Posted: February 5th, 2015

Much Ado About Nothing(please design a topic)

Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

 

 

Although the fact is easy to forget in the presence of the dynamic duo Beatrice and Benedick, the main love story of the play is that of Hero and Claudio. Why does Shakespeare give us two couples? How do the relationships compare, intersect, and contrast – and with what effects?

General guidelines and advice:
· Papers should be typed, double-spaced, and with margins of one inch all around. Please note that Word often sets by default a left margin of 1.5 inches: learn how to change this setting. Do not leave a blank line between paragraphs: this style is appropriate for business letters and reports, not academic essays. Title-pages are not necessary: just put your name, the date, the course name, the name of the play you’re writing on, and a title (however prosaic) at the top of the first page. Please staple your paper.
· Avoid broad opening generalizations and self-evident conclusions. Use your introduction to set up the specific question or subject you plan to address. If most of your first paragraph could be cut-and-pasted into a paper on another play, it’s too general.
· Illustrate your points with short (three- or four-word) quotations: in papers like these, lengthy quotations are usually just space filler. Use quotations primarily to draw attention to words that help you make an analytical point, and not simply to prove that what happens in the play does in fact happen. Try to avoid mechanical exposition (e.g., repeatedly introducing quotations with “This is shown when…”).
· Provide references for your quotations in the body of your paper. There are two conventional referencing styles for plays: one mixes roman and arabic numbers for act, scene, and line numbers (IV.iii.17), the other uses all arabic numbers (4.3.17). Either is acceptable. E.g., as Capulet complains, “Death is my heir” (IV.v.38). Or: as Capulet says, Death lies on Juliet “like an untimely frost”; “I will die,” he concludes, “And leave him all” (4.5.28, 39-40).
· Ellipses are appropriate only in mid-quotation (not to end or begin a quotation).
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· Quotations should fit into sentences naturally. That is, if you mentally remove all quotation marks, the sentence that remains should still make grammatical and syntactic sense. This includes punctuation: remove punctuation from the end of a quotation if it does not fit within the syntax of the sentence in which it is contained. Learn, in general, how to integrate quotations properly and effectively into your prose.
· The point of the paper is not to convince us that you think Shakespeare is a great writer or that the play is a great play.
· Write about the text we have, not about the text we would have if it were a different play. That is, while characters in the play might speculate about alternative courses of action, and while you might discuss the effects of their speculations, your conclusion should not be that if X did not happen, the story would have turned out differently.
· Finally, remember that the most important question you ask yourself as a careful reader is: “so what?” That is, observations you make about a text should always be accompanied by speculation about the thematic effects or functions of whatever it is you have noticed.

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