Stack & Quill

11/05/2025

Best of luck to those GCSE students sitting Lit Paper 1 in the morning! You’ve got this!! 🙌🙌

16/03/2025

01/03/2025

Check out these free events and resources from the British Library!

30/10/2024

May your cauldrons be full and your chants be rich with symbolism, and delivered in rhymed couplets of catalectic trochaic tetrameter! 🎃👻😈

Keep your eyes (of newt?) peeled for the next S&Q publication on Macbeth, which includes analysis of the weird sisters’ rhyme and metre, and a breakdown of all the symbolism in their potion ingredients!
🧙‍♀️🧙‍♀️🧙‍♀️

Happy Halloween from us at Stack & Quill!

Painting: ‘The Three Witches from Macbeth: Double, Double, Toil and Trouble’ by Mary H***e, 1781.

12/09/2024

If you find Shakespearean English inaccessible, spare a thought for the teachers who need to translate it into a language that is still evolving. No cap.

For real though, if elders are salty about the language of the young, they forget that Shakespeare, the GOAT, was a language innovator and that if language never changed, wē woldon gīet sprecan on Eald Englisc (“we would still be speaking in Old English”).

Go forth and be creative with language, just as Shakespeare would have wanted. But remember to spare a thought for your audience and purpose of course (got to be mindful of that essay style for Lit as well as the GCSE Language mark scheme)!

Hope this flex from Richard Franks is helpful.

Stack & Quill’s Annotated Guide to Macbeth will be out later this term for a fully-annotated breakdown of the play!

10/08/2024

What if the illegitimate heir of a well-known king stumbled upon Prospero’s magical staff, decided to take his rightful place as king, stole his way into the realm of Shakespeare’s magical beings, was overthrown by the witches of Macbeth, and brought an end to destiny itself? Well, The Globe and Splendid Productions have the answer!

If the prestige and brilliance of Shakespeare had a baby with the hilarity and audience participation of panto, it would look a lot like ‘Rough Magic’ at the Sam Wanamaker. Sam and Emma from Stack & Quill HQ attended today and thoroughly recommend it if you’re looking for some laughs this summer holiday!

20/05/2024

🙌🏆📚👏 Congratulations to all those GCSE students who sat their final English Literature exam today!

Best of luck for the rest of the exam period and we hope you have the most fabulous summer break when it comes! 🌞🥤🧘😎

08/05/2024

🤔 Check out what our early readers think of the new release! 📚♥️📚

Top marks ambitions in GCSE English literature? We’ve got you 😉🙌🏆

🔗 Link in bio.

04/05/2024

OUT NOW!

Stack & Quill’s Annotated Guide to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is available to order.

Check it out if you’d like:

📝 A master essay structure for the exam…

🗺️ To find out about the geographical symbolism of Stevenson’s London…

✉️ To understand how Stevenson structures his text using the epistolary form to create his plot twist…

👨🏻 To explore the meaning behind each character name…

✅ Top grade analysis and context notes…

📚 And much more.