(1) When a quotation from a play takes up four or fewer typed lines and is spoken by only one character, put the quotation marks around it and run it into the text of your essay. When quoting lines in verse (as in Shakespeare and Eliot), indicate line breaks with a slash. For example:
Two attendants silently watch as the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth subconsciously struggles with her guilt: "Here's the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand" (V.i.47-48)(2) When a dramatic quotation by a single character is five lines or longer, set it off by indenting one inch (ten spaces) from the left margin and omit quotation marks. Include the citation in parentheses after the final mark of punctuation. For example:
Lady Macbeth feels anxious for her husband's lack of resolution; she claims, "Yet do I fear thy nature: / It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness, / To catch the nearest way" (I.v.16-19).
Lady Macbeth feels anxious for her husband's lack of resolution, claiming,(3) 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-inch (ten space) indent from the left margin. Indent subsequent lines under the character's name an additional quarter inch (or three spaces).
Yet do I fear thy nature:
It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness,
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness shoudl attend it: what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet would wrongly win . . . (I.v.16-22)
(4) When citing a play that either does not provide line numbers and/or is written in prose, you can cite page numbers instead of act, scene, and line numbers.
