Wikipedia:WikiProject Shakespeare/Guideline for play articles

This is a discussion draft of a proposed standard disposition for play articles within the scope of WikiProject Shakespeare. It has not yet been the subject of discussion among the project's members, and is not backed by consensus. The standard disposition is meant as an aid to editors writing, rewriting, or expanding an article on one of the plays within the projects scope; and to facilitate recognition and standardization of article for the benefit of the reader. It is not intended to be retroactively applied to existing articles. Nor is it intended as a rigid requirement that must be followed to the letter; some articles will require a slightly different approach. It is also intended to be updated and modified over time as new requirements are discovered.

Lede

The lede (or lead if you prefer) is an overview of the points covered elsewhere in the article. The lede should be a succinct summary of the article as a whole. It should start by introducing the subject and by explaining why it is notable. The lede should be able to stand alone: it should be possible to read only the lede and come away with a reasonable overview of the subject.

The lede should not introduce new facts, and hence it should generally not be necessary to include cites in the lede. Care should be taken to avoid novel synthesis when summarizing the article in the lede.

Since the lede should strictly summarize the rest of the article it is often advisable to leave the lede for last when working on an article. Controversial discussions arising over wording in the lede should generally be recast to either be about whether the lede accurately summarizes the article, or whether the article's coverage of the controversial point is accurate, reliably sourced, and written from a neutral point of view. As a rule of thumb, whenever the urge is present to add citations in the lede there is an impedance between the argument and the article text, and one of the two must be corrected.

Characters

A succinct list of the main character roles in the play with descriptions. For plays published as part of the First Folio, the character list and descriptions included there (usually reproduced in all critical editions of the play) is a good starting point. Minor characters and excessively long descriptions should not be included. As a rule of thumb, the character list is there to introduce the characters that will be referred to in the Synopsis section; if the synopsis does not refer to the character by name, or precisely who the character is is not important to the synopsis, then the character should not appear in the character list.

The layout of the section should be as a multi-column list (at least 2, but no more than 4, columns is appropriate); with groupings into houses, sides, group affiliations, locations, or other divisions as fits the play and with a separate list and descriptive heading (bolded text, not a real heading); names and descriptions should be separated by an em-dash; character names for which there is a separate article should be linked; and list items should not end in a full stop or other punctuation. For an example of this style, see Hamlet. For an example of splitting the list into groups, see Romeo and Juliet.

Note that the inclusion of this section is controversial, and that reviewers at FAC have consistently complained at its inclusion on the grounds that it is unaesthetic, that starting the article with a list disrupts the flow and jerks the reader out of the prose, and that it would be better to include the introduction and description of the characters in the synopsis itself (the same reviewers frequently also complain that the synopsis is too long and convoluted, but, hey, consistency is overrated). Discussions of the problem within the WikiProject has scraped by a simple majority for its inclusion, but there is not a clear consensus (either way, obviously). It is strongly suggested that any discussions of the character list be had prior to nominating the article at FAC. If the issue is brought up at FAC it should be acknowledged, but a repeat of the discussion there is entirely unlikely to resolve anything and will only bog down the FAC. It should be noted that the FA director has also consistently passed candidate play articles in spite of the complaints about the character section (absent other concerns, obviously).

Synopsis

The synopsis should be a complete but brief summary of the major threads and plot points of the play. It should explain to the reader what the play is about without delving into interpretation (rule of thumb: it should never be necessary to cite sources in the synopsis). It should avoid unnecessary detail and care should be taken to avoid writing in an in-universe perspective. Characters referenced in the synopsis should already be introduced in the Characters section, so there should be no need to include basic introductions of the characters in the synopsis.

If an audio version of the play exists on Wikimedia Commons, an audio box can be included here if copyright does not interfere. See Romeo and Juliet for an example.

The Synopsis section should include an image—preferably an iconic one—illustrating a particularly well known or important scene from the play.

Sources

The Sources section should cover all the known and probable sources on which Shakespeare drew when writing the play. It should not contain general allusions, similarities and parallels, or later homages or references. All sources included should be cited to a good mainstream source (one of the main critical editions of the play), and should be generally uncontroversial. Where a significant controversy over a specific source exists, the controversy should be briefly acknowledged and the points of view summarized. If the controversy is very recent, it may be preferable to reference it only very briefly or leave it out altogether (see WP:RECENT).

Date and text

The Date and text section should summarize the current consensus on the date of the play, with particular focus on its first performance or publication, and, if relevant, on when it was written. It should not go into excessive detail on the issues, but make note of the main datums informing the conclusion. One of the main critical editions of the play should be used to cite the majority of this section, but possibly supplemented by a more specific reference if one exists.

The section should also note the providence and versions of the text, with particular emphasis on the extant or known Folio and Quarto versions, and on the differences between them.

If either or both the date and the text parts of the section become very long, the section can be split into separate sections for each topic. This should generally be avoided, but may be necessary for certain plays such as Hamlet where there are significant differences between the various versions of the text; or The Tempest where there is considerable controversy surrounding its dating.

Themes and motifs

The Themes and motifs section should summarize and explain the various themes that critics over the years have found in the play. The section should not attempt to analyze the play itself, it should merely report the themes and motifs that critics have found. Examples of themes and motifs include (from Romeo and Juliet): Love, Fate and chance, Duality (light and dark), and Time; and (from The Tempest): The theatre and Magic. Each theme or motif should be its own subsection under Themes and motifs. Finding an overview of these is often possible in things like the Cambridge Student Guide for the play, with further reading suggesting sources for more in-depth discussion.

Criticism and interpretation

The Criticism and interpretation section should summarize and explain the major strains of topics literary and theatre critics bring up in relation to the play. It should fix the play's genre (or discuss its problematic classification, if such it is), and may explain its dramatic structure as critics see it. Care should be taken to avoid devolving into editors' personal interpretations of the play. The section should also, if relevant, explain how critics have historically seen the play, and how this has changed over time, in a "Critical history" section.

The section should also cover the main critical approaches to the play and how they have been applied. Typical approaches that are used for Shakespeare's plays are: Religious, Philosophical, Psychoanalytical, Feminist, Queer theory, Postcolonial, and New Historicist. Not all approaches are typically applied to every play. Approaches that have historically been applied, but which have fallen out of favor, should be noted appropriately.

Each critical approach should have its own subsection. For examples of these sections, see Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and The Tempest.

Afterlife

The Afterlife section should cover stagings, adaptations, and alterations of the play in its history from the first performance up to the current day. It should cover notable or representative performances in roughly-defined eras, and explain why they are notable and how they differ from other performances. The section should be split into subsections covering eras roughly corresponding to:

Shakespeare's day through the Interregnum
Restoration and 18th-century
19th-century
20th-century

These should all primarily focus on theatre productions and adaptations, with inclusion of musical or operatic variants where appropriate.

The section should further cover adaptations in other media as available, such as:

Music
Literature and art
Screen

Where relevant, adaptations in modern media (such as social media, blogs, etc.) should also be covered. These should be in subsections specific to the medium and not in a 21st-century or modern section. The 21st-century is too recent to enable a meaningful summary of its adaptations.

References

The References section should include the sources cited in the article following the Wikipedia guidelines on Verifiability, Reliable Sources, and Footnotes. General reading or suggestions of more in-depth material should not be included here. One standard work should be chosen as a source for all cites to the play itself, and it should be one of the main critical editions. In practice this is the Oxford or the Arden, and generally the more recent of the two should be preferred. Versions of the text not subject to a peer review process (e.g. most on-line sources) or raw facsimiles of the Quartos or Folios should not be used. The section should start with a brief note explaining this, which edition is used, and its numbering system (as it differs between editions).

Note that Wikipedia does not give preferment to any particular reference style or method, above requiring Verifiability, so the guidelines in this section are meant to be an advisory suggestion for cases where there is no other factor suggesting another approach.

Notes

The Notes section should contain a listing of all the citations given in the article. Citations should be given as in-line citations, and should be of the “short refs” style (i.e. abbreviated to Author and Year, not with full bibliographic detail). In-line citations should be provided using either the {{sfn}} template, or one of the similar short ref templates ({{Harvnb}} is common). The list of references should be generated using the {{Reflist}} template using a parameter value between 2 and 4 (which produces the respective number of columns in the output).

Footnotes should generally contain only a bare citation and not include explanatory text, comments, or quotations. Where absolutely necessary a quote from the cited work may be given. Where there is a need for explanatory quotes or comments, a parallel footnote regime should be established.

Secondary sources

The Secondary sources section should give full bibliographical details for the works cited in the article. Each unique short ref in the Notes section should have a corresponding full entry here. Sources should be given using {{cite book}} and its sibling templates, both to ensure consistent formatting and to ensure that proper metadata (machine-readable bibliographic data) is generated. Where possible templates which cooperate with the {{sfn}} template system to generate links and anchors should be used.

External links

Various versions of the play itself
- An easy, accessible, modern spelling version of the play.
- An original spelling version of the play.
- An annotated version of the play.
- A facsimile edition of the play (both Folio and Quarto versions, if relevant).
Online articles discussing aspects of the play that we didn't have room for in the article.
Online articles discussing aspects covered in the article, but in more depth.
(And maybe for some articles where it is particularly relevant, link to significant dissenting points of view; e.g. for The Tempest, whose dating is important in that context, link to the Stritmatter-Kositsky paper to note the Authorship view. Don't do this as a standard on all articles, just the key ones where a) it's particularly important, and b) there's a decent online article on the matter. This would be especially important on articles where the Authorship related bits are dropped entirely for NPOV or FRINGE concerns.).