Paper 1 Lit Questionbank

Title: Barbecue Shakespeare
Text Type: Drama Script
Setting: A small flat in London. Evening. Books are scattered on the floor and a mug is perched precariously on the arm of a sofa.
Characters: MEG (early 30s, sharp, self-conscious), EDWIN (mid-30s, calm, observant)

(MEG sits cross-legged on the floor, sipping wine from a chipped glass. EDWIN stands by a bookshelf, leafing through a book. A comfortable silence—just barely—hangs in the air.)

MEG:
(sipping)
Hilary’s decided she’s going to “do” English literature now. Chaucer, no less.

EDWIN:
(looking up)
Middle English Hilary? That’s bold.

MEG:
She says she “always felt a connection” with medieval texts. Probably because Mum made us wear sackcloth once for a school pageant. She played a beggar. Very formative.

EDWIN:
(half-smiling)
You’re not being generous.

MEG:
Why should I be? She thinks if she reads The Canterbury Tales and puts on some glasses-without-a-prescription, she’ll suddenly be ‘cultured’ — with quote marks.

EDWIN:
(gently)
You sound... a bit snobbish.

MEG:
(mocking tone)
Oh Edwin. It’s not snobbery. It’s observation. You should hear her when she starts on Shakespeare. (putting on an exaggerated voice)
“Don’t you think King Lear really captures the emotional fragility of retirement?” Over sausages. At a barbecue. Next to the dog.

EDWIN:
(raises eyebrow)
Ah, the Royal Shakespeare Company... in thongs and aprons.

MEG:
Exactly. It’s the whole middle class back home. They’ve replaced wine with ‘relevance’ and think quoting Hamlet gives them depth.

EDWIN:
(sitting now, amused)
You once cried during a Globe performance of Twelfth Night.

MEG:
That was different. That was real. Not over a scorched snag with plastic chairs and “Would you like another chop, Polonius?”

(Pause.)

EDWIN:
Why does it bother you so much?

MEG:
(with forced brightness)
It doesn’t. It’s just... overwritten. All of it. You know? The whole literary canon. Should be more honest.

EDWIN:
(not letting her off)
Your tone says otherwise.

MEG:
(snaps, then softer)
I just wish she’d say something about my book. I sent it three months ago. Not even a “well done.”
(pause)
I just want a reaction.

(EDWIN watches her. There is a long silence. The mood shifts.)

EDWIN:
Have you asked her?

MEG:
(sighs)
No. That would be... needy. And if there's one thing she can't stand, it's need.

(She sets her glass down. For a moment, her performative tone slips.)

EDWIN:
Maybe it's not about Shakespeare. Or Chaucer. Or sausage-fuelled soliloquies.

MEG:
(small smile)
Maybe not. Maybe I just wanted her to say it mattered. That I mattered.

(Pause.)

EDWIN:
Well, I read it. Twice. And it mattered.

(They sit in the quiet. The tension has dissolved, replaced by something gentler.)

End Scene

The following text is an excerpt from The Red Mitten, a piece of prose fiction. The passage follows Maria, a woman grappling with the aftermath of a significant personal loss, as she navigates the quiet rituals of daily life on a rainy afternoon.

The rain had started again, tapping faintly against the kitchen window like a memory that wouldn’t quite leave. Maria stood by the sink, her hands still wet from washing the dishes, watching the garden blur into muted shades of green and brown. A single red mitten lay on the patio stones, soaked through, a remnant of a morning forgotten in the rush of everything.

She had meant to call her mother. She had meant to write to Elise. She had meant to pick up the dry cleaning, to return the library books, to apologize to Tom. But instead, she had stayed in, rearranging the spice cupboard and alphabetizing the condiments.

There was a comfort in order, even if it meant nothing. The world outside could be chaos—spilled coffee, sharp words, late trains—but inside her cupboards, the paprika always came before the rosemary.

Behind her, the radio murmured something about traffic delays and foreign elections. The kettle clicked off. Somewhere upstairs, the floor creaked—she told herself it was the house settling, but the hairs on her neck rose anyway. Silence followed.

It had been six months since Elise left, and still the quiet was heavier than Maria ever expected. Elise had taken the cat, most of her books, and the navy scarf Maria had knitted during the winter of 2020. In exchange, she left behind two chipped mugs, a tangled phone charger, and an ache that settled between Maria’s ribs whenever she turned the key in the front door and found no lights on.

The neighbours had stopped asking questions. At first, there had been polite interest—“How’s Elise doing?” and “We miss seeing you both at the market”—but Maria’s short answers and forced smiles eventually built a fence higher than any hedge.

She moved through the day with a kind of stillness. In the mornings, she brewed coffee and drank it slowly, letting the bitterness spread across her tongue like punishment. She reread old postcards from Elise, trying to decipher subtext in every loopy sentence. “The sun’s just come out after three days of rain. You’d love it here.” Was that an invitation? Or a farewell?

On this particular afternoon, Maria opened the back door and stepped outside barefoot. The cold stones shocked her soles. She bent and picked up the mitten, wringing the water out slowly. The wool clung to her fingers. She turned it over once, twice, as if inspecting it might answer something. Then, in one swift movement, she tossed it into the bin.

Inside again, she sat at the kitchen table and traced circles into the condensation on her tea mug. The house sighed around her—pipes expanding, wood groaning with age. She thought of calling Tom, but she couldn’t find the words that weren’t soaked in regret. Instead, she reached for a notepad from the drawer. The page was blank, painfully white.

She wrote one sentence:

Today it rained, and I didn’t cry.

It was something. Not poetry. Not closure.

But something.

The following text is an excerpt from The Edge, a piece of prose fiction. The passage follows Luca, a young man grappling with rejection and desperation after losing a life-changing opportunity. As he flees through the city at night, the extract explores themes of identity, self-worth, and resilience through a moment of emotional crisis.

He was already running when the sirens started.

Luca didn’t look back. His shoes slapped the pavement, too thin for the cold, too worn to hold much grip. Behind him, the alley narrowed, shadows peeling off the brick walls like smoke. He turned left, then right, then left again—his feet knowing the route even if his mind didn’t. The city blurred: rusted fences, broken lights, graffiti screaming in colour.

He had the envelope in his coat pocket. He could feel it crinkle with every movement, too thin to matter to anyone else, too heavy to leave behind.

He hadn't meant to take it. Not really. It had just been sitting there—on the desk, unguarded, open. A letterhead, a signature, a number. His name.

They had called it a mistake. “Administrative oversight,” they said. “Not eligible.” But it hadn’t felt like a mistake. It had felt like being erased.

He turned another corner and reached the footbridge. Below, the canal shimmered like black glass. He paused. His breath came in ragged bursts, clouding the air. The envelope crinkled again.

They would find out. Maybe they already had. He walked onto the bridge, footsteps echoing in the silence. The water below moved slowly, pulling scraps of leaves and wrappers along its surface like secrets it would never tell.

Luca stood still, his heart trying to punch its way out of his chest. He remembered how proud his mother looked when he told her about the scholarship. The way she held his face in both hands, her thumbs brushing his cheeks like he was still ten. He hadn’t told her it was revoked. Couldn’t. She already worked too many hours, already pretended too hard that things were fine.

The envelope was still there. Still real. He took it out, unfolded it slowly. The paper trembled in his hands. His name. The signature. The award, the sum, the promise. It was dated last month. It was no longer valid.

But it had once been true.

He let the paper hang between his fingers, the wind tugging at it gently. The sirens had faded. The city hummed below him—trains in the distance, laughter from a bar, the hum of streetlights waking up for the night.

He closed his eyes.

Then he folded the letter again, carefully this time, and tucked it back into his pocket.

When he turned around, the bridge behind him was empty. No sirens. No footsteps. Just the quiet.

Luca began to walk—not fast, not slow. Just forward.

The Forgotten Path

By Victor Graves

A winding path beneath the trees, Where shadows creep and footsteps fall, The leaves, they whisper in the breeze, A secret song, too faint to call. The air is thick with history, A thousand tales of days gone by, The echoes faint, the mystery, A world that’s lost and yet still high. The stones are old, the path is long, It curves and winds into the night, The wind, it howls a mournful song, That wraps the soul, without a light. I walk alone, yet not in vain, For every step I leave behind, The path is lost, but still remains, A trace within my restless mind. And though I know the end is near, I take another step, yet slow, For in the loss, there lies a fear, That I, too, may be lost, you know. But in this journey, I find peace, The path may fade, yet still I stay, For in the steps, my heart’s release, The lost becomes the found, today.

A letter written in 1920 from a grandfather to his newborn grandson

Liverpool, Christmas, 1920

The following memoir recounts the narrator’s childhood habit of retreating to the fire escape to escape family tension and observe the world below.

The first time I climbed onto the fire escape, I was nine. It was summer, and the heat inside the apartment pressed against the walls like it was trying to escape too. My parents were arguing about something in the kitchen—money, probably—and I had quietly slid the window open and slipped through, barefoot. The fire escape was rusted and creaked beneath me, but it was cooler than inside. I sat down on the metal grating, knees pulled to my chest, and looked out at the other buildings. All of them packed together like a cluttered shelf, windows blinking yellow, blue, and television white. The city didn’t sleep. It just got quieter.

That became my place. When the apartment felt too small, too loud, or too full of questions I didn’t know how to ask, I climbed out there. Sometimes with a book, sometimes with a slice of toast, sometimes with nothing but myself. I liked watching people on the street below—delivery bikes darting past, couples arguing, someone chasing their dog into traffic. Life was always moving. I stayed still.

From that vantage point, I saw time change. The laundromat across the street changed owners twice. A tree lost its leaves and grew them back, again and again. The man who played saxophone on the corner disappeared one spring and didn’t come back. I didn’t ask why. I’d learned that adults rarely answered honestly when it came to disappearances. By the time I was twelve, I knew every crack in the metal frame. I had scratched a constellation into the paint beside where I sat. I called it my “escape map”—not a way out, but a way through.

It was there I watched my father leave for the last time. He didn’t know I was above him, pressed into the shadows, the metal cool against my back. He walked quickly, like the sidewalk burned. He didn’t take much. A suitcase, a jacket, the keys he never returned.

My mother cried in the living room while I counted blinking windows in the dark. Years later, when I came back to visit the building, everything was smaller. The windows, the stairwell, even the fire escape. I climbed out again, careful not to wake the sleeping city. The grating still creaked. The street had changed—new shops, different cars, fewer trees. But some things remained: the hum of traffic, the buzz of neon, the distant music of someone else's life.

I sat there and touched the constellation I had carved. It was faded, but still there. Like me.

Letter: For the Road Ahead

This op-ed was published on March 17, 2024 in the Huntington News, an independent student newspaper at the Northeastern University. The author, Lily Cooper, is a member of the Huntington News staff.

In this open letter addressed to all MPs in Parliament, footballer Marcus Rashford advocates for the extension of the free school meals voucher scheme during the summer holidays, urging the government to reconsider its decision to cancel it.

This Oxfam brochure titled "Protection, Dignity, and Rights: Reshaping Disaster Aid" highlights the importance of local voices and leadership in disaster response.