The Cambridge AS & A Level Literature in English (9695) May/June 2026 papers and mark schemes are out, and they’re free. All four papers, 9695/12 to 9695/42, can be downloaded and printed on the Tutopiya Learning Portal. Below is every set text and question on each paper, how you choose between them, and how the mark scheme grades a 25-mark answer, taken from the papers themselves.

Key points from the 2026 9695 papers

• Every answer is out of 25, on one grid. All four papers have 50 marks: two answers of 25. The mark scheme gives no list of expected points for any question. You are placed in one of six levels.
• Each set text offers an essay or a passage. You choose either (a), a question on the whole text, or (b), a close reading of a printed extract.
• Quotations framed several essays. Four (a) questions opened with a quotation to test: three critical comments (on short stories, on Cora and on Shakespeare’s sonnets) and one line of Elizabeth’s about Darcy’s pride.
• The A Level papers reward weighing other readings. Papers 3 and 4 add AO5, the evaluation of opinions and interpretations, to every level.
• Passage questions point outwards. Most extract questions on Papers 3 and 4 asked how the passage relates to the text “here and elsewhere” or is “characteristic of” the writer.

All May/June 2026 9695 papers

Paper	Code	Duration	Marks	What it tests
Paper 1 Drama and Poetry	9695/12	2 hours	50	One drama and one poetry set text (AS)
Paper 2 Prose and Unseen	9695/22	2 hours	50	One prose set text and one unseen (AS)
Paper 3 Shakespeare and Drama	9695/32	2 hours	50	One Shakespeare play and one other play (A Level)
Paper 4 Pre- and Post-1900 Poetry and Prose	9695/42	2 hours	50	One pre-1900 and one post-1900 text, one poetry and one prose (A Level)

Timings and marks are taken from the front cover of each 2026 paper. Dictionaries are not allowed on any paper. For the full list of set texts, see the Cambridge International AS & A Level Literature in English 9695 syllabus.

Which variant is this? Cambridge sets different versions of each paper (variants) for different time zones. The papers here are variant 2: 9695/12, /22, /32 and /42. All variants cover the same syllabus at the same difficulty, so variant 2 is just as good for practice as the one your school sat.

Download the 9695 May/June 2026 papers →

What came up in 9695 Paper 1 (Drama and Poetry), May/June 2026?

You answer two questions: one from Section A (drama) and one from Section B (poetry). For your text, choose either (a) or (b).

Question	Set text	(a) Essay	(b) Passage
1	Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?	How Albee makes families significant	George in an Act 2 extract where he tries to warn Nick
2	Errol John, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl	Desire and its effects	How tension is created in an extract from Act 3, Scene 2
3	Shakespeare, The Tempest	Miranda through her different relationships	Alonso and his companions in Act 2, Scene 1
4	Webster, The Duchess of Malfi	Different kinds of conflict	Bosola and Ferdinand in Act 3, Scene 1
5	Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise	The natural world in two poems	Attitudes to work in One More Round
6	Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience	Social injustice in two poems	The situation in A Little Boy Lost
7	Plath, Ariel	Effects of settings in two poems	The journey in an extract from Getting There
8	Songs of Ourselves, Volume 2	Journeys in two poems	Edward Taylor’s wasp in Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold

Watch for: the poetry (a) questions all asked for two poems. Writing on one, or on four, misses the task.

What came up in 9695 Paper 2 (Prose and Unseen)?

You answer one prose question from Section A and one unseen from Section B.

Question	Set text	(a) Essay	(b) Passage
1	Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss	Biju and his importance in the novel	The cook and his family in a Chapter 2 passage
2	Stories of Ourselves, Volume 1	Moments of realisation or discovery in two stories (quoted comment)	Wallace’s schooldays in H G Wells’s The Door in the Wall
3	Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust	Mrs Beaver and her role	Princess Abdul Akbar in a passage from Hard Cheese on Tony
4	Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad	Cora as a symbol of hard-won freedom (quoted comment)	Ridgeway’s past

Section B, the unseen. Choose one:

• Question 5 (poem): a short poem in which a parent describes a quiet daughter who seems to slip away, through images of snakes, the sea and a fishtail. The task is the presentation of the daughter, through language, imagery and poetic methods.
• Question 6 (drama): a dialogue in which a stranger correctly guesses that a young woman drying her hair outside is a struggling writer in New York, stuck on a love story. The task is the presentation of the characters, through language, dialogue and dramatic methods.

What came up in 9695 Paper 3 (Shakespeare and Drama)?

You answer one Shakespeare question from Section A and one drama question from Section B.

Question	Set text	(a) Essay	(b) Passage
1	Shakespeare, Hamlet	How women are presented, with what dramatic effects	Act 3, Scene 3: the King at prayer and Hamlet’s decision not to kill him
2	Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew	Deception and its dramatic significance	Act 2, Scene 1: the first meeting of Petruchio and Katherina
3	Lynn Nottage, Sweat	Financial hardship and its significance	Hopes and dreams in an Act 1, Scene 2 extract on a supervisor’s job
4	Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night	Characters’ attitudes to acting and the theatre	Edmund and Jamie in Act 4
5	Wole Soyinka, Kongi’s Harvest	Flawed leadership	An extract from the First Part, in relation to the rest of the play

What made it hard: both Shakespeare passages ask about methods and concerns “here and elsewhere in the play”. You have to analyse the extract closely and also link it to the whole play.

What came up in 9695 Paper 4 (Pre- and Post-1900 Poetry and Prose)?

You answer one question from Section A (pre-1900) and one from Section B (post-1900). The cover adds a rule: one must be poetry and one must be prose.

Question	Set text	(a) Essay	(b) Passage
1	Austen, Pride and Prejudice (prose)	Pride in Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship (quoted line)	Family relationships in a Chapter 51 passage
2	Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale (poetry)	Symbols and motifs	The knight, in an extract from the Tale
3	Eliot, Middlemarch (prose)	How Eliot shapes our response to Lydgate	A passage with Dorothea, and Eliot’s methods in the novel
4	Hardy, Jude the Obscure (prose)	Lies and dishonesty	Jude in a passage from Part Second
5	Shakespeare, selected sonnets (poetry)	Whether the sonnets are personal and universal, with three sonnets	Sonnet 116
6	Whitman, Leaves of Grass (poetry)	Symbols, with three poems	War in The Wound-Dresser
7	Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (prose)	The power of empire and imperialism	A Chapter 2 passage and Coetzee’s methods
8	Louise Glück, The Wild Iris (poetry)	Love, with three poems	Critical appreciation of a Vespers poem
9	Katherine Mansfield, Selected Stories (prose)	Children, in at least two stories	A passage from Marriage à la Mode
10	Toni Morrison, Beloved (prose)	How Morrison shapes our response to Beloved	A Part 2 passage on Paul D
11	Gabriel Okara, Collected Poems (poetry)	Suffering, in three poems	Critical appreciation of an extract from The Fisherman’s Invocation
12	Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard (poetry)	Different poetic forms, with three poems	Photographs, through Photograph: Ice Storm, 1971

Watch for: the poetry rule. If your pre-1900 text is a novel, your post-1900 answer must be on poetry, and the reverse.

How the 9695 May/June 2026 mark scheme gives marks

The 9695 mark schemes don’t list expected points for any question. They give one grid and tell examiners to place the whole answer in a level. Here is how that grid works.

1. Six levels, each out of 25. Level 6 “perceptive and assured” (22 to 25), Level 5 “confident and thorough” (18 to 21), Level 4 “sound and competent” (14 to 17), Level 3 “straightforward and partial” (10 to 13), Level 2 “basic and limited” (6 to 9) and Level 1 “generalised and restricted” (1 to 5). The examiner finds the best-fit level first, then the mark within it.

2. All assessment objectives count equally. On Papers 1 and 2 they are AO1 knowledge and understanding, AO2 analysis of the writer’s choices, AO3 personal response and AO4 communication. On Papers 3 and 4, AO5 (evaluating other opinions and interpretations) is added. So a brilliant reading that is badly organised still loses ground on AO4.

3. What separates Level 6 from Level 5 is perception, not more content. Both levels ask for knowledge, analysis and structure. Level 5 is “thorough” and “confident”. Level 6 is “perceptive” and “assured”, with interpretations fully supported by quotation and an approach that may show originality. Take Paper 3 Question 2(b), the first meeting of Petruchio and Katherina. A thorough answer explains the puns and the slap. A perceptive one shows what the wordplay reveals about power between them, and links that to the rest of the play as the question asks.

4. Narrative summary keeps you in the lower levels. Level 3 mentions “occasional reliance on narrative summary or paraphrase”, and Level 1 describes knowledge that “may be narrative-based”. Retelling the plot of The Inheritance of Loss when asked about Biju (Paper 2 Question 1(a)) will not lift you above the middle.

5. Quoted comments are an invitation to argue. Paper 4 Question 5(a) asked whether Shakespeare’s sonnets are personal and universal. At A Level, AO5 rewards answers that “consider and evaluate varying opinions and interpretations”. So test the comment, agree in part, or offer another reading, using three sonnets.

6. The unseen has its own grid. On Paper 2, the unseen grid (Table B) replaces “context” with awareness of the text type. For Question 6, that meant reading the extract as drama, with dialogue, timing and how the scene would play on stage, not as a short story.

7. There is no single right answer. The mark scheme says level descriptions are not “hurdle statements”, that examiners must not penalise you for leaving out a particular focus, and that they should “meet candidates on their chosen ground” if it is relevant. Choose an argument you can support well.

Which papers should you sit?

• AS Level: Paper 1 and Paper 2.
• Full A Level: Papers 1, 2, 3 and 4.

You can only answer on the set texts your school taught, so the choice on the day is mainly between (a) and (b) for each text. On Paper 2, the unseen choice between poem and drama is open to everyone.

How to use the 2026 papers as a mock

1. Try both options for your text. Write the (a) essay one week and the (b) passage answer the next, so you know which suits you.
2. Time it exactly. Two hours for two answers is about an hour each. Spend the first ten minutes of each hour planning.
3. Do the unseen cold. Read the Paper 2 poem or extract without notes, in timed conditions, as you will on the day.
4. Level your own answer. Read Levels 4, 5 and 6 of the grid and decide where your essay sits. Write one sentence on what would move it up.
5. Check your links. For every Paper 3 or 4 passage answer, underline each place where you connect the extract to the rest of the text.

More A Level Literature in English resources

• A Level past papers 2026: all subjects

🔍 Looking for a specific past paper? Use our free Past Paper Finder to search by subject, year and exam board.

Need help with a 9695 topic? Book a free trial lesson with an A Level Literature in English tutor →

Frequently asked questions

Are the 9695 May/June 2026 past papers free? +

Yes. All four question papers (9695/12, 9695/22, 9695/32 and 9695/42) and their official mark schemes are free to download and print on the Tutopiya Learning Portal.

Which set texts were on 9695 Paper 1 in May/June 2026? +

The drama texts were Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, The Tempest and The Duchess of Malfi. The poetry texts were Maya Angelou's And Still I Rise, Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Plath's Ariel and Songs of Ourselves, Volume 2. Each text had an essay question and a passage question.

What was on the 9695 Paper 2 unseen in 2026? +

You chose between a short poem about a quiet, elusive daughter and a drama extract in which a stranger guesses that a young woman in New York is a struggling writer. Both were marked out of 25 on a grid that rewards awareness of the text type.

How is 9695 marked? +

Every answer is marked out of 25 on a six-level grid, from Level 1 (1 to 5) to Level 6 (22 to 25). The assessment objectives are equally weighted. Papers 3 and 4 add AO5, the evaluation of other opinions and interpretations.

Why can't I find 9695/11 or 9695/13 for 2026? +

Only variant 2 of the May/June 2026 papers is on the portal at the moment. Cambridge sets different variants for different time zones; variants 1 and 3 test the same syllabus in the same format, so variant 2 prepares you just as well.

When will the October/November 2026 9695 papers be available? +

Cambridge usually releases the October/November papers in the new year. We add them to the Learning Portal once they are published.

Ready to Excel in Your Studies?

Get personalised help from Tutopiya's expert tutors. Whether it's IGCSE, IB, A-Levels, or any other curriculum — we match you with the perfect tutor and your first session is free.

Book Your Free Trial