Your
asssignment is to choose one of these statements and support it with
evidence from the text of the play. The problem is that each of
these scenes is far too long to quote in its entirety in a short paper.
For purposes of this assignment, you must follow these rules:
1)
You may quote no more than three excerpts. Any quotation counts
as an excerpt.
2) Of these three quotations, at least two must be three or fewer
lines.
3) One quotation may be longer, but the maximum length for this quotation
is six lines. Quotations longer than four lines of prose or
three lines of verse must be set-off.
4) You may use ellipses [. . .] to cut out unnecessary parts of the
passage and thus shorten the length of the quotation, but no quotation
may have more than two ellipses in it. You do not need ellipses
at the beginning or end of a quotation, however, because we know that
something always comes before and after the quotation (unless the
quotation is the first or last line in a scene). Note that ellipses
should have a space between each pair of dots — [. . .] not
[...] — and that you should place them in brackets when you
insert them in a quotation.
In each case, you should obviously focus on lines spoken
by the character about whom you are making an argument.
Your
first task, once you have chosen which statement you would like to argue,
is to decide which lines from the scene will be most helpful
in proving the statement. You may only use evidence from the passages
listed above; do not look elsewhere in the play for support.
Once
you have identified the best lines to use, you need both to set them
up and comment on them so that they support the thesis. Your general
approach should be to establish the point — not the whole thesis,
but a point that supports it — you are trying to make, then introduce
a quotation, quote the text accurately, and then explain how the quotation
supports the statement.
Because
you must both introduce the quotations and comment on them, you absolutely
cannot either begin or end your paragraphs with the quotations.
Starting or ending a paragraph with a quotation will result in an
unsatisfactory grade on the argument portion of the assignment and mandatory
revision. Introducing a quotation means setting it up
in a meaningful way, not just starting a paragraph with “Hamlet
says” etc. Remember:
the quotations cannot make your argument for you; you need to comment
on everything you quote.
Obviously,
the statement itself needs to be in one of the paragraphs somewhere
— using it verbatim is easiest, so just copy it directly into your
paper — but where you put it is up to you.
Make
sure you write at sufficient length to make your point; a good rule
of thumb is that the discussion of any indented quotation should cover
at least twice as many lines as the quotation itself, and preferably
more.
The
format of the quotations should be perfect, and every quotation should
be cited appropriately according to MLA rules. Two of these passages
from Hamlet are in verse and the other is in prose; you must
use the quotation format appropriate to the passage you select.
Note
that usually a colon works better to set up a quotation than a comma
does. For instance, if one were to quote Hamlet’s most famous
soliloquy, one should do something like this:
Hamlet
begins the soliloquy with the most fundamental possible question,
that of existence itself: “To be or not to be” (3.1.55).
One
should not do something like this:
Hamlet
begins the soliloquy with the most fundamental possible question,
that of existence itself. He says, “To be or not
to be” (3.1.55).
The
“He says” is superfluous.
A
correct Work Cited entry for the edition of Hamlet we are using
must be included at the end of the exercise.