Cameroon GCE advanced level June 2025 literature in English 3

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SECTION A – CONTEXT QUESTIONS

1. Read the following extract from William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, and answer the questions that follow it.

   Nicanor: I know you well, sir, and you know me. Your name, I

   think, is Adrian.

   Adrian: It is so, sir. Truly, I have forgot you.

   Nicanor: I am a Roman, and my services are, as you are, against ’em.

   Know you me yet?

   Adrian: Nicanor, no?

   Nicanor: The same, sir.

   Adrian: You had more beard when I last saw you, but your favour

   is well appeared by your tongue. What’s the news in

   Rome? I1 have a note from the Volscian state to find you

   out there. You have well saved me a day’s journey.

   Nicanor: There had been in Rome strange insurrections; the

   people against the senators, patricians and nobles.

   Adrian: Hath been? Is it ended? Our state thinks not so:

   they are in a most warlike preparation, and hope to come

   upon them in the heat of their division.

   Nicanor: The main blaze of it is past, but a small thing would make

   it flame again, for the nobles receive so to heart the

   banishment of that worthy Coriolanus, that they are in a

   ripe aptness to take all power from the people, and to

   pluck them from their tribunes forever. This lies glowing,

   I can tell you, and is almost mature for the violent breaking

   out.

   Adrian: Coriolanus banished?

   Nicanor: Banished, sir.

   Adrian: You will be welcome with this intelligence, Nicanor.

   Nicanor: The day serves well for them now. I have heard it said,

   the fittest time to2 conquer a man’s wife is when she’s

   fallen out with her husband. Your noble Tullus Aufidius

   will appear well in these wars, his great oppose Coriolanus

   being now in no request of his country.

   Adrian: He cannot choose. I am most fortunate thus accidentally

   to encounter you. You have ended my business, and I will

   merrily accompany you home.

   Nicanor: I shall between this and supper tell you most strange

   things from Rome, all tending to the good of their

   adversaries.

   Have you an army ready, say you?

   Adrian: A most royal one. The centurions and their charges

   distinctly billetted, already in the entertainment, and

   to be on foot at an hour’s warning.

   Nicanor: I am joyful to hear of their readiness, and I am the man. I

   think that shall set them in present action. So, sir,

   heartily well met, and most glad of your company.

   Adrian: You take no part from me, sir. I have the most cause to be

   glad of yours.

   Nicanor: Well, let us go together.

   a) Put the italicized lines in good modern English prose

   i) your favour is well appeared by your tongue. (lines 8-9)

   ii) in a ripe aptness. (lines 19-20)

   b) Comment on two aspects of Nicanor’s character.

   c) Pick out two figures of speech used in the extract and comment on their aptness.

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d) i) State two themes used in this extract.

ii) Comment on the dramatic significance of this extract.

e) Adrian is a spy. In at most fifty words, write the intelligence report he will likely present to the Volscian state upon his return.

2. Read the following extract from Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests, and answer the questions that follow it.

   ESHUORO: Answer quickly. On whose side are you?

   MURETE: I hadn’t been told we were taking sides.

   ESHUORO: Fool. How you survived till now I do not know.

   Have you seen how they celebrate the gathering of the tribes in our own destruction?

   Today they even dared to chase out the forest spirits by poisoning the air with petrol fumes.

   Have you seen how much of the forest has been torn down for their petty decorations?

   MURETE: I know it wasn’t the humans who3 are my rooting.

   [Eshuoro presses his arm so hard Murete yelps with pain.]

   ESHUORO: Don’t talk back, tree gleaner. I’m telling you,

   Today must be a day of reprisals.

   While they are glutted and full of themselves that is the time.

   Aroni’s little ceremony must be made into a bloody sentence.

   My patience is at an end.

   Where the humans preserve a little bush behind their homes,

   it is only because they want somewhere for their garbage.

   Dead dogs and human excrement are all you’ll find in it.

   The whole forest stinks. Stinks4 of human obscenities.

   And who holds us back? Forest Father and his lame minion, Aroni.

   They and their little ceremonies of gentle rebuke.

   MURETE: You feel strongly about it. That’s commendable.

   Isn’t Forest Father the one who can help you?

   Go and talk to him. Or if you are afraid to go,

   Tell me and I’ll make you an appointment.

   ESHUORO: You had better not go to him if that is in your mind.

   I’ll have you bitten for seven years by ants.

   MURETE: Oh. Oh. So you can count on them can you? You have

   been poisoning the mind of the ants.

   ESHUORO:5 They were not difficult to win over.

   and they’ll be present at the welcoming.

   Four hundred million of their dead will crush the humans in a load of guilt.

   Four hundred million callously smoked to death.

   Since when was the forest so weak that humans could smoke out the owners

   and sleep after?

   MURETE: No one has complained much. We have claimed6 our own victims

   for every tree that is felled or for every beast that is slaughtered,

   There is recompense, given or forced.

   ESHUORO: [twists his arm.] Be sure then to take yourself off today.

   Every one of you that won’t come clearly on my side must take himself off.

   Go into the town if you7 leave them so much and join the gathering of the tribes.

   MURETE: What will you do?

   ESHUORO: My master will accompany me.

   Aroni means to let the humans judge themselves.

   Good. My jester will teach them.