Guide to spelling, punctuation and grammar

U
SE OF QUOTATIONS
As well as close references, quotations from the play are used to back up
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AMPLE ESSAY
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LITERATURE

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the analysis you are making. It is usually essential that you do use
quotations as part of your ‘evidence’. If you are allowed to bring the text
of the play or novel or poem into the examination room, then you can
refer to the text and copy what you need. However, do not overdo this:
it is far better to use a series of short quotations or even one or two word
quotes than to put down whole chunks of text.
If you have to memorise quotations for the purpose of using them in
examinations, again it is better to go for short sections of a line or two at
most. Answering literature questions is not a test of memory and a
wholesale use of quotations for the sake of it is not sound practice.
Quotations must be relevant and concise.
In literary essays, you must use close references to the
original text to back up your analysis. Quotations should
also be used but relevantly and concisely.
Below is a sample essay answer to this question: 
Why does Hamlet delay carrying out his revenge for his father’s
murder?
According to the conventions of Elizabethan revenge
tragedy, of which genre ‘Hamlet’ is a prime example,
the main protagonist is duty bound to carry out the
task of revenge that is given him. Of course, if
Hamlet sped to his revenge immediately, then the
play would be over very quickly, but the fact is
Hamlet delays carrying out his revenge not because
of the practical difficulties in his way, but because of
his own emotionally confused and irresolute nature.
Shakespeare represents Hamlet as continuously
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H
OW TO WRITE ESSAYS

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finding excuses for non-action. This essay will
explore his professed motives for the delayed revenge.
Immediately after his first encounter with his
father’s ghost on the battlements of Elsinore Castle,
Hamlet appears convinced that the ghost is ‘honest’:
‘Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.’
Hamlet emphasises to Horatio and Marcellus that he
believes what the ghost has told him and he seems
intent on flying to his revenge. Yet by the time the
Players arrive at the castle and he listens to one of
them enact a speech from a play, he is already
beginning to doubt his own will to act:
‘What would he do 
Had he the motive and cue for passion
That I have?’
He chastises himself that he has as yet done nothing
about carrying out his revenge, comparing his
motives for action (his father’s murder) with the
pretend emotions of an actor impersonating
someone in a mere play. At the end of the soliloquy
‘O what a rogue and peasant slave am I’, Hamlet
questions the veracity of the ghost mentioning that
the ‘spirit’ might be the devil who has assumed the
appearance of his dead father to send him (Hamlet)
to his damnation. This directly contradicts his
earlier assertion that the ghost was ‘honest’. Already,
this early in the play, it appears that Hamlet is
looking for excuses not to act.
In addition, Hamlet has already warned Horatio
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AMPLE ESSAY
2:
LITERATURE

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