English 304: Shakespeare: Major Plays (Prof Boyer)
I. General Format
1.
Your paper should be typed, double-spaced, in a normal font size and style, with margins of approximately 1 inch on each side.
2.
Your paper should have a title, either at the top of the first page or on a separate title page.
3.
In your paper, play titles should always be underlined or in italics.
II. Quotations From the Plays
1.
Short quotations (2 lines or less) should be run into the text, using a / to mark line breaks in verse. Do not mark line breaks in prose.
2.
Longer quotations should be indented. Since the indenting marks the passage as a quotation, quotation marks are not necessary. In longer quotations, verse passages should appear as verse.
3.
All quotations should be followed by a citation, giving an abbreviated title and act, scene, and line numbers.
III. References to Other Works--whether summary, paraphrase, or quotation--should also be given in parentheses in the text, using an author's name or short title and page number. (See examples below.)
IV. Bibliography
1.
Your paper should have a bibliography (or works cited page). At a minimum, it should contain information about the edition of Shakespeare you are using. For example:
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Ed. David Bevington. Updated 4th ed. New York: Longman, 1997.Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 1997.
2.
If you consult or refer to any modern criticism, including the editorial apparatus in your edition, it should also appear in your bibliography. Examples:
Danson, Lawrence. "Twentieth Century Shakespeare Criticism: The Comedies." The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Ed. Stanley Wells. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 231-40.Brown, John Russell. Shakespeare's Plays in Performance. London: Edward Arnold, 1966.
Cohen, Walter. Introduction to Othello. Shakespeare 2091-98.
Bevington, David. Introduction. A Midsummer Night's Dream. By William Shakespeare. New York: Bantam, 1988.
Newman, Karen. "Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew." English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986): 86-100.
V. Examples of Quotation Formats and Textual Citations:
Lysander thinks of aristocratic women as bold and strong, and invokes the independent power of women to
protect his plan of escape:
I have a widow aunt, a dowagerOf great revenue, and she hath no child.
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues,
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee,
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us. (MND 1.1.157-163)
His lines echo and invert Theseus' image, earlier in the scene, of "a dowager / Long withering out a young man's
revenue" (MND 1.1.5-6). In contrast, Peter Quince imagines that great ladies are frail and dependent when he
entreats Bottom not to roar out the part of the lion: "An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the Duchess
and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all" (MND 1.2.75-77). David Bevington
calls this a "primitive faith, naive but strong," in the "terrifying power of art" (Bevington xxvii), but it may also reflect
a terror of these powerful members of the opposite sex and the opposite class.
VI. For Further Information
The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 5th ed., is available in the Library's Reference section (call number RR808.027 G43M5). On pages 292 and 293 you will find a sample first page and Works Cited page. On pages 250 and 251 you will find a list of the standard abbreviations for Shakespeare's plays.NOTE: These instructions differ in some details from MLA style. You may also use pure MLA style.