AMERICAN THEATRE IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY: WRITING THE ESSAY
PART ONE – SPECIFIC WRITING STRATEGIES
A) CONTEXTS
1) General points about context

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that you must relate the text you are
considering to the relevant context/s. However, you must avoid just adding in bits of
historical detail without connecting it to the text.

Avoid using biographical information about the playwright. It is too easy to write a
biographical history of the author and stray from the question.

Do not use Wikipedia or other unreliable websites.

Consult the mini-lectures on the wiki (http://ustheatre.wikispaces.com/) for examples of
how you might connect the contexts with the texts.

Have a look at the wiki links for each text to help you understand the context.

There are three different types of contextual sources:
a) History books for the period like Hugh Brogan’s Penguin History of the United States
or Maldwyn Jones’s The Limits of Liberty. See the ‘American culture and history’
section of the reading list here: http://tinyurl.com/c328mq7).
b) Cultural history books, such as American Culture in the 1930s by David Eldridge.
c) Theatre survey books, such as those by Berkowitz; Bigsby (trilogy); Krasner
(American Drama: 1945-2000, and his edition of A Companion to Twentieth Century
American Drama); Cohn; Saddik; and Wilmeth and Bigsby.
B) PLANNING
1) General points

Do devise a plan before starting to write your essay.

Your plan should begin with the main part of your essay, with details of your introduction
and conclusion being included later on, once you have worked out the main argument of
your essay (see p.5 below).
2) Example of planning
Sample question: ‘American playwrights are determined to write about things forbidden.’ Evaluate
how far social taboos allow playwrights to explore themes of American experience in at least three
of these plays.
i) Select the plays which might fit this question first (at least three, making sure you pick them
from contrasting periods).

E.g. Machinal (1920s); Streetcar (1940s); Buried Child (1970s).
ii) Note down connections between the text and the question of taboos/socially forbidden
activities.
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
Machinal: the Young Woman rebels against social norms – she does not want to be
married, she is repelled by sex with her husband; finds her baby disgusting.
iii) If the question has a quotation in it, ensure that you address it – perhaps in the
introduction.
iv) For each point, examine what themes of American experience (i.e. socio-historical context)
are being explored through the particular taboo situation.

Machinal, the Young Woman is presented as an Everyman/woman figure who is forced to
do what society expects.
v) Identify scenes and quotations from the plays to support each of your points, and analyse
them, linking them to context.




Machinal: ‘Let me alone – let me alone – let me alone – I’ve submitted to enough – I won’t
submit to any more – crawl off – crawl off in the dark – Vixen crawled under the bed – way
back in the corner under the bed – they were all drowned’.
In this world, individuality and originality amongst women is unacceptable, and the Young
Woman’s desperation leads her to compare herself to an animal (‘vixen’) in an attempt to
separate herself off from a world that she cannot understand and in which she cannot find a
place (‘crawl off in the dark’).
Women had only gained the vote in 1920 after many years of protesting, and campaigners
like Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the president, wrote articles throughout the 1920s and
1930s claiming that women were still not being treated as equals to men. This is
demonstrated in Machinal in the way in which the Young Woman is forced to continually
‘submit’ to men in positions of power, such as George H. Jones and, most clearly, in the
final trial and execution scenes.
Provide quotations from critics and historians where appropriate to support your ideas – and
then comment on how these quotations inform or develop your point.
vi) Show awareness where possible of the dramatic context too.


Treadwell uses a style of associative thought in the Young Woman’s monologues,
punctuated by dashes as if one thought is flooding into another – this is in stark contrast to
the way that everyone else in the play speaks, marking the Young Woman off as different.
In performance, we would get a real sense of how conflicted the Young Woman feels; that
she can hardly sustain a coherent thought because of the pressures all around her.
vii) Go on to compare one play with another.

E.g. You might compare the way in which the Young Woman’s rejection of the baby can be
paralleled with the rejection of the baby born of incest in Buried Child.
viii) Secondary material.

You need not just quote from historians/cultural critics. Read and employ more general
literary/drama criticism about the play (see the reading list).
C) QUOTATIONS

Make sure that you use enough quotations to support your points. You must always
comment upon the quotation you use, showing how it supports or develops your argument
in respect to the question.

Do not quote huge chunks of text. If you quote only a couple of lines, integrate them into
your sentence, e.g. Shelly accuses the family of keeping the dead child a secret, asking:
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‘Don’t you usually settle your affairs in private? Don’t you usually take them out in the
dark?’

If you quote more than a couple of lines, make sure you use block quotes, by indenting all
the lines like this (press tab twice):
WOMAN. I mean – what’s that he’s playing?
MAN. Cielito Lindo.
WOMAN. What does that mean?
MAN. Little Heaven.
WOMAN. Little Heaven?
MAN. That’s what lovers call each other in Spain.1

You do not need to double space quotations if they are in a block quote or include quotation
marks.

Make sure that you reference ALL quotations. Use footnotes, as in the quotation above.
(For more on referencing, see section E below.)
D) SECONDARY MATERIAL: READING LIST, WIKI

You must use secondary material to support your ideas about the plays and about the
context. All the secondary material you will need is listed in the course handbook (and on
the wiki). Do use journal articles as well as books – use JSTOR to search for relevant
essays: go to http://www.gold.ac.uk/library/e-resources/j/, click on the green 'W' icon under
the JSTOR entry, and enter your Goldsmiths username and password.

Some of the secondary texts will not be available in Goldsmiths library, so you should
consider acquiring a British Library card to consult more (see here for more information:
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/register/stpregister.html).

You can of course also use the Senate House Library (http://www.shl.lon.ac.uk/).
E) REFERENCING AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Footnotes
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
Footnotes should take a similar form to these bibliographical entries, but the first name and
surname should not be reversed.

Avoid making footnotes longer than a couple of lines.

The first time you reference a text, include all the details (place of publication: publisher,
date of publication), and then subsequent references can be much shorter. E.g. first
reference: Sophie Treadwell, Episode Six: Intimate, in Machinal (London: Nick Hern
Books, 1993), p.46. After this, cite the play as: Treadwell, p.46. Make sure you include all
the plays in your bibliography too.

If you quote from an article, chapter, or section of a book, the first reference you make to
the item should include the range of pages in which the text appears, followed by the
specific page you are referencing in brackets. E.g. John Baker, ‘Commercial Sources for
Hart Crane’s “The River”‘, Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, 6.1 (WinterSpring, 1965), 45-55 (p.48) in JSTOR
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncl.2011.65.4.548> [accessed 13 July 2011].
Subsequent references can just be to the author and cite the page number, e.g. Baker, p.50.
Episode Six: Intimate, in Machinal (London: Nick Hern Books, 1993), p.46.
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Bibliography
Allen, Robert C., Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill, NC: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
Baker, John, ‘Commercial Sources for Hart Crane’s “The River”‘, Wisconsin Studies in
Contemporary Literature, 6.1 (Winter-Spring, 1965), 45-55 in JSTOR
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncl.2011.65.4.548> [accessed 13 July 2011]
Barbarese, J.T., ‘Hart Crane’s Difficult Passage’, in The Columbia History of American Poetry, ed.
by Jay Parini (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 419-451.
Damon, Maria, ‘Queer Cities’, in A Concise Companion to Twentieth Century American
Poetry, ed. by Stephen Fredman (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005), pp.95112.
Dos Passos, John, Manhattan Transfer, Penguin Classics (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2000).
Quinn, Vincent, Hart Crane (New Haven, Connecticut: College and University Press, 1963).

The example above shows how to write a bibliography according to the MHRA style,
recommended by Goldsmiths, with a number of different kinds of texts being referenced
(books, chapters, articles in journals, websites, films). You can find out more information
on pp.26-31 of the Department of Theatre and Performance Student Handbook, but you
should also consult the guide from Oxford Brookes which I e-mailed to you.

See the course handbook for further examples of MHRA referencing.

Note the alphabetical order of the names, surname first. If there are two authors or editors,
the first name is surname/first name, whilst the second and any subsequent names are
written first name/surname.

If you refer to the same author several times, you can use an horizontal line (__________),
instead of repeating their name. The line should end in the same place as the first name of
the author in the line above.

Do not quote page numbers in your bibliography unless you have only used one
section/chapter (e.g. J.T. Barbarese, listed above). Do quote them in your footnotes.

If you note down the page numbers of an article from a journal, do not use the
abbreviation pp., just write the numbers of the pages (e.g. John Baker’s article above).

If your reference runs over more than one line, indent the second line and any subsequent
lines.
Other general points about the essays

Use double spacing, except for block quotations and the bibliography.

After writing each paragraph, re-read it carefully to make sure that it is still addressing the
question (see the general composition section below).

Make sure that you include sufficient examples from the text. Just about every time you
make a point, you need to include a quotation from the text to support that point, and then
analyse the section of text you have included in relation to the question.
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
If your essay is short, see if there is anywhere you could improve your argument with a
quotation.

Re-read your essay very carefully. Sometimes it will also be of benefit to read sentences out
loud. This will help you decide where punctuation marks like commas should go.
F) SUPPORT

You can get help with your writing from the Royal Literary Fund fellows:
http://www.gold.ac.uk/3d/opportunities/essayhelpfromtheroyalliteraryfund/

And of course I’m happy for you to e-mail me with questions (niall.munro@gmail.com).
PART TWO – GENERAL COMPOSITION TECHNIQUES
Courtesy of Dr. E. White, Oxford Brookes University.
1. Planning Your Essay
Think about how you will use your chosen topic to answer the question. Identify the most useful
passages/scenes/examples from the text or performance to make an argument. Plan the ways in
which you will create links between those examples by way of comparison, contrast, or
juxtaposition. When starting your paper, ask yourself, ‘What is my point’? Keep asking
yourself that question at various stages throughout your essay – if you don’t have an answer,
refine your approach until you do.
Essay context is also extremely important – if it is a short paper, be sure to plan accordingly. You
will have less space in which to make your points, so choose them carefully. Similarly, for longer
essays, a greater depth of analysis is needed
2. Writing Your Essay
a) Introduction
 An Introduction can be 1, sometimes 2, or in the case of a lengthy paper or dissertation,
occasionally, up to 3 paragraphs long
 In the case of a short exercise, though, sometimes it will only be one sentence – always
take the assessment context into account!
 It should provide a way to ‘set up’ your topic, capture your reader’s interest, and, where
appropriate, anticipate a thesis statement
 Your first paragraph can begin by: rephrasing (but not re-inventing!) the question; with
your reaction to an apposite quotation or example; with an engaging twist or ‘hook’ that
identifies the territory that you will cover in the essay; or some other engaging method
that fulfils these criteria
 Often, your introduction will be the last thing you write
Hint: Try experimenting with the most *basic* introduction you can:
‘In this essay I will discuss__________. My argument is__________.’
Then develop those basic sentences into a full introduction.
b) Thesis Statement
 At its most basic level, a thesis statement is a 1- or 2-sentence answer to the essay
question
o it should condense your argument and/or analysis
o it should focus on the intent and scope of your work
 Most essay assignments will benefit by containing some form of thesis statement
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

A thesis statement can reflect the structure of your essay; for example, you might
identify the order in which you will discuss the texts
In most cases, it will appear at the end of your introduction
c) Arguments
 In academic writing, an argument is usually a main idea backed up with evidence that
supports the idea
 An argument should stake a claim, which should be developed over the course of the
essay
 In English modules, ‘evidence’ consists of carefully chosen examples from the assigned
texts that back up your claims and analyses in a series of coherent, interconnected
paragraphs
d) Developing Coherent Paragraphs
(adapted from material by the U. of Toronto Writing Centre – see references)
 Paragraph structures provide a map for your ideas, guiding readers through your
reasoning
 Use topic sentences
o A topic sentence states the main point of a paragraph
o It serves as a ‘mini-thesis’ for the paragraph
o You might think of it as a ‘signpost’ for your readers: something that identifies
the most important interpretive points in your essay
o When read in sequence, your topic sentences provide a sketch of the essay’s
argument
o Topic sentences almost always works best at the beginning of a paragraph, so
that the reader knows what to expect
o NOTE: The first and last paragraphs of an essay are exceptions – in both
instances, readers already know that you’re leading up to something.
 The body of a paragraph develops and demonstrates what your topic sentences state.
Here are some common patterns:
o Explain more fully what you mean, giving definitions or indicating distinctions
o Offer details, examples, or relevant quotations (with your comments)
o Follow through a logical sequence, showing the connections among your ideas
in a recognizable pattern such as cause and effect or comparison and contrast.
e) Conclusion
 A conclusion is generally 1or 2 paragraphs for a longer work, but in the case of a
shorter assignment, may only be a sentence or two
 It should provide a way to summarise your work, consolidate your arguments, and,
where appropriate, restate your thesis statement in a new and engaging way
References:
Procter, Margaret (coordinator), ‘Advice on Academic Writing’. University of Toronto Writing
Centre.15 March 2007. <http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/>
Strunk, William, and White, E.B. The elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. with revisions, an
introduction, and a chapter on writing by E.B. White [foreword by Roger Angell]. 4th ed. Boston:
Allyn and Bacon 1999.
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