Love through the ages - Exemplar student response and commentary for AS Paper 1 - Section B

Oct 20, 2026

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Exemplar student response and examiner commentary analyzing Richard Lovelace’s presentation of a speaker in the poem as having a selfish attitude to love. The response discusses how rhetorical questions silence the woman’s voice, how the speaker breaks promises by seeking other women, and how the poem’s structure intensifies humiliation toward the end. The commentary evaluates achievement objectives (AO1-AO5), noting clear structure, relevant quotation use, largely accurate analysis, and a mainly description-driven approach with comments on how conventions of cavalier poetry shape the attitude to love.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages3

Reading Time8 min

AccessFree to download

Sample script - AS Paper 1, Section B, band 3 response

Analysis of the speaker’s selfish attitude

Cavalier poet conventions and Carpe Diem context

Comparison with other Carpe Diem poems

Examiner commentary

Overall assessment

Love through the ages: Exemplar student response and commentary for AS Paper 1, Section B Below you will find an exemplar student response to a section B question in the sample assessment materials, followed by an examiner commentary on the response. Sample script-AS Paper 1, Section B, band 3 response Examine the view that Richard Lovelace presents the speaker in this poem as having a selfish attitude to love. Richard Lovelace does present this speaker as having a selfish attitude to love. The speaker is a man who has just had a night of passion with a woman during which he made her a promise that he would commit to her. However, in the morning he has changed his mind and now is even telling this woman that he intends to sleep with other women before he decides whether to commit to her. Lovelace does not allow the woman to have a voice which shows the speakers attitude that, whatever the woman has to say about the situation, it is what he has decided that matters. The speaker begins by posing questions to the woman at the beginning of stanzas one and two which have a rhetorical effect because we do not hear her responses and so it conveys the idea that the speaker does not care about her views. The first question: ‘Why should you swear I am forsworn,/Since thine I vowed to be?’ shows his disbelief that just because he made a promise to her last night, she should not expect him to keep to it. The second question: ‘Have I not loved thee much and long,/A tedious twelve hours’space?’ also suggests that he cannot understand why she is not satisfied with their night of passion. His description of their passion as ‘tedious’ suggests that he has easily grown bored of her and referring to commitment as an‘impossibility’ -emphasises his decision not to remain faithful to her. A reader can well imagine this man making all sorts of promises to the woman in order to seduce her but, once she has given in to him, happily discarding her. Having told her that he will not commit to her now, his selfishness continues ashe tells her how he ‘must search the black and fair’ as if he has the right to tryout other women. However, he makes this worse by saying how these women will be ‘Beauties’ and virgins, i.e. ‘treasure in un-plowed-up ground.’ The ultimate selfishness comes in the final stanza when this speaker suggests that ‘if, when I have loved my round,/Thou provest the pleasantest she’, he will return to the woman. What, of course, we don’t know is whether she will take him back, but the verbs ‘laden’ and ‘sated’ imply that he will have enjoyed his time with the other women whatever the outcome. Lovelace has structured the poem so that the selfishness increases as the poem unfolds and becomes more humiliating for the woman so that the politically correct reader likes the speaker less and less. Lovelace was a cavalier poet and so part of a group of poets who wrote poetry which portrayed life in the Court of Charles I with the purpose of entertainment and with a message that you should live life to the full, an attitude known as Carpe Diem (or ‘seize the day’) . One interpretation of ‘ The Scrutiny’ therefore would be that the poet was writing for a private, mainly male audience at Court and so was able to portray a speaker with a tongue-in-cheek selfish attitude without fear of offending readers whereas modern readers, including women, might not appreciate the speaker’s selfishness. Other Carpe Diem poems include ‘ The Flea’ by John Donne and ‘ To His Coy Mistress’ by Andrew Marvell, which both try to persuade a woman to seize the day and have sex with them. Although the speakers in these poems could be said to be selfish in their demands, they do not humiliate the woman in the ways that Lovelace’s speaker does. In ‘ The Flea’ the woman’s action of squashing the flea lets the reader know the woman’s response to the speaker, which Lovelace does not do-so helping to make his speaker seem more selfish. Others have interpreted

FAQs

How does the response argue that the speaker is selfish about love?

It argues the speaker makes promises, then changes his mind and intends to sleep with other women. It highlights how rhetorical questions remove the woman’s voice and how the poem’s progression increases humiliation.

What techniques does the response identify in Lovelace’s poem?

It points to rhetorical questions that suggest disregard for the woman’s views. It also emphasizes descriptive language such as calling passion “tedious” and commitment “impossibility,” plus the poem’s escalating structure across stanzas.

How did the examiner evaluate the response overall?

The examiner judged it straightforward and relevant, consistent with Band 3 descriptors. They noted clear organization and accurate understanding, while observing that the focus shifts toward description/narrative and some commentary is bolted-on.

Oct 20, 2026

Uploaded by OmBimo