Shakespeare

  This essay builds on the close reading exercise by asking you to use those skills in service of a larger claim about Shakespeare’s plays. You have now read examples from two genres dissimilar in crucial ways—tragedy and comedy, history and tragedy, romance and history, etc.—but in the process, you have discovered that they often explore the same themes. Focus on one theme the two plays (The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet) share, study the ways it is dealt with in each play, and unite your analysis to a larger claim about the relationship of the form (genre) and function. You should support your claims with carefully selected evidence from the plays themselves.