SED Expanded Reference Guide

In general, follow the same rules as when quoting short and long prose (when quoting blank verse) – and short and long verse.

Prose examples:

1. Sidney Grundy’s Mrs Sylvester in The New Woman is adamant that she knows what men are like, making confident proclamations such as: ‘a man thinks of nothing but his stomach’.¹

2. Ibsen’s character, Dr. Rank, is so convinced that his health has been affected by his heredity, that he feels he must sacrifice things like marriage and pleasure in life, much to the annoyance of Nora:

NORA     You are quite absurd today. And I wanted you so much to be in a really good

humour.

RANK     With death stalking beside me? To have to pay this penalty for another man’s

sin! Is there any justice in that? And in every single family [...] some such inexorable retribution is being exacted.²

Verse examples:

3. The fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are said to wander ‘over hill, over dale / thorough bush, thorough briar’.³

4. Federico Garcia Lorca consciously used verse and prose for different effects; in Blood Wedding, verse takes over at the end of the play:

BRIDE          O the four young men

                    Who carry death through the air!

MOTHER    Neighbours!

LITTLE GIRL (at the doorway)

They’re bringing them now.

MOTHER       It’s the same –

                               The Cross! The Cross!⁴

Note:

• In long prose quotations the character’s name is presented in small capitals, followed by a space, and second and subsequent lines of speech are indented, as shown in example two.
• When a stage direction follows a character name the space follows the stage direction instead of the character’s name.
• In long verse quotations the character’s name is indented and the verse lineation should be reproduced as accurately as possible, as in example four.
• Stage directions are italicised and presented in parentheses, as in example four.