This in-depth section helps students like yourself with a range of references that you can utilize when studying Shakespeare. Read the Scholarship Snapshots from our editors that include commentary on specific plays and discussions of their favorite and least favorite works by the Bard. Also you can view our complete list of memorable lines sorted by play.

The Annual "Bantam Classic Shakespeare Scholar"
2009 Essay Contest for High School Students

Win a $2500 Scholarship and two Bantam Classic Libraries!

Here is the perfect opportunity for high school students to prove their knowledge of the Bard and earn valuable awards to help further their education.

Students who write an essay addressing one of two questions below will be eligible to win. Entries will be judged on:

• overall critical analysis
• use of language to provide meaning
• textual detail and historical context
• vocabulary
• sentence structure
• and effective use of rhetoric

Students who wish to enter the essay contest should address one of the questions below.

Three prizes will be awarded. The 2009 Grand Prize consists of $2500 plus two sets of a 100-copy Bantam Classics Library (including 30 Shakespeare editions). One set of books is for the winner and the other for donation to a school or other library. In addition, two first prizes will be awarded, consisting of a single aforementioned 100-copy Bantam Classics Library.

To submit an entry, e-mail your essay as text within an e-mail (no attachments please) to bantamdell@randomhouse.com. The deadline for entry is April 24, 2009.

Click here for official rules.

Question 1

Many of Shakespeare's famous tragedies and comedies are often considered foils of one another. Both are multifaceted with conflict, humor and pathos. Choose one play from each of the lists below and discuss how a key character in one of the four tragedies compares and contrasts to a key character in one of the four comedies. Be sure to take careful consideration of each character's motivations, interactions with others and their own inner monologues.

Four Tragedies

• Hamlet
• Othello
• King Lear
• Macbeth

Four Comedies

• The Taming of the Shrew
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• The Merchant of Venice
• Twelfth Night

Question 2

Read the soliloquy below, which comes from Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Then in a well-developed essay analyze Hamlet's famous lines and discuss how the author uses this passage to characterize Hamlet's experiences. Be sure to explain how this passage connects to some of the main themes in the play.

Hamlet
Act III, Scene I, lines 57-89

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.