Ground Rules

Ground Rules for Writing about Literature 1. Stay in the present tense.
Mercutio is killed in the second act.
The nurse allows and facilitates the elopement.

*The present tense only refers to events that occur in literature. Events that occur in real life in real time can be in the past tense:

The short story was published in 1935. The author died shortly thereafter.

2. Refer to authors and critics by last name (after the first instance).

Shakespeare writes convincingly of young, headstrong love.
Faulkner exposes the complexity of race relations in the South several years after the civil war.
Smith proposes an interpretation …

*Characters may be referred to by first name, however.

3. Stay out of the first person. (Avoid “in my opinion” waffling statements.)

In my opinion, Rosalind is a fascinating character.
I think the ending means …

*The whole paper is your opinion and your interpretation. The reader understands it’s just what you think!

4. Use correct MLA documentation.
The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the intense passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet. According to one critic, in Romeo and Juliet, “love is a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions” (Smith 444). In the course of the play, the young lovers are driven to defy their entire social world: families “Deny thy father and refuse thy name,” Juliet asks, “Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet” (Shakespeare 2.1). Love is the overriding theme of the play, but a reader should always remember that Shakespeare is uninterested in portraying a prettied-up, dainty version of the emotion, the kind that bad poets write about, and whose bad poetry Romeo reads while pining for Rosaline. Love in Romeo and Juliet is a brutal, powerful emotion that captures individuals and catapults them against their world, and, at times, against themselves.

Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. 10th edition. New York:
Harcourt Brace, 2010. Print.
Smith, Lauren. “Unconventional Love in Romeo & Juliet.”
Literature Review 44.1 (1999): 444-6. Print.


*MLA that I expect you know:
• All directly quoted words go in “ “ (or in a block quote)
• All borrowed info (including direct quotes) needs:
o A (parenthetical citation) that points directly back to
o A Works Cited Entry