Shakespeare Plays

Part 1: Word Overview, Past to Present Offer a broad overview of the word, from past to present. The overview should suggest how the word came into the English language (its etymology), how usage of the word has changed over time, and how the word is used now. Note: good overviews rely on facts, quotations, and specific details; don’t confuse overview with over-generalization! Quantify: Discuss how and how often the word is used in Shakespeare’s works. Use Folger Digital Texts to help locate other instances of the word, but look to other useful databases that can help you learn more about the word and how it’s used in Shakespeare. Bolster your claims with facts, quotations, and statistics. Qualify: Be sure to offer qualifications and contextualization that help to convey why the word is significant in Shakespeare’s works. For example, we don’t learn much from an unqualified/non-contextualized fact such as: “The word x occurs 30 times in Shakespeare’s plays.” Is 30 a lot? A little? Qualified/contextualized facts are more telling. They help the reader make sense of the data. Consider, for examples: • “The word x occurs 30 times in Shakespeare’s plays, and 11 of these occurrences—nearly 40%—are in Hamlet.” • “Although the word x never appears in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, it appears 30 times in his plays” • “The word x occurs 30 times in Shakespeare’s plays; more than half of these occurrences are found in Tragedies while only three are found in Comedies.” On the last page of your submission, include a short reflection (approximately 100 words, although you need not be as careful with word count here as with the Word Entry) in which you highlight the best accidental or random discovery you made along the way—a fact or insight that is intriguing, but that was not quite what you were trying to find. This accidental discovery might be something about your word that does not quite fit into the “Overview” or “Usage and Significance” sections, or it might be a tangential fact about something you happen upon while researching your word.