Teaching Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay: Writing Short Papers Effectively
Writing Short Papers Effectively: The Hand-Out
Para1The short papers are due at the beginning of the class on the day we begin discussing
the play on which you’re writing. Topics are posted, and you must narrow down the
topic to a specific application. You must hand in no more than two pages typed and double-spaced, with 1 inch margins all around, on a very specific concrete issue in the play under
discussion for that week. Title your paper appropriately. Quote minimally. Late papers cannot be accepted. You will be penalized for not using the class Style
Guide.
Para2What topics are acceptable in a short paper? Find a scene with a strong emotional
impact, or a strong representation of a key idea in the play, perhaps in a strongly
worded speech which you might analyze; or the recurrent focus on a single character;
the treatment of a female character, a symbolic role, or an important stage property
in the play. Consider how the play was originally performed and how it held its audience.
The important thing is to narrow your choice to something specific and concrete, and
develop a thesis you can support in a 2-page argument.
Expected Structure
State your thesis in 2–3 sentences in your first paragraph. Your last sentence in
this paragraph should make your thesis very clear and concrete. Do not generalize.
Your next paragraphs in the body of your essay should each explain a step in the logic
of your argument to prove your thesis is accurate. Link the paragraphs carefully.
Quote only a word or a phrase to contexualize your argument.
Your last paragraph should not simply repeat the initial thesis. It should offer at
least one other application to demonstrate that your argument works consistently:
refer to another scene, another character’s experience, or another play, in order
to establish that your idea has merit and will work in a variety of ways to help interpret
the play.
Topics for the Short Paper
Consider magic as invested in a material object: (a) Bacon’s magic mirror: how does
this prop develop key ideas in the play? or (b) the Brazen Head: what is its symbolic influence in the play and what is it supposed
to do for the magician? or (c) a devil or spirit (scenes 2, 6, 9, and 15). What does the play have to say about
scholars and intellectual life through these material magical presences? Focus on
one key scene for your choice of magical item. Does magic always mean the power to
destroy?
The play’s treatment of Margaret of Fressingfield: has she escaped one abusive lover
to become victim of another? Consider Margaret’s strength in scene 8. Consider more
specifically the whole idea of
testingthe woman in scenes 10 and 14. What is the play’s attitude to promises, and what does social class have to do with it? Focus on one scene but don’t ignore the others.
The role of the fool: choose one, either the licensed fool Ralph Simnell (especially
in relation to the Prince) or the student/servant Miles (especially in relation to Bacon). Is the role ironic?
Does it provide essential commentary? How does the fool help define either the role
of a prince or the role of a scholar?
The treatment of the foreign: Why does this play have major concerns about foreign
royalty? To what extent is the power of a king invested in the power of the magician
he employs? What comment is made about foreign power in the defeat of Vandermast?
Compare to the treatment of foreigners in The Three Ladies of London or The Masque of Blackness: is the idea about foreigners the same?1
Notes
1.You will see in the two sample final essays that these topics influenced the performers,
particularly in assessing the brazen head (#1), the role of Miles (#3), and the treatment
of the foreign (#4). These ideas developed out of lectures and tutorial meetings,
as well as small group meetings and independent research.↑
Prosopography
Helen Ostovich
Helen Ostovich, professor emerita of English at McMaster University, is the founder
and general editor of Queen’s Men Editions. She is a general editor of The Revels Plays (Manchester University Press); Series
Editor of Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama (Ashgate, now Routledge),
and series co-editor of Late Tudor and Stuart Drama (MIP); play-editor of several
works by Ben Jonson, in Four Comedies: Ben Jonson (1997); Every Man Out of his Humour (Revels 2001); and The Magnetic Lady (Cambridge 2012). She has also edited the Norton Shakespeare 3 The Merry Wives of Windsor Q1602 and F1623 (2015); The Late Lancashire Witches and A Jovial Crew for Richard Brome Online, revised for a 4-volume set from OUP 2021; The Ball, for the Oxford Complete Works of James Shirley (2021); The Merry Wives of Windsor for Internet Shakespeare Editions, and The Dutch Courtesan (with Erin Julian) for the Complete Works of John Marston, OUP 2022. She has published
many articles and book chapters on Jonson, Shakespeare, and others, and several book
collections, most recently Magical Transformations of the Early Modern English Stage with Lisa Hopkins (2014), and the equivalent to book website, Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context containing scripts, glossary, almost fifty conference papers edited and updated to
essays; video; link to Queen’s Mens Ediitons and YouTube: http://threeladiesoflondon.mcmaster.ca/contexts/index.htm, 2015. Recently, she was guest editor of Strangers and Aliens in London ca 1605,
Special Issue on Marston, Early Theatre 23.1 (June 2020). She can be contacted at ostovich@mcmaster.ca.
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
Joey Takeda
Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020
after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.
Kate LeBere
Project Manager, 2020–2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019–2020. Textual Remediator
and Encoder, 2019–2021. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English
at the University of Victoria in 2020. During her degree she published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History
Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management
in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth
and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet
during the Russian Cultural Revolution. She is currently a student at the University
of British Columbia’s iSchool, working on her masters in library and information science.
Martin Holmes
Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media
Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities
projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the
Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020.
He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.
Navarra Houldin
Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual
remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major
in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary
research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They
are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice
Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.
Peter Cockett
Peter Cockett is an associate professor in the iArts (Integrated Arts) program at
McMaster University. He is the co-editor, with Melinda Gough, of Engendering the Stage in the Age of Shakespeare and Beyond (University of Toronto Press, 2025) which publishes the findings of their 2018 Performance
as Research (PaR) workshop at the Stratford Festival Lab. He is the general editor
(performance), and technical co-ordinating editor of Queen’s Men Editions. His PaR directing credits include King Leir, The Famous Victories of Henry V, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006), Clyomon and Clamydes (2010), and Three Ladies of London (2015) for the Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men project (SQM). The process behind
the 2006 productions is documented in depth on the project website Performing the Queen’s Men. For the PLS, the University of Toronto’s Medieval and Renaissance Players, he has
directed the Digby Mary Magdalene (2003) and the double bill of George Peele’s The Old Wives Tale and the Chester Antichrist (2004). He also directed An Experiment in Elizabethan Comedy (2005) for the SQM project and Inside Out: The Persistence of Allegory (2008) in collaboration with Alan Dessen. Peter is a professional actor and director
with numerous stage and screen credits. He can be contacted at cockett@mcmaster.ca.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
QME Editorial Board (QMEB1)
The QME Editorial Board consists of Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter Cockett, General Editor (Performance); Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text); and Janelle Jenstad General Editor (Text).
Metadata
| Authority title | Teaching Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay: Writing Short Papers Effectively |
| Type of text | Pedagogy |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Queen’s Men Editions |
| Source |
Page written by Helen Ostovich. First published in the QME 1.0 anthology on the ISE platform. Converted to TEI-XML
and remediated by the LEMDO Team for republication in the QME 2.0 anthology on the LEMDO platform.
|
| Editorial declaration | This document follows Canadian spelling conventions. |
| Edition | Released with Queen’s Men Editions 2.0 |
| Sponsor(s) |
Queen’s Men EditionsThe Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter
Cockett, General Editor (Performance); Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text; until
2026); and Janelle Jenstad, General Editor (Text; 2026–)
|
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | published |
| Funder(s) |
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
McMaster University Poculi Ludique Societas University of Waterloo University of Toronto Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies University of Victoria Friends of the ISE |
| License/availability |
This file is licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without permission under the following
conditions: (1) credit must be given to the author, Queen’s Men Editions, and LEMDO
in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted
or repurposed (except in quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation);
and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of Queen’s
Men Editions, the editor, and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the
critical paratexts in the classroom. Neither the content nor the code in this file
is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any
use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial
uses and are strictly prohibited.
Production photographs and videos on this site may not be downloaded. They appear
freely on this site with the permission of the actors and the ACTRA union. They may
be used within the context of university courses, within the classroom, and for reference
within research contexts, including conferences, when credit is given to the producing
company and to the actors. Commercial use of videos and photographs is forbidden.
|