A conclusion that answers the question in its own words.

The commonest failure is that paragraph two swallows the answer. If your summary runs past a third of the page, you are writing a summary and not an analysis.

A worked answer

Question. "Critically analyse The Cop and the Anthem with respect to its theme, character and language." This is the shape; the full material is in the two chapters that follow.

Paragraph one. O. Henry's The Cop and the Anthem, from the 1906 collection The Four Million, follows a homeless man's attempts to have himself arrested so as to spend the winter in prison. This answer argues that the story is not a joke about a tramp but a demonstration that the law's attention falls where it pleases and not where it is needed.

Paragraph two, the outline. Soapy, on his bench in Madison Square, decides that three months on Blackwell's Island is preferable to charity, and tries six times to be arrested: a costly dinner, a smashed window, a cheap dinner he cannot pay for, an approach to a young woman, a bout of loud disorder, and the theft of an umbrella. Each fails. He then hears an organ playing in a church, resolves to reform, and is arrested at once for loitering and sentenced to three months.

Paragraph three, theme. The story's argument is that the law is not a rational instrument but an accident. Soapy commits six offences in plain view of policemen and is not touched; he then stands still, doing nothing, and is taken. What decides arrest is appearance, convenience and the officer's mood, and the story proves it by controlled repetition.

Paragraph four, character. Soapy is made almost entirely by his own reasoning, which is the most sophisticated thing in the story. He rejects charity not from pride alone but because he has analysed its price: "If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit", and every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath and every loaf its private inquisition. A man capable of that analysis is not a fool, and O. Henry's refusal to make him one is what makes the ending sting.

Paragraph five, language. Two devices carry the story. The first is mock-heroic diction: Soapy resolves himself into "a singular Committee of Ways and Means", plans his "annual hegira", and compares his winter arrangements with other New Yorkers' tickets to Palm Beach, so that the language of comfort is laid over destitution. The second is situational irony, structured as repetition: six attempts to be arrested fail, and the seventh arrest comes when he is committing no offence at all.

Paragraph six, conclusion. The story is therefore a piece of social criticism disguised as a comic anecdote, and its method is to make the reader laugh five times and then to close the trap on the sixth, so that the joke and the indictment are the same event.

What beginners get wrong

They summarise and call it analysis. A summary answers "what happens". An analysis answers "what is it doing, and how".

They name no device. Saying "the language is very beautiful" is worth nothing. Saying "the diction is mock-heroic, as when a homeless man's winter plan is called an annual hegira" is worth a mark.

They state a theme in one word. Themes are propositions, not nouns.

They forget MU's third word. Language is a third of what the note asks for and it is where most candidates write nothing.

Quick revision

MU's three words: themes, character analysis and language.

Theme: a proposition, proved from two or three named places, ending with the position the text takes.

Character: placing sentence, qualities proved by incidents, and what the character is for.

Language: name a device and illustrate it. Irony, situational irony, understatement, mock-heroic diction, tone, point of view, structure, imagery.

Six-paragraph shape, with the summary kept under a third of the answer.

Test yourself

1. State the three things MU's own note asks a critical analysis to cover. Themes, character analysis and language. The note under topic 3.1 uses those words, and it adds that students should also read aloud to improve reading and pronunciation.

2. What is wrong with giving "justice" as a theme? It is a noun and not a proposition. A theme has to make a claim that can be proved or disputed, such as that the story shows the law reaching people for what they cannot help and ignoring them when they ask for its attention.

3. Define irony and situational irony, with one example each. Irony is a gap between what is said and what is meant, or between intention and outcome, created deliberately. Situational irony is the second kind, where the result reverses the intention: Soapy's six attempts to be arrested fail and he is arrested when he has stopped trying.

4. What is mock-heroic diction, and where does this module use it? Grand or elevated language applied to a low or ordinary subject, so that the gap is comic. O. Henry uses it throughout The Cop and the Anthem, calling Soapy's winter planning a Committee of Ways and Means and his move to prison an annual hegira.

5. How long should the summary be in an analysis answer? No more than about a third of the page, and preferably four or five sentences. If the summary runs longer, the answer has become a retelling, which is the commonest reason analysis questions score badly.

Two. The shop window. He takes a cobblestone and smashes a plate-glass window on Sixth Avenue, then stands still with his hands in his pockets and smiles at the policeman. It fails because the policeman refuses to believe it: men who smash windows do not stay to talk to the law, they run. Seeing a man running to catch a car, the officer joins the pursuit.

Three. The cheap restaurant. A modest place with thick crockery and thin soup. He eats beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie, and then tells the waiter that he has no money. "Now, get busy and call a cop," he says. "And don't keep a gentleman waiting." It fails because the waiter says "No cop for youse" and two waiters throw him out on his left ear, while a policeman two doors away laughs and walks off.

Four. The young woman. He decides to play the "masher", that is, a man who pesters women in the street, in front of a large policeman leaning against a water plug. He straightens his tie, sets his hat at a killing cant, and says "Ah there, Bedelia! Don't you want to come and play in my yard?" It fails because the young woman is delighted: "Sure, Mike, if you'll blow me to a pail of suds. I'd have spoke to you sooner, but the cop was watching." He walks past the policeman with her on his arm, "overcome with gloom" and "doomed to liberty".

Five. Disorderly conduct. Outside a bright theatre he yells drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh voice, dances, howls and raves. It fails because the policeman turns his back and explains to a citizen that it is one of the Yale lads celebrating a victory over Hartford College: "Noisy; but no harm. We've instructions to lave them be."

Six. The umbrella. In a cigar store he takes another man's silk umbrella from beside the door and walks off with it slowly. The owner follows and claims it. Soapy sneers, admits the theft in terms, and points to a policeman on the corner: "Well, why don't you call a policeman? I took it." It fails because the umbrella man turns out to have found the umbrella himself that morning in a restaurant, and retreats apologising. The policeman, meanwhile, hurries off to help a blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a car two blocks away.

Soapy's own comment on the pattern. He mutters against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs, and thinks that because he wants to fall into their clutches, "they seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong."

The anthem

He turns east, towards Madison Square, "for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench". On a quiet corner he comes to an old church, quaint and rambling and gabled, with a soft light through a violet-stained window where the organist is practising for Sunday.

What the music does. The anthem holds him against the iron fence, because he had known it well "in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars."

The change. He sees with sudden horror the pit into which he has tumbled, "the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base motives" that make up his existence, and an impulse moves him to fight his fate. He will pull himself out of the mire, make a man of himself again, and go downtown tomorrow to find work: a fur importer had once offered him a place as a driver. He would be somebody in the world. He would...

The arrest

The sentence breaks off, and a hand is laid on his arm.

"What are you doin' here?" asked the officer.

"Nothin'," said Soapy.

"Then come along," said the policeman.

The story ends in one line of a different voice altogether.

"Three months on the Island," said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.

Why the ending is placed exactly there. He is arrested at the only moment in the story when he is committing no offence and intends none, and he is given precisely the sentence he had spent the whole story trying to earn. The reform is destroyed by the granting of the wish.

A worked answer

Question. "Give an account of Soapy's attempts to get himself arrested." Six marks.

A model answer. Soapy makes six attempts, each defeated for a different reason. He first tries to dine expensively and then declare himself insolvent, and is turned out at the door because the head waiter notices his frayed trousers and worn shoes. He smashes a plate-glass window with a cobblestone and waits beside it, and the policeman refuses to suspect him because men who break windows run away. He eats a full meal at a cheap restaurant and announces that he cannot pay, and is thrown into the street by two waiters who will not call a policeman at all. He plays the masher to a young woman in front of a watching officer, and she turns out to be perfectly willing to go with him, so that he walks off, in the story's phrase, doomed to liberty. He shouts and dances in drunken disorder outside a theatre, and the policeman explains to a passer-by that he is a college boy celebrating and that there are instructions to leave such men alone. Finally he steals a silk umbrella and openly admits it, and the owner, who had picked the umbrella up himself that morning, apologises and retreats.

The sentence that turns the list into an answer. In every case the failure is caused by somebody's assumption about what a person like Soapy would do, and the story's point is made by the seventh event, when he is arrested for standing still.

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