You have a chance to make a real contribution to scholarship when you work on non-canonical texts. To identify the gaps in criticism (and hence the opportunities for new interventions), you need to familiarize yourself with the conversation to date. In most cases, you’ll want to (and be able to) read all of the published textual criticism and literary criticism on your play.
Your task is to compile an exhaustive, enumerative, partially annotated* bibliography of the criticism on your play. (* To make the workload roughly equal for all of you, please annotate just ten of the items on your list. If you want to annotate more, I’m happy to read your annotations, but I’ll grade only the ten that you mark with an asterisk.)
Details on the three parameters of the assignment:
Exhaustiveness
Given the glorious paucity of criticism on most of your plays, most of you will be able to be exhaustive in the strictest sense. Go right back to the 1900.
Places to search
- MLA International Bibliography (as usual).
- World Shakespeare Bibliography (because non-Shakespearean plays often get a certain amount of attention as context for, source of, or adaptation of Shakespeare).
- Monographs and essay collections on your playwright, playing company, genre, and/or playhouse. You might also check books that address the issues prominent in your play. Check the indices for any references to your play. You may well find two or three pages of analysis that you’ll want to take into account.
- The critical introductions to scholarly critical editions (if there have been editions of your play). Not only do they cite previous criticism, but they are often significant pieces of criticism in their own right.
- Journals to check
- Early Theatre (ET). Access via UVic Libraries.
- Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England (MaRDE). Access via UVic Libraries.
- Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama (RORD; no longer being published, but back issues are useful). Access via UVic Libraries.
- Renaissance Drama (continuation of RORD). Access via UVic Libraries.
If exhaustiveness is overwhelming …
Remember that you can limit the parameters of your bibliography. An exhaustive bibliography need be exhaustive only within a set of parameters. Revisit How to Write the Preface to an Enumerative Bibliography.
Enumeration
You need to organize your bibliography in a meaningful way. Alphabetical by author’s surname is one option. Chronological (by date of publication) is another common option. You might, however, want to group items in meaningful ways. For example, you might want to divide textual criticism and literary criticism into two categories. Whatever organizational principle you adopt, explain it in your preface.
Citation
MLA 8 is a good standard to follow, but I am more concerned that you follow the Three Rules of Citation. If only part of a book or article discusses your play, give the relevant chapter and/or page numbers.
Annotation
Write summary-style annotations for ten items in your bibliography. If you write more than ten, mark with an asterisk the ten you want me to grade. Summary-style annotations are often written in sentence fragments that begin with a present-tense verb. Use the list of critical verbs to help you describe the critical and textual activities that each item undertakes. An annotation should summarize:
- the research question/problem
- answering thesis
- methodology
- evidence
Sample Annotations (parsed)
The first two examples are my own. The third is directly from the World Shakespeare Bibliography (WSB bbf91).
Kahn, Michael. Prologue. Teaching Shakespeare Through Performance. Ed. Milla Cozart Riggio. New York: MLA, 1999. 19-29. Explains how a director moved from cutting texts to produce reductive readings of plays to being willing to explore the contradictions. Taking Merchant of Venice and Henry V as examples, focuses on “Let all of his complexion choose me so” line, and issue of whether or not the latter is pro or anti-war. Argues that “fixed points of view” make a production “more the artist’s play than Shakespeare’s” (28).
My statement of the research question: Explains how a director moved from cutting texts to produce reductive readings of plays to being willing to explore the contradictions.
My statement of the methodology: Taking Merchant of Venice and Henry V as examples, focuses on “Let all of his complexion choose me so” line, and issue of whether or not the latter is pro or anti-war.
My statement of the thesis and conclusion, which, in this essay, both come near the end (which is point-last writing, but it’s not your job in an annotation to rewrite the essay): Argues that “fixed points of view” make a production “more the artist’s play than Shakespeare’s” (28).
[Note that brief quotations are acceptable in an annotation. Always give the page number(s).]
Osborne, Laurie E. “Antonio’s Pardon.” Shakespeare Quarterly 45 (1994): 108-14. Asks how actor-managers of the nineteenth century handled the problem of Antonio’s unresolved status in the final scene of Twelfth Night. Acting editions show the addition of a six- or eight-line pardon. Stage directions in these texts show that the productions anticipated and often tried to contain what modern critics have identified as homoeroticism between Antonio and Sebastian.
My statement of the research question: Asks how actor-managers of the nineteenth century handled the problem of Antonio’s unresolved status in the final scene of Twelfth Night.
My statement of the methodology and nature of the evidence: Acting editions show the addition of a six- or eight-line pardon. Stage directions in these texts…
My statement of the thesis and conclusion: …show that the productions anticipated and often tried to contain what modern critics have identified as homoeroticism between Antonio and Sebastian.
Bulman, James C. “Spectatorship, Remediation, and One Hundred Years of Hamlet.” Shakespeare in Our Time: A Shakespeare Association of America Collection. Ed. Dympna Callaghan and Suzanne Gossett. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. 91-98. Briefly chronicles Shakespeare’s relationship with film throughout twentieth- and twenty-first-centuries. Employs Hamlet as case study to reveal Shakespeare’s consistent ability to “validate the capacity of an emerging technology to supplant older technologies” (91).
WSB statement of the research question/issue: Briefly chronicles Shakespeare’s relationship with film throughout twentieth- and twenty-first-centuries.
WSB statement of the methodology: Employs Hamlet as case study …
WSB statement of the thesis and conclusion: … to reveal Shakespeare’s consistent ability to “validate the capacity of an emerging technology to supplant older technologies” (91).
Janelle Jenstad 