2. Some Notes on Your Microanalysis Essays
Analytical essays provide you with an opportunity to make sense of text’s complexity, not just to make surface-level observations
So where the heck do I “find” this complexity?
1. Looking closely at the details in the author’s language (observations)
2. Exploring the significance of these details by connecting them to the text’s big ideas, problems, concerns, etc. (analysis)

3. Levels of Complexity: The Nurse & Juliet
Responding to Romeo, the Nurse says, “for the gentlewoman / is young; and, therefore, if you should deal double / with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered / to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing” ( ).
Within the context of the play, what is significant about this quote?
Basic: Nurse is protective of Juliet (“gentlewoman is young” “if you should deal double”); mother figure
But why is it so interesting or important in the context of the play that the nurse is the mother figure?
Complex: The character from the lowest class is actually controlling the lives of the wealthy ruling class; the “bawdy” nurse actually has the moral high ground
Even More Complex: Nurse is criticizing Romeo for “dealing double” when she is fact doing the same “ ill thing.” Commentary on lying/dealing double/good intentions? Commentary on gender (“gentlewoman”)? Is this more “paternal” than “maternal”? Foreshadowing?

4. Levels of Complexity: The Nurse & Juliet
To Juliet, the Nurse relies, “To fetch a ladder, by the which your love / Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark. / I am the drudge and toil in your delight, / But you shall bear the burden soon at night” ( ).
Within the context of the play, what is significant about this quote?

5. Levels of Complexity: Romeo & Mercutio
Mercutio exclaims, “Alas poor Romeo! he is already dead; / stabbed with a white wench's black eye; run through / the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his heart / cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft; and is he a / man to encounter Tybalt?
Within the context of the play, what is significant about this quote?

6. Whatsa Matta With This Sentence?
Romeo realizes that Juliet is deeply in love with him, Shakespeare shows the reader this insight through the character of the nurse.

7. Whatsa Matta With This Sentence
Whatsa Matta With This Sentence? The Run-On Sentence (RO) and the Comma Splice (CS)
When two independent clauses (complete sentences with subjects and predicates) are joined by a comma instead of a period or semi-colon.
This next chapter has a lot of difficult information in it, you should start studying right away.
This computer doesn't make sense to me, it came without a manual.
Most of those computers in the Learning Assistance Center are broken already, this proves my point about American computer manufacturers.
Mercutio pokes fun of Romeo for spending the night with a woman, “Without his roe, like a dried herring” (2.4.39).

8. Microanalysis Part Deux
Choose one character that intrigues you.
Create an argument that explains…
- What we learn about this character in Act 5 and
- Why this is important in light of the play’s big ideas, themes, conflicts, etc.
3. Same requirements as Micro # 1
4. Due as a hardcopy in class and on turnitin on Wednesday 4/10
HW: Get started