Citing lines from plays

To cite lines from a play, include the act number, scene number, and line numbers (as many of these as are available) in parentheses at the end of the quotation. Separate the numbers with periods, and use arabic numerals unless your professor prefers roman numerals.

Two attendants silently watch as the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth subconsciously struggles with her guilt: “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” (5.1.50-51).

If no act, scene, or line numbers are available, use a page number.

When a quotation from a play takes up four or fewer typed lines and is spoken by only one character, put quotation marks around it and run it into the text of your essay, as in the previous example.

If the quotation consists of two or three lines from a verse play, use a slash to indicate line breaks, as for poetry.

The opening lines of Frost’s “Fire and Ice” strike a conversational tone: “Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice” (lines 1-2).

When a dramatic quotation by a single character is five typed lines or longer (or more than three lines in a verse play), set it off by indenting one-half inch from the left margin and omit quotation marks. Include the citation in parentheses after the final mark of punctuation.

Speaking to Electra, Clytemnestra complains about the sexual double standard that has allowed her husband to justify sacrificing her other daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods. She asks what would have happened if Menelaus, and not his wife Helen, had been seized by the Trojans:

If Menelaus had been raped from home on the sly, should I have had to kill Orestes so my sister’s husband could be rescued? You think your father would have borne it? He would have killed me. Then why was it fair for him to kill what belonged to me and not be killed? (1041-45)

When quoting dialogue between two or more characters in a play, no matter how many lines you use, set the quotation off from the text. Type each character’s name in all capital letters at a one-half-inch indent from the left margin. Indent subsequent lines under the character’s name an additional one-quarter inch.

Throughout The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon criticizes romance and the institution of marriage, as in the scene when he learns of Jack’s intention to marry Gwendolen:

ALGERNON. My dear fellow, the way you flirt with Gwendolen is perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as bad as the way Gwendolen flirts with you.

JACK. I am in love with Gwendolen. I have come up to town expressly to propose to her.

ALGERNON. I thought you had come up for pleasure? – I call that business. (act 1)

Related topics:

Citing passages from short stories or novels

Citing lines from poems