Prompt for Essay on Twelfth Night:
To write this paper, you will need to view the Globe production of Twelfth Night, which is available via the following link on the library’s website:
https://www-dramaonlinelibrary-com.libproxy.txstate.edu/plays/twelfth-night-globe-on-screen-iid-154877
Write a three-to-five-page essay that answers all of the following questions:
How do issues of gender identity and alternative sexualities register differently in your reading of Twelfth Night than in your viewing of the Globe production described by James Bulman in “Bearding the Queen: Male Cross-Dressing at the New Globe” (Shakespearean Performance: New Studies. Ed. Frank Occhiogrosso. Madison and Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008: 74-91 – posted on CANVAS as “Bulman article”)? According to Bulman, how does this all-male production differ from a “traditional” version, in which men play men and women play women? Why do you agree or disagree with Bulman’s thesis? Bulman does not consider the possibility of trans people (trans men or trans women) performing in such a production. How might their participation support or undercut his thesis? If you were producing a version of this play, how would you cast it with regards to gender (traditional, all-male, all-female, cross-gender, some mixture of the above)? What factors would impact this decision?
This essay will be graded pass/fail. You have only one chance to submit your paper. Neither the Professor nor the IAs will preview your paper before you submit it. You will NOT be able to revise the paper if you fail. If you fail, you lose a full-letter grade for the semester. To pass you must observe the following rules:
Papers must be submitted as MS Word documents on Canvas by 5 pm on Wednesday, March 23. No late or Emailed essays will be accepted without documentation of hospitalization or incarceration.
You must answer ALL of the questions in the above prompt, incorporating these answers into well-structured paragraphs.
The title Twelfth Night (whether describing the play or the production) must be italicized (not underlined or put in quotation marks) every time you use it within the body of your essay. With each such usage you must make it clear whether you are referring to the printed play or the Globe production.
You must quote directly from the play and the Bulman article in your essay, following the quotation guidelines below.
Quotation guidelines:
You must quote directly from the play in your essay. This means from the written text of Twelfth Night, Broadview Anthology of British Literature Edition, ISBN 978-1-55481-036-9. For quotations shorter than four verse lines, use diagonal slashes to indicate breaks between lines:
In his first address to Hamlet, Claudius says, “Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet/To give these mourning duties to your father” (1.2.87-88).
When you quote prose from a play, no slashes are necessary. You can recognize prose by the fact that, in prose, every sentence begins with a capital letter, but not every line on the page. Even when quoting prose, you should provide act, scene, and line numbers:
In a moment of introspection Falstaff observes, “I never prospered since I forswore myself at primero. Well, if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, I would repent” (4.5.95-97).
For quotations of four lines or longer, use the block quotation format. The lines should be arranged as they appear in the text if you are quoting verse and arranged as a paragraph if you are quoting prose:
In his first address to Hamlet, Claudius says:
Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet
To give these mourning duties to your father,
But you must know your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow. (1.2.87-92)
In a moment of introspection Falstaff observes:
If it should come to the ear of the court how I have been transformed, and how my transformation hath been washed and cudgeled, why would melt me out of my fat drop by drop and liquor fishermen’s boots with me. I warrant they would whip me with their fine wits till I were as crestfallen as a dried pear. I never prospered since I forswore myself at primero. Well, if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, I would repent. (4.5.89-95)
In either case you must indicate act, scene, and line numbers in your parenthetical citation, as per the examples above.
Do not use more than one block quotation in any paper this semester. Do not use a block quotation longer than eight lines in any paper this semester.
You must also quote from the James Bulman essay in your paper. All quotations and paraphrases should include a parenthetical citation that lists the page number and, if necessary, the author’s name. There is no need to provide a Works Cited page unless you employ sources other than Bulman and the written text of Twelfth Night.
Examples:
As James C. Bulman notes, “By 1999, the idea that gender is performative rather than innate had circulated widely” (75).
The Globe production exploited a growing sense in contemporary culture “that gender is performative rather than innate” (Bulman 75).k
