The essay is to be written in-class only, no exceptions. Arrive at
class a few minutes early and log in to the course through EduCat. The assignment,
with prompts, will be available at precisely 10am. You must arrive no later than 10am. Students arriving late will not be
permitted to write the exam, no exceptions. You will have until 11:40 to complete
your essay.
You are permitted to use the prescribed course text book and your
class notes. No other aids or devices are permitted, including earphones. Cell
phones must be silenced and stowed.
General Instructions
- Begin with a simple title, followed immediately by your essay’s thesis
statement (the first brief paragraph).
- Having established your thesis (which, like the title, you may want to
revise after writing the essay), concentrate immediately on building your
argument around evidence from the plays. This evidence should be selected
judiciously. Do not fill your essay with many references or quotations; a
pertinent few will suffice. As a rule, the analysis preceding and/or
following a quotation should be at least as long as the quotation itself. In
short, dedicate as much space as possible to your argument, quoting only
enough evidence as is necessary to support it.
- References to specific passages, using course text, should be clear and
simple. For example, if you quote lines 23-25 from Act 3, Scene 2 of a play,
follow the quotation with 3.2.23-25 in parentheses. There is no need to
write “Shakespeare” or “Richard II” or the words
“Act,” “Scene,” and “Lines.” Keep it
simple; do not fill space with padding. You need not quote a passage word
for word. It will suffice simply to cite it using the reference method
outlined here. (This is especially useful for any long passage you wish to
discuss.)
- Do not refer to yourself. Phrases such as “I think” or
“I believe” are totally unnecessary and should be avoided. Also,
be sure to use the literary present tense. For example, do not write,
“Hermia said to Helena”; write, “Hermia says to
Helena.” What happens in a work of literature happens in the
present—every time we see or read it. Do not think of it as taking
place in the past.
Prompts
Choose one of the following, or devise your own prompt. If you opt for the
latter, you must clear it with me first.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, and 1 Henry
IV each contain a “play-within-the-play”: respectively,
the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude, the Mousetrap, and the Mock Interview.
Choosing two of these “performances,” compare their dramatic
purpose, connecting them more broadly with the plays in which they are
staged.- Hamlet and Richard II are in some ways very different tragic heroes.
Compare and contrast these characters in terms of the development of their
tragic personae over time, concentrating not so much on their differences
(which are obvious) as their similarities.
- Compare the relationship between the tavern and court worlds in
1 Henry IV with the relationship between the
“green world” and the city in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream. What is the nature of this relationship in
each play—complementary? oppositional? both?—and in what ways
does that relationship in one play resemble and/or differ from that of the
other?
- Compare the characterization of King Henry IV’s son, from Tavern Harry to
Prince Hal, with that of a character of your choosing from another play. The
goal here is to establish similarities between two otherwise disparate
characters.
- Typically in Renaissance drama, female characters feature more strongly in
comedies than they do in tragedies and/or history plays—but there are
always exceptions. Compare the development of one of the major female
characters in
Dream (Hermia, Hellena, Titania,
Hippolyta) with a relatively minor character in another play (e.g., the
Duchess of York, the Duchess of Lancaster, Gertrude, Ophelia, Kate).
- Shakespeare’s most compelling characters invite the illusion that they are
more than the sum total of their words and actions—that they possess
an interior, psychological world in excess of the language they speak and
actions they perform. With reference to two of the plays studied thus far
(
Hamlet, Dream, Richard II, 1 Henry IV) examine this aspect of
Shakespearean character. Be sure to connect your analysis of the two plays
under some overarching thesis.
- A foil is a character whose dramatic purpose is to foreground another
character through mirroring and contrast—a character whose
circumstances and ethos is both similar to and different from the other.
Compare Shakespeare’s handling of foil pairings in two of
1 Henry IV (Hal/Falstaff or Hal/Hotspur); Richard II (York/Aumerle, York/Lancaster,
Bolingbroke/Aumerle); or Hamlet
(Hamlet/Laertes).
Feel free to devise and respond to some variation of any one
of these prompts. Whatever you decide, however, your essay must examine two plays.