What the Shakespearean worlds elective asks of you in the 2024 HSC English Extension 1 syllabus

New syllabus (first HSC 2027). This page follows the English Extension 11-12 (2024) syllabus. If you are sitting the 2026 HSC, use the older Literary Worlds pages and the 2026 elective pages instead. See what's changed.

What NESA says this elective is about

NESA's published description asks students to consider "the nature and characteristics of the worlds of Shakespeare's works" (NESA, English Extension 11-12 Syllabus 2024, Year 12 Extension 1). You explore and evaluate how those worlds are referenced, reconstructed, extended or subverted in other texts, and why Shakespeare's work endures and is valued across cultures and contexts. The description highlights the ways Shakespeare's worlds represent individualism and subjectivity, and says that reading Shakespearean worlds through texts by other writers deepens understanding of how structure, ideas, content and language are adapted and appropriated. It also asks students to evaluate Shakespearean worlds that represent moments of crisis and new ways of understanding the world. As in every elective, you compose imaginative pieces of your own, but the exam question on the elective is a critical one.

Four verbs: reference, reconstruct, extend, subvert

The description lists four things a later text can do to a Shakespearean world, and they are a ready-made toolkit.

• Reference. A text points to Shakespeare and trusts you to hear it, as when a modern work borrows a title, a situation or a voice.
• Reconstruct. A text rebuilds the world in a new setting. Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed sets a version of The Tempest inside a modern prison theatre project. Sulayman Al Bassam's plays move Shakespearean tragedies into contemporary Arab political life.
• Extend. A text follows the minor figures or the unseen scenes. Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead gives the stage to two courtiers who barely speak in Hamlet and wait through the play in a world they cannot read.
• Subvert. A text turns the original against itself, questioning who is centred and who is excluded.

For each of your texts, decide which verb is the dominant one and which is secondary. That gives you an argument rather than a list.

Individualism and subjectivity

Shakespeare's worlds are often built around a single consciousness trying to decide what to do: someone alone with a problem, speaking to the audience. The description asks you to consider how his worlds represent individualism and subjectivity, and how other texts take that up. Notice who in your set of texts is allowed an inner life, and who is not. In The Merchant of Venice, the play gives Shylock, an outsider, speeches of striking inwardness, while the society around him treats him as a type. Later texts can repeat, enlarge or refuse that inwardness. A film like The Big Short has characters step out of the story to speak directly to us, which echoes how a Shakespearean soliloquy turns a character into both a participant and a guide.

Endurance across cultures

Why does the work last, and for whom? The question leads you outward from the plays: a theatre company in another culture, a critic at a period of crisis, a prison classroom. James Shapiro's 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare shows one year's circumstances shaping the plays written in it, so endurance is explained by the specific pressures of their time as much as by timelessness. Al Bassam's trilogy uses Shakespeare's plots as a way to discuss power and authority in a very different political setting. Ask whether a text endures because it means one thing everywhere, or because it can be made to mean new things.

Moments of crisis

The description says students evaluate Shakespearean worlds that represent moments of crisis and new ways of understanding the world. Crisis is where Shakespearean worlds test their rules: a trial, a coup, a shipwreck, a state of mourning. Look at the crisis in each text and ask what it reveals about the world's assumptions, and whether the later text sees a new way through. The related text you choose may be a good place to try this idea out.

The six prescribed texts, and what each is good for

NESA's rule for every elective is that you study three texts, including at least two extended print texts, plus one related text of your own choosing. NESA fixes the six below for 2027 to 2030. Check NESA's prescriptions page for full bibliographic details and any later change.

• Sulayman Al Bassam, The Arab Shakespeare Trilogy (Bloomsbury, 2014). Best for reconstruction in a different culture, politics and power, and the stage as a place of argument.
• Margaret Atwood, Hag-Seed (Hogarth, 2017). Best for a novel that rewrites a play, a play within a story, and ideas of captivity, revenge and forgiveness.
• Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Best for a Shakespearean world in itself: law, money, difference, and mercy against justice.
• James Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (Faber, 2006). Best for context as a driver, and non-fiction that reads the plays through one year's pressures.
• Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Faber, 2005). Best for extension and subversion: minor figures at the centre of a play about not knowing.
• Film: Adam McKay, The Big Short (2015). NESA lists it as the media text. It is not an adaptation of Shakespeare, so any link to Shakespearean worlds is an argument you must make, for example through direct address, fools who see clearly, and a crisis of authority.

Of the six, only The Merchant of Venice is a Shakespeare play. Natural worlds prescribes a different Shakespeare play, As You Like It.

How this shows up in Question 2

The Extension 1 paper is online, 50 marks, with 2 hours plus 10 minutes of reading time. Question 2 is the elective: one sustained critical response worth 25 marks on your prescribed texts and related text. For Shakespearean worlds, expect a claim about adaptation, authority, endurance or the individual in crisis. The task is critical, so your own re-imaginings in class are best used to learn what a reworking has to keep and what it has to change.

Traps specific to Shakespearean worlds

• Retelling the original play rather than analysing how the later text relates to it.
• Treating adaptation as a matter of faithfulness. The question is what the later text does with the world.
• Making Shakespeare the hero of every sentence. The marks are for the relationship between texts.
• Overlooking that a text which does not adapt Shakespeare (the film, the history) can still illuminate his worlds.
• Ignoring the Shakespeare play you study if your texts include one.

What to do next

Move on to composing a Shakespearean worlds response, which gives a method and original practice questions. For the common focus area, see what the Literary worlds focus area asks.