Incorporation of Quotations from Shakespeare

1. Incorporation of Quotations from Shakespeare (and other verse forms)

2. 1. Determine if the desired passage is in verse or prose. • Use the right margin to help. Also, each line will be capitalized in verse. • Typically, servants, lower-class people, informal discourse, and letters are rendered in prose. Kings/royalty almost always speak in blank verse.

3. You need to determine verse or prose in order to decide whether to use slashes between lines (/) or how to format a block quotation. • In verse, we employ the slash (/) to indicate line breaks: • The witches chant, “Double, double, toil and trouble / Fire burn and cauldron bubble” (4.1.40-41). • If prose, just write until the right margin of your paper.

4. 2. Determine the best format for your quotation (dialogic, embedded, or independent clause).

5. Dialogic Quotation • Does not refer to two or more people talking inside of quotation marks! • Refers to the type of set-up you employ: Ex.: Macbeth exclaims, “Liar and slave!” (5.5.36). • You intend to analyze the quotation in depth.

6. Embedded Quotation • Typically, a very brief quotation that you embed into a complete sentence. • (Tip: if you can remove the quotation marks and it’s still grammatically correct, you have an embedded quotation) • Macbeth meets the witches in “thunder, lightning, and in rain” (1.1.2). • Hamlet is tired of the “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable” world (1.2.133). • Typically, references something to demonstrate your exhaustive knowledge of the text, not for specific analysis.

7. Independent Clause • Both the set-up and the quotation function as independent clauses. Ex.:Hamlet is depressed: “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world” (1.2.133-34). • You use this when you intend to analyze a quotation in depth.

8. 3. Rules for Parenthetical Documentation • For any Shakespearean play, you indicate act.scene.lines • 5.5.21-32 • Always write the tens and single digits. Don’t repeat hundreds or thousands digits. But write the hundreds and thousands digits if they change during the quotation. • 2.2.198-210 • 2.2.190-98 • Prose also has line numbers, even though each publisher will have different numbering.

9. 4. Concluding Punctuation for Quotations • You never include punctuation at the end of the quotation unless it is an exclamation or question: • Hamlet declares, “To be or not to be” (3.1.57). • Macbeth exclaims, “Come on, dog!” (5.7.115).

10. 5. Block Quotations • When you intend to quote 5 or more lines of verse or 5 or more lines of your paper, you format the quotation into a block quotation. • All lines are indented 1 inch from the left margin.

11. Hamlet opines, To be or not to be, that is the question Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune, or to take arms against a Sea of troubles and by opposing end them. (3.1.115-19) noticeno quotation marks, no slashes, and the par. doc. goes after the final punctuation, not before as in unblocked quotations.

12. You should only use block quotations when you plan to discuss the quotation in great and exhaustive depth. • If possible, divide block quotations into smaller units. • Remember the 1:5 ratiofor each line of quotation, you should provide 5 lines of explanation.

13. For two or more speakers HAMLET. Ha, ha! Are you honest? OPHELIA. My lord? (3.1.104-05) Blah, blah, blah, lame ideas and imperfect analysis.

14. Hamlet believes that “[t]o be or not to be” is the central question of existence (3.1.57).