310: Shakespeare, Later Plays
1. Advice on Writing an Essay
2. Developing Close Reading Skills
for Shakespeare Study
3. How to Present your Essay
4. Ten Things That Really Annoy Me
When I’m Grading Papers
Prof. Andy Stott
435 Clemens Hall
amstott@buffalo.edu
Part One: Advice on Writing an Essay
How do you write a good essay? The perfect essay is a
mysterious thing. There is no blueprint for perfect papers, and two very
different types of essay could potentially get an ‘A’. There are, however, some
very basic steps you can take to improve the general quality of your work. What
follows is an idiot’s guide to constructing a good essay. This doesn’t mean
you’re an idiot, but it does mean it’s an extremely systematic approach and one
that doesn’t allow much room for imaginative essay techniques. It is a good
rudimentary tool, useful helping you to avoid getting into bad compositional
habits, and for helping you concentrate on what is important in written work.
Please don’t think that I have anything against innovation. I haven’t. I simply
want to make sure that the runway has been laid before you attempt to fly.
An essay is a unit of academic measurement. It is designed
to test:
·
Your
degree of factual knowledge and critical insight into a particular topic.
·
Your
ability to propose a thesis and formulate an argument that leads to coherent
conclusions.
·
Your
skill in synthesizing and incorporating material from a range of sources.
·
The
extent of your independent research.
·
Your
understanding of the conventions, expectations and apparatus of academic
essays.
·
Your
ability to express yourself in an articulate and intelligent manner.
·
The
quality of your written English in terms of compositional style and grammar.
The most
commonly found mistakes in essay writing are:
What do I want from an
essay?: Close Reading, Coherent Argument, Literacy
Five Steps From Start
to Finish
Essay titles usually contain one or more key words, such as
‘analyze’, ‘compare’, ‘contrast’, ‘define’, ‘discuss’, ‘evaluate’, ‘outline’,
‘summarize’, that indicate the type of response required of you. Questions may
also ask you to consider specific themes and/or texts. Make sure you understand
exactly what the question is asking. Look up any unfamiliar words, phrases, or
terms, and use your introductory paragraph to define any ambiguous or
complicated terms. If you can clearly define what the question is asking, the
terms it uses and what it means, this will act as a firm foundation for the
rest of the essay.
Tip: Try to avoid using definitions
lifted straight from the dictionary, or very literal and pedantic breakdowns of
the question. Define terms within a good, readable style.
You should have a good working knowledge of any literary
text you intend to write on. It goes without saying that you should have read
it all the way through at least twice, but you should read certain passages
many times over and make notes on them. Locate all the passages that you think
illustrate particular elements of the text, or are particularly illuminating in
relation to the question being asked, such as thematic devices, linguistic
patterns, developments in characterization, and crucial scenes. Bring the full
force of your close-reading skills to bear on these passages and make extensive
notes on them.
Move from the text to background and secondary reading.
Using your knowledge of the text, and the text in relation to the specific
question you’re answering, find some secondary sources and literary criticism
that have something to say about the topic you’re considering. Try to focus
your research on relevant areas and using relevant and respected critics. Your
Professor can help you direct your reading. Keep good, well-ordered notes, and
take care to transcribe quotations from critics correctly, and keep a record of
the book’s full citation (author, title, place of publication, publisher, date
of publication) and the number of the page where the quote appears. Keeping
good notes at this stage saves you from a world of lamentation at a later date.
Tip: Try not to get side-tracked by
irrelevant, haphazard, or endless reading, but keep focused: find out what the
most important things are and focus on them. Having said that, you should allow
yourself to wander into other areas that you might not have thought of when you
began your research. Some of the most interesting things can be found by
chance, and some of the most engaging essays inspired by a random find. In
brief, use your discretion, but don’t make it hard for yourself.
You’ve been through the primary text(s), finished your
background reading and compiled notes. Now you need to begin to organize those
notes into some kind of structure that can begin to look like an essay. Think
of the essay being comprised of three or four different sections, each section
dealing with a principal point or issue, and think carefully about where
specific bits of your material would be best deployed. Arrange your primary and
secondary sources into sections organized around central motifs, and think
about how your material relates to the question being asked. Above all, try to:
Analyze: extract
the implicit assumptions that hide in statements, see the relationships or
dissonances between ideas, distinguish value-judgments and ideologies, ‘read
between the lines’.
Synthesize:
condense and compare ideas, recognize emerging patterns, see broader
similarities, draw strands together.
Evaluate:
draw conclusions from your material, make judgments about it, state your
considered opinion, assert yourself and answer the question.
Tip: Say you want to write about love,
violence and death in Romeo and Juliet.
Think what the smoothest, most coherent order to deal with them might be. You
decide that love comes first in importance. Locate all the good quotes, do some
research on conceptions of love in the renaissance, and make some notes about
it. Read other critics, and make a note of what they’re saying. How does this
material come together? Is it suggesting a way to proceed? Shape it until it’s
a smooth progression of ideas and elaborations of ideas. Now move on to
violence…
Without a doubt, an essay plan is the most invaluable aid to
writing. Your plan is the blue-print or map of your essay, it will prevent you
getting lost or stuck. If your essay is well planned-out, you will always know
where you are going next and what you remains to be done. Essays can be planned
in a number of ways, but this is a fairly basic guide to essay structure.
i)
The Introduction
The introduction sets the tone for the essay. Clarity is all
important here. If done well, the introduction will give the reader a sense of
being led by a competent and authoritative author. In your introduction, you
must:
·
Define
your understanding of the question. Explain what you understand by any
ambiguous or difficult terms, or how you are going to formulate a particular
idea. For example, the term ‘feminism’ has a variety of implications,
formulations and nuances depending on context, so is too vague to be useful in
an essay on its own. Be more precise.
·
Outline
any theoretical frame of reference you intend to use, and the manner in which
you intend to use it.
·
Give
a brief explanation of the principal themes of the essay as you understand
them, and an indication of the position you are going to take.
·
‘Signpost’ the essay: give a clear,
step-by-step account of the direction you will take in the essay, introducing
the main points that you intend to discuss and the order in which they will be
presented. This doesn’t have to be long-winded and pedantic: ‘In this essay I
intend to deal with the topics of love, violence, and death in Romeo and Juliet, in order to show that,
for the Veronese, romantic love is necessarily built on a foundation of
conflict at the level of both social and interpersonal relationships’. Once you
have established your signposts, stick to them.
ii)
The main body of the essay
During your preparatory reading and note-taking, you should
have decided on about 3-5 main areas for discussion (this is an imprecise
number and will change depending on the length of your essay and its topic).
The main body of your essay, its principal and most significant content, will
be composed of these discussions, treated in turn as set out in your
introduction. Again, try and make sure there is a logic to the sequence you
choose to set your sections out in, and look for possible ways to link the
sections and avoid unevenness or odd lurches in the direction of the essay.
At this stage, think of each section as a self-contained
entity. Each section needs to be planned, so:
·
Begin
with a brief statement that introduces the topic or motif for this section. You
will know this as the ‘thesis statement’.
·
Now
put forward an overview of any assertions, speculations, and/or arguments that
you will use in relation to the topic of this section.
·
Illustrate
your argument with quotations from the text. The primary text is of sovereign
importance here. Make sure you use it well.
·
Comment
on the quotes you have used. Herein is the bread and butter of literary
criticism. Analyze your quotes thoroughly, read them closely. Examine the
language, the ideas and the sentiments. Why is this quote useful, what does it
reveal?
·
Introduce
the arguments, views and insights of other critics and secondary readings.
Refer to, and preferably quote, works of criticism and enter into a dialogue
with other writers who have considered this topic. Is their position helpful to
an understanding of the issue under discussion? Do you want to use them to
validate your own position? Do you want to take issue with them and challenge
or dismiss their claims?
·
Conclude
the section by briefly summarizing what has been discussed and your position on
it. Move on to the next section.
Repeat this
part of the plan for the remaining sections of your argument until you have
discussed all your main points.
iii)
Conclusion
In many respects, the conclusion is the most important part
of the essay, and also the most difficult to describe. Think of it as a return
to the question. During the course of the essay, you have presented your
evidence, and now you must round it up, summarize it, and offer it in answer to
the question that was asked in the first place. Make sure you:
·
Summarize
the main ideas.
·
Use
you summary as a basis for your answer to the question.
·
Answer
the question.
Conclusions
don’t have to be all that ‘conclusive’ inasmuch as they needn’t offer the last
word on the topic. That is unrealistic. Ideally they should make a clear statement
of your position vis- a-vis the
question. Avoid weak conclusions about the timeless artistry of Shakespeare, or
purple passages about how much you’ve learned. Make a statement, you can even
conclude asking questions or indicate other interesting areas of related study
that were beyond the scope of the piece.
Advice on Writing and Essay: Summary
Introduction
Define terms
Indicate you position/theoretical framework
Signpost
First Section
Introduce the issue and discuss it
Use quotations from the text, discuss them
Use secondary sources, discuss them
Evaluate
Summarize, move on
For the second, third, fourth, fifth etc. sections,
repeat as above.
Conclusion
Summarize the argument
Return to the question and answer it
State your position
Is the essay:
Analytical?
Thorough?
Close to the text?
Detailed?
Grammatically correct?
Correctly presented?
Does it:
Have
a thesis?
Follow
a line of argument?
Use
direct quotation?
Get
to the heart of the question?
Represent
you at your best?
Close reading is an
essential skill in the study of literature, arguably the one that sets literary
study apart from other disciplines, and one at which students of literature
should aim to excel. Close reading is essentially the practice of basing
critical commentaries on the detailed analysis of a piece of text, paying close
attention to its verbal contours and specific use of language, and by
understanding the different applications and demands of literary form.
Ingenious arguments about literature amount to nothing unless you can find
evidence in the text to support your views. Once you’ve got this cracked, you
will have in your possession an invaluable tool for the study of literature
that you can apply to any text in any genre or period whatsoever.
Close reading is
especially useful for the study of Shakespeare for two additional reasons: 1)
historical distance has made much of Shakespeare’s language strange to us, so
we need to pay special attention in order to understand it; 2) Shakespeare was
a dramatist, and as such could not rely on long prose passages or narrator’s
interventions in order to describe a character’s feelings or motivations as the
novelist can. The Shakespearean stage made only the lightest use of scenery,
costumes, and stage effects, and had no artificial lighting to help create the
illusion of reality. The principal and most versatile tools at Shakespeare’s
disposal were the words he put in characters’ mouths. Plot, action, narrative,
themes, imagery, dramatic tension, even characters themselves, are all effects
of language. Language is therefore the fundamental building-block of everything
else in a Shakespeare play: without words there are no characters, no story, no
play.
Here’s how to do it:
Note: This is my
introduction to strategies for close reading. Other Professors may have
different opinions, or object to it on point of principle, so take advice,
practice, and develop your own style.
Another note:
Close reading is like a béchamel sauce, a base for other flavors, not a dish in
itself. Once you have got the hang of close reading, you can use it as a basis
to emphasize, underpin and extrapolate the critical position that most interests
you, whether that be feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, new historicism or
whatever. All the best critics are excellent close readers, but close reading
is the beginning of criticism, not its objective.
When attempting close
reading, do the following:
1.
Choose a
decent-sized passage for your attention. 20-40 lines should do it.
2.
Read it.
3.
Read it again.
Concentrate. Take notes.
4.
Who is
speaking? What is their place in the bigger picture? Get a sense of the overall
meaning of the piece, of its direction and tone. What other characters are
participating in the scene? Is it perhaps relevant that someone is markedly
absent?
5.
Where does it
appear in the play, and how does it contribute to the action of the play? What
is the audience being told? Is it establishing characters and themes, for
example, or providing an important piece of information for the purposes of
exposition? Is it a confrontation, a reconciliation, a seduction, a curse?
6.
Identify the
form of the piece. Is it in blank verse, or in prose? Why is it in the form it
is in? How does the form contribute to the message? Remember that Shakespeare
uses different types or textures of language in order to serve his overall
themes: a 14-line sonnet, for example, is the form of a conventional love-poem;
rhyming couplets have a jaunty, folksy, or dream-like effect; stichomythia
(shared lines closely following one another) create the impression of shared
purpose; members of the lower classes speak in prose; kings are enamored of
oration.
7.
Identify the
principal issue of the piece. Is it about love? Honor? Death? Doubt? Revenge?
How does it treat this issue? In a straightforward manner? Does it skirt around
the issue? Does it allude, is it to the point? Is this a private moment, a
soliloquy, a king addressing an army, a seduction, a betrayal?
8.
What type of
language is chosen as the vehicle for the presentation of the issues in the
piece? What imagery is being used? Is it the language of nature? The language
of the heavens? Comparison to Classical gods and heroes? The language of
animals? Warfare? Love, for example, is often expressed as a battle, death as a
journey.
9.
Learn some
literary terms. Do you know what ‘sibilance’ is? Or ‘litotes’? Rhetorical
figures and their use was a very importance part of education and literary
composition in Shakespeare’s day. He used them extensively and with a purpose.
Get yourself a glossary of literary terms (I used to use Chris Baldick’s The
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms [Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990], but I expect there’s an equally good one available in the US). In the
old days, Professors would have insisted you learnt these and their definitions
by heart. This is not necessary, but it is important to understand that
specific styles of language were associated with specific moods, concepts,
intentions.
10. Using all the information you have gathered so far, think
about how the specific passage, its language, imagery and themes, relate to the
play as a whole. Remember that each scene, each interaction, exists in a context,
just as the play exists within contexts of its own. How are the play’s larger
interests served by this piece? What is the relationship between the specific
section and the overall structure of the narrative?
Do something with your close reading: The simple identification of examples of stichomythia and
bathos alone are not enough. Why is this happening and what is its literary
effect? Why does this thing exist in the world as it is? Put simply, when
constructing a written argument about Shakespeare, try and work from specifics
to broader arguments, moving outwards:
Part Three: Correct Presentation for
Essays
1. The Correct Essay Format
·
Leave
a margin of 4cm on the left-hand side of the page for the grader’s comments.
·
Work
should be double-spaced.
·
A4
paper (i.e. the size of this page) should be used.
·
The
pages should be stapled together and numbered.
2. Quotations
If your quotation does not exceed
more than three or four lines, it should appear in the text in inverted commas
(Example i). Quoted lines of verse that appear in the text should be separated
by a forward slash that designates the end of a line (Example ii). If quotes
are longer than three or four lines, they should be indented, without inverted
commas, and single-spaced if typed (Example iii).
Anything you cut from a quotations,
in order to make it more manageable, or for sense, should be indicated by three
spaced stops (. . .), and additions [by you] should be enclosed in square brackets.
Try to ensure that quotations do not disrupt the syntax or the normal flow of
the sentence.
All quotations from plays should be followed by their act, scene, and
line numbers (in parentheses). If the context of the quotation makes it
ambiguous, include the title of the play.
Example i:
Mcdonald reminds us that, ‘Scholars
have been unable to ascertain which theatrical company first employed
Shakespeare as actor and playwright’ (p.24), although we know that he concluded
his career with the King’s Men.
Example ii:
Hamlet initiates the imagery of
natural decay in his first soliloquy: ‘’Tis an unweeded garden / That grows to
seed, things rank and gross in nature / Possess it merely’ (2.1.135-137).
Example iii:
That Richard is an adaptation of the
Vice figure from medieval drama is clear from the malevolence with which he
introduces
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of
And all the clouds that low’r’d upon
our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean
buried.
(1.1.1.4).
3. Titles
The titles of books, plays,
periodicals and long poems should be underlined (or italicized if you are using
a printer with that facility), they should NOT
be put in inverted commas: both Romeo and Juliet and Romeo and Juliet, are acceptable.
The titles of individual poems or of
essays in collections and periodicals should be put in ‘inverted commas,’(or
‘quotes’) NOT underlined.
4. Footnotes
Footnotes should be used every time
you cite a source other than the primary texts you are using. In an essay which
deals with plays, reference them using their act, scene, line numbers as
discussed above. Other footnotes should be placed at the foot of the page, and
marked in the text by numerals, not asterisks or other marks. These numerals
should be beside and above the appropriate part of the text, outside the
punctuation, and not in brackets.[1]
5. How to List References
The purpose of referencing is to
give academic credibility to your essay. Accurate references show your reader
the exact source of your material thereby enabling them to reconstruct your
chain of thought or, indeed, challenge your argument. Think of references as
the material evidence of your workings through: they must be honest and open to
scrutiny.
Absolutely any idea, discussion, or piece of information that is not
entirely your own work must be referenced. Avoid accusations of plagiarism.
References given for quotations or
for opinions taken from other sources than the literary text under discussion
must be precise. Their purpose is to give an unmistakable indication of where
the passages or information can be found. Although varying conventions for
footnote referencing are employed in other disciplines, it is useful to learn
at least one convention that is reasonably widely used in the humanities. The
details given below generally follow the conventions of the MLA Handbook 2nd
edition (New York: Modern Language Association, 1999).
Initial references to books in
footnotes should be set out in this order:
(i) The name(s) of the author(s) in
normal order (first name, second name), followed by a comma: Andrew Stott,
(ii) The title of the book, underlined or
italicized. Where there is a two-part title, the second part is separated from
the first part by a colon and is also underlined or italicized:
Andrew
Stott, How to Care For Your Beagle
(iii) The place of publication,
publisher, and date of publication, all in parentheses. A colon follows the
place, a comma follows the publisher, and the closing bracket follows the date:
Andrew
Stott, How to Care For Your Beagle (London:
Stottpress, 1969).
(iv) The page number(s) in Arabic
numerals:
Andrew
Stott, How to Care For Your Beagle (London:
Stottpress, 1969), p.42.
Further references to the same book
may be given in an abbreviated form of the author’s name and the book’s title,
and leaving out other details except for the page number:
Stott,
Beagle, p.42.
or, they may
be given without repeating the book’s title, if this is the only work by this
author you are going to refer to:
Stott,
p.42.
or, they may
be given without repeating the author’s name, if you are going to refer to more
than one of this author’s works :
Beagle, p.42.
Note: While the old-fashioned Latinate
forms ‘ibid’ and ‘op.cit.’ are not incorrect, they are
less straightforward than these conventions and have generally fallen into
disuse.
6. The Bibliography
Every essay should include a bibliography,
otherwise known as a list of sources or citations. This is a list of all the books
and articles you have used in the preparation of the essay, whether you have
quoted from them directly or just paraphrased them.
Even if you have used no other sources than the primary literary text in
the preparation of your essay, your bibliography will still record that fact.
Your bibliographical references
should be in alphabetical order, and given in the following form
:
(i)
Author(s) name(s), surname first, and followed by a stop, Stott, Andrew.
(NOT as in footnote references).
(ii) Book Title, underlined or
italicized, including any subtitle, and followed by a stop.
(iii) Place of publication,
publisher and date of publication, separated as in a footnote reference, but
not enclosed in brackets:
Stott,
Andrew. How to Care For Your Beagle.
For further information, or more
detail, on presentation there are plenty of websites giving similar advice.
Try, for example,
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html
Part Four: Ten Things That Really Annoy
Me When I’m Grading Papers
1.
Plagiarism. The thing that bothers me most about plagiarism is not that it’s
dishonest, cheating, or that it’ll mean you fail your degree and go to hell,
but that it’s personally insulting to me. It assumes that I can be fooled, know
nothing about my field, can’t read books and can’t use the internet.
2. Bad
presentation. You know how to do it, so no excuses
3.
Incomplete referencing for quotations. Please include the act, scene, and line
number in parentheses after each quote you use (such as, 2.3.458-463).
4.
Incomplete referencing for secondary sources. Please cite a source for each
quote you use, information you include, or argument that you invoke in your
work. This includes secondary sources, critical works, websites, introductions,
textual notes and basically anything that doesn’t come straight out of your
head.
5.
Underline or italicize the
titles of books. Do not put them in quotation marks.
6.
‘It’s’. ‘It’s’ (with an apostrophe) is an abbreviation of ‘it is’. You probably
just mean ‘its’. As in, ‘It’s nice in its own way’. For your information: I
hate abbreviations.
7.
Writing ‘novel’ or ‘film’ when you’re discussing a play or poem, or vice versa.
A simple, innocuous, mistake you might think. No. It gives the impression you haven’t
been paying attention and that you personally hold me in dire contempt.
8. Spelling characters’ names wrong, or, even worse, the author’s. Check it
if your not sure, and get it right.
9.
Weak conclusions, like: ‘…and this is why Shakespeare’s work will always be
immortal and teach us so much about life.’ What does that mean? And do you
really think that, or do you think it’s the sort of thing English professors
say to each other at parties? Be more assertive.
10. Too much
personal information. Keep it formal; this is an academic piece, designed to
test and improve your levels of scholarship and critical analysis. I am not
interested in biographical asides, reminiscences or examples of journalistic
flair (‘Who could tip the immortal Bard from atop his lofty perch?’ etc.). Good
style is not self-indulgent, it keeps the piece moving and guides the reader
with its intellect.