Personal Paper on Henry IV, part 1.
Due: No later than Oct. 6, 2:55PM, but welcome sooner.
I advise you to sit down to write this paper as soon as possible after reading or re-reading a play.
This should be a short, thoughtful piece of writing that is grammatically correct, well-formed, and intelligent. It must also include specific reference to the play itself.
“Short” in this context should suggest a paper of two or three pages.
A well-formatted paper will have:
- A meaningful and communicative title (Henry IV, part 1 is Shakespeare’s title, not yours. “The Role of Women in Henry IV, pt. 1” is the sort of thing I expect to see);
- A title that is not underlined, italicized, bold-faced, or enclosed in quotation marks;
- Your name on the line immediately below the title, and then at the top right of every page after the first (Do not include your student id);
- A page number on every page after the first, but not on the first page;
- Titles of plays or book-length works italicized, and titles of essays, articles, poems, or chapters enclosed in quotation marks;
- Long quotations indented;
- Full sentences, a wide range of correctly deployed punctuations, a university-level vocabulary, and well formed paragraphs;
- Correct use of abbreviations, such as l. for line, ll. for lines, p. for page, pp. for pages, ms for manuscript, mss for manuscripts; Double spaced text, and indented paragraphs after the first paragraph (the first paragraph should not be indented);
- Margins of at least 1” (2.5cm) left, right, and bottom, and not much more than that on the top;
- A 12-point font from one of the following families: Times Roman, Helvetica, or Cambria (I read student work for a living, so I can spot overly large margins or font points with ease. There’s no hard limit on the length of this paper, so do not try to make it look like more than it is by fiddling with font or margin size).
Let me see, in your paper, that you have read and thought about the play, and then have thought-through-writing to a deeper understanding of whatever you have chosen to write about.
Specific references to the play will enable any reader to determine immediately exactly what part of the play you are engaging with. A specific reference may be a direct quotation, but it might only be a reference to a line or lines of script. If you are relying on your interpretation of the lines, you should quote them. If you are merely referencing them to alert your reader to that point in the play where s/he can find what you are writing about, then line numbers will often be sufficient (e.g. “As, for example, when Prince Hal save Henry IV’s life [ll. xxxx-xx]).