Play Citation Generator
Cite a play you read as a printed text or e-book. Enter the playwright, the title, the translator or editor, the publisher and the year, and get the reference in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 and 10,834 other styles — plus how to point to an act and scene. Free, no sign-up.
How to Use the Play Citation Generator
- 1. Find the edition details. The title page and the copyright page give the playwright, the exact title, any translator or editor, the publisher and the year of this edition.
- 2. Enter them. Put the title in Title and the playwright in Author(s). Put the publisher in Publisher / Site and the edition's year in Date / Year. A play cited as a book opens on the Book type.
- 3. Add a translator or editor. Type the name in Editor(s). The form has no translator box, so change Edited by to Translated by in the result when it applies.
- 4. Pick a style. Choose APA, MLA, Chicago or any of the 10,834 styles.
- 5. Copy it, then plan your locators. Plays are quoted by act, scene and line, as described below.
Play, Poem, Shakespeare or Performance?
This page is for the printed text of a play by anyone other than Shakespeare. Shakespeare's plays have their own rules for act, scene and line, and a dedicated page. A single poem in a collection has its own page, and so does a performance you saw on stage.
| You are citing… | Use |
|---|---|
| A printed play or script, in a book or an e-book | This page |
| A play by Shakespeare, with act.scene.line references | Shakespeare Citation Generator |
| A poem in a collection | Poem Citation Generator |
| A performance you attended or watched | Live Performance Citation Generator |
A published play is cited like a book. APA 7 gives the playwright, the year of the edition, the title in italics, any translator or editor in parentheses, and the publisher; a reprint adds the original date at the end. MLA 9 names the playwright, the title in italics, then Translated by or Edited by, the publisher and the year. Chicago 18 gives the same elements in a note, with the translator after the title as trans.
Play Citation Examples
An edition of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House in the Dover Publications edition of 1992, translated by R. Farquharson Sharp. The play first appeared in 1879.
A translated play
APA 7:
Ibsen, H. (1992). A doll's house (R. F. Sharp, Trans.). Dover Publications. (Original work published 1879)
APA in-text:
(Ibsen, 1879/1992)
MLA 9:
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Translated by R. Farquharson Sharp, Dover Publications, 1992.
MLA in-text, with an illustrative page:
(Ibsen 45)
Chicago 18 note:
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House, trans. R. Farquharson Sharp (Dover Publications, 1992), 45.
Chicago 18 bibliography:
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Translated by R. Farquharson Sharp. Dover Publications, 1992.
Pointing to a Passage: Acts, Scenes and Lines
Plays are divided into acts, and often scenes and lines, and these hold across editions in a way page numbers do not. MLA's rule, from its Style Center, is to give page numbers or line numbers according to how your edition locates the text, with line numbers following act and scene numbers. So cite the page for a play in prose, as in (Ibsen 45). For a verse play with numbered lines, give act, scene and line separated by periods, such as 3.1.64–65. APA and Chicago accept the same locators.
What the Generator Gives You
With the Ibsen details, the generator returns Ibsen, H. (1992). A doll's house (R. F. Sharp, Ed.). Dover Publications. in APA, and the MLA and Chicago lines with Edited by. Replace Ed. with Trans. and Edited by with Translated by, and add the original date in APA yourself. The generator capitalizes MLA and Chicago titles on its own, so type the title in sentence case.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I cite a play in APA 7?
- Cite it like a book: Ibsen, H. (1992). A doll's house (R. F. Sharp, Trans.). Dover Publications. (Original work published 1879). In text: (Ibsen, 1879/1992). Add a page to a quotation: (Ibsen, 1879/1992, p. 45).
- How do I cite a play in MLA 9?
- Give the playwright, the title in italics, the translator or editor, the publisher and the year: Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Translated by R. Farquharson Sharp, Dover Publications, 1992. In text, cite the page: (Ibsen 45), or act, scene and line for a verse edition with numbered lines.
- How do I cite a play in Chicago style?
- In a note: Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House, trans. R. Farquharson Sharp (Dover Publications, 1992), 45. The bibliography entry reverses the name and uses periods. For a verse play, cite act, scene and line numbers.
- How do I cite a play in an anthology?
- Cite the play as a part of the anthology: the playwright, the play's title in quotation marks (MLA) or plain type (APA), then the anthology, its editor and the page range. The Anthology Citation Generator handles the whole collection.
- How do I cite a play I saw performed?
- Cite the performance, not the script: the production, the director or company, the theater, the city and the date. Use the Live Performance Citation Generator, because a performance and a script are different sources.
- Which citation styles does the play generator support?
- All 10,834 styles in the library, including APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago 18.