Dr Adrian Papahagi — ‘Early Modern Drama Course’, IA, Spring Semester 2009

papahagi@upcnet.ro

WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT

• Within two weeks from the last course, you must turn in a paper of your own making on any aspect
of the plays and topics covered in the course. You can write about a general aspect (eg ‘Magic and
Redemption in Early Modern English Drama’), one play (‘Satire in The Alchemist’), specific characters
(‘The Elizabethan Magus: Bacon vs Dr Faustus’), etc.
• The paper must be typewritten, in Times typeface, size 12, double-spaced, justified, and must have
no more than 5 A4 pages.
• The paper must be entirely your own production. You are allowed to use others’ ideas only critically
(i. e. by agreeing or disagreeing with them and saying why), and you must acknowledge them in two ways:
by setting the quotation between inverted commas (“...” or ‘...’) and by giving the full reference to the source
in footnotes. Plagiarism is a crime, and I have always been able to spot even the slightest unacknowledged
‘borrowing’. Papers guilty of any degree of plagiarism will be graded 1, and their authors will be pursued in
the Faculty’s council. Don’t forget that your teachers also have Google, that they know the bibliography
infinitely better than you, and that they know very well how a student is expected to write. Here are a few
examples:

OK:
As noted by T. S. Eliot, Hamlet lacks ‘an objective correlative’, which in this critic’s view is one of the
play’s major flaws1. However, Eliot’s theory can be considered extreme, because ...
1
TS Eliot, ‘Hamlet and His Problems’, in The Sacred Wood. Essays on Poetry and Criticism, London: Faber & Faber, 1997 (1st
ed. 1920), p. 82.

Wrong:
Hamlet lacks an objective correlative, which is one of the play’s major flaws.

OK:
Shakespeare’s early career was largely devoted to writing comedies and history plays2.
2
See article ‘William Shakespeare’ on Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare>, consulted on Feb. 25, 2008.

Wrong:
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly
comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth
century. [the entire passage is plagiarised from Wikipedia and presented as the student’s writing]

• The paper must be written in an academic style, which excludes orality.

OK:
It can be stated that Romeo and Juliet is a comedy that veers into tragedy almost by accident.

Wrong:
I think Romeo and Juliet looks pretty much like a comedy, but it becomes a tragedy by accident.

• The paper must observe the following rules:

1. Title and author in the beginning, centred, in bold characters.
2. Each paragraph is indented.
3. Quotations must be clearly marked (“...” or ‘...’).
ADINA POPESCU
 To ‘See Helen’s Beauty in a Brow of Egypt’.
The Female Lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
[paragraph indent ->|]
Shakespeare’s apparently flamboyant comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not a ‘problem play’
like Measure for Measure, but it certainly has a dark side. Indeed, there is much bitterness and disorder
looming in the Arcadian woods. One of these problems is the ‘désordre amoureux’ affecting all the lovers in
the play, including the divine couple of Oberon and Titania.
In the following pages, I would like to argue that...

4. Foreign words (eg hybris) and titles (eg Romeo and Juliet) are in italics.
5. All references are given in footnotes. References must quote:
-initials and name (in this order!) of author
-title of article between inverted commas, title of book in italics
-place and editor, year, page numbers
1
N. Frye, A Natural Perspective, New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1965, p. 23 and pp. 45-49.
2
J. Bate, ‘Ovid and the Sonnets; Or, Did Shakespeare Feel the Anxiety of Influence’, in Shakespeare Survey 42 (1990), p. 72.
3
J. Levinson, ‘Comedy’, in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, ed. by AR Braumuller and M. Hattaway,
Cambridge UP, 1990, p. 265.
When quoting the same author again, one does not repeat the full reference:
4
Frye, p. 52.
5
ibidem. [means ‘Frye, p. 52’, and can be used only immediately after the note it refers to]

6. Longer quotations (over 2 lines) are indented and set in size 10 characters.

Thus, as Quince so deliciously puts it in his prologue to the play within the play:
If we offend, it is with our good will.
That you should think, we come not to offend,
But with good will. (Midsummer Night’s Dream V.i, 108-110)

According to Northrop Frye,

The opposite of repetition is the sudden starting of a new action or mood, as the jealousy of Leontes bursts on us without
warning at the beginning of The Winter’s Tale, or as Isabella, who seems half asleep through the first two acts of
Measure for Measure, explodes into a furious tirade against Claudio in the prison scene1.

1
Frye, p. 26.

Settings in Microsoft Word:

first line
indent size 12 for text; size
10 for notes and
quotations justified text
throughout text double spaced;
font italics I for titles and
‘Times’ quotations and notes
foreign words single spaced