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Paper 6
 First you must
pick a topic related to Shakespearean England (the years from 1564-1616) that
has some specific and meaningful connection with Shakespeare's life and/or
works. The connection between your topic and Shakespeare's life and/or
works will be your thesis statement (what you will prove over the course of
your research paper).
Next you must submit that topic to your instructor for approval.
Then, once your
topic has been approved, write a formal essay of at least one thousand (1000) words using
Formal MLA Documentation, including parenthetical quote and paraphrase citations, as
well as a Works Cited page.
Remember:
for Paper 6 you must write about something that has some connection to Elizabethan
and/or Jacobean England and you must specifically relate that topic to Shakespeare's life and/or
works in detail. You must document that relationship using
outside sources. For example you could write a paper on Queen Elizabeth
I and her connection with Shakespeare. Or you might write about King James
I and his connection with Shakespeare. Or you could write about The Globe
Theatre. However, you could also write about the
Counter-Reformation and its connection with Shakespeare, or about the London
Theatre during Shakespeare's lifetime. Or about the Plague and its effect on
Shakespeare's life.
The relationship
between your topic and Shakespeare must be the
focus of your essay, and you must state this relationship specifically in a
thesis statement that you prove over the course of Paper 6. You may not
simply write a biography of Shakespeare. However, you could write about
some specific aspect of his work. For example, you might write about the
three periods that most critics fit his plays into.
You will need to
do research to give background information about your topic, as well as specific facts and
examples. You must have at least five (5) sources. They can be all
electronic, or all text-based, or a mix of the two.
You
must
do a separate Works Cited page with a Formal MLA Style entry for each source you quote
or paraphrase. You must quote or paraphrase a source, and do a
parenthetical citation, in order to include it
on your Works Cited page. A handy rule of thumb is to use at least one - and not
more than three - quotes and/or paraphrases per body paragraph. You must
alphabetize the entries on your Works Cited page.
If you quote Hamlet
(or any other of Shakespeare's plays) then you must use the MLA format for
citing a Shakespeare play. Use the title of the play, the act number,
the scene number, and the line number in the parentheses. The act number
is a capital Roman numeral. The scene number is a lower case Roman
numeral. The line number is Arabic. For example: the first line of
Prince Hamlet's first soliloquy is "To be, or not to be, that is the
question" (Hamlet III.i.57). The first line of this
soliloquy is in the third act, the first scene, line number fifty-seven.
It is best to
print up electronic source information. That way if a website is updated and/or
information is deleted, you have a copy. Also, printing up your electronic sources
should give you the information you need to do your Works Cited entries.
The minimum
information that you must have in order to do a Work Cited entry for an
electronic source is as follows: title of article, name of website,
copyright date or date of last update, access
date, web address. If the author's name is listed, you must give
this information also.
If you cannot
find the minimum information necessary to do a Formal MLA Style entry for an electronic source, then you may not use that source in
your Paper 6 (the author's name is not necessary, but the rest of the information listed
above is). There will be no exceptions.
Remember:
this research paper is the biggest assignment you will do this semester. It may take
a little longer than the others. Don't get frustrated.
Paper 6 must be
submitted and marked "Accepted" before you move on to Module 8.
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