For your final essay (6-8 pages), you will compare and contrast two of the plays (or a play and a related film) that we have read this semester.  Focus your essay very narrowly so that you may discuss your topic thoroughly in the length required.  Here are a few possible topics:

• issues of genre or structure (how do two comedies compare as comedies?)

            • images or metaphors (for instance, light metaphors or animal images)

• themes (women’s speech, class aspirations, the creation of cultural power)

• characters: choose two whose comparison is justified by their considerable similarity and focus your comparison

• source material: compare a play and one of its sources

Regardless of the focus of your comparison, all essays should connect to theme/s.  You may use a maximum of three scholarly sources in your final draft but neither your thesis nor your topic statements may come from any source except your own intellectual resources.  Any words or ideas from any source must be cited.  You may not use “book rags” or study guides such as Cliffnotes or Sparknotes for any essay for me in any course.

Most of your essay should be close analyses of the two works by focusing on particular word choices, images and metaphors, etc.  However, I also expect that you will take a step back at some point—probably toward the end—to consider seriously the significance of your analysis to larger issues (thematic and others)—within the play, within Shakespeare’s oeuvre, and/or within the time period.  Be concrete and specific (after all, these reflections are based on your close analysis) as opposed to making broad generalizations that are unsupported or unsupportable. 

Remember that compare and contrast essays are organized generally by the block method (one work first and then the second with most comparison done while discussing the second) or point by point (analyze one aspect of your topic in one play and then the same aspect in the second play); most use the block method. With my permission, you may focus on one play.

Please come by during office hours or make an appointment at any stage of your writing to discuss your ideas, progress, grammatical problems, MLA style, or the current situation in Zimbabwe.