Shakespeare critical essay on either The Twelfth Night, Henry V, Othello, or The tempest.
A 5-6 pages of original content; size 12 Times New Roman; double-spaced with no additional spaces; 1-inch margins; original and meaningful title; header that includes your name and, if you’re using these prompts, the number of the prompt you’ve chosen (does not count towards page count). Follow MLA for formatting and integration of quotations (prose and poetry), block quotations, and citations. Using close textual analysis of one of the plays that we have read and drawing upon one scholarly article, propose and defend an original, insightful, and compelling interpretive thesis about the play that responds to one of the prompts below or a prompt of your own making. Your thesis must make a specific claim that is both arguable and significant. Evidence in support of your argument must directly use the play and could take the form of verbal, theatrical, metrical, editorial, or any other kind of textual analysis. The questions in the prompts below are guidelines: while your response should address the topic raised, it need not explicitly answer the questions. Your paper should provide your own critical thoughts; it should not repeat ideas covered in class. Avoid generalizing about the play or its context, making observations rather than argument, and relying on plot summary or paraphrase for evidence; avoid giving advice to or morally judging the characters, speculating on unprovable ideas, or using the play, its characters, language, or ideas, as evidence to support a claim beyond the text; avoid narrating about your personal thinking, research, or writing process. Make sure that your thesis is an argument—that is, a claim that needs to be proven true; it cannot be a self-evident observation or a personal opinion. Focus on defending your argument through the use and analysis of evidence from the play. A narrow focus that goes deep is more effective than a broad focus that remains thin.
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