Expanded Reference Guide
3. How to present quotations
3.3. When quoting plays...
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.