Studies in Drama: Shakespeare and His Rivals

This course will pair Shakespeare plays from most of the major genres that he worked in (i.e., tragedy, comedy, romance, revenge tragedy) with those of his contemporaries who worked in the same genres. (We probably will not read a Shakespeare history play.) I would hope that the comparison will be mutually enlightening, that students who take the course will, first of all, see Shakespeare not just as the towering figure he has become but also what he looks like when situated among his peers; and, second, that students who take the course will, I also hope, come to understand that there’s much more to Renaissance drama than just Shakespeare. The reading list has not yet been finalized, but the other playwrights we will be reading will certainly include Kyd, Marlowe, and Jonson—and most likely Fletcher and Middleton as well. I am also keen to teach Beaumont’s wonderfully metatheatrical The Knight of the Burning Pestle, though right now I am not sure which Shakespeare play to pair it with. In the other direction, a Shakespeare play that I’d like to teach, but am not sure right now what to pair it with, is his only city farce, The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Class Requirements and Procedures

Letters to the class, posted to the class’s Laulima site (20% of the course grade)
Oral reports on two plays, one by Shakespeare, one by a contemporary (10%)
Two short comparative papers (10%)
A midterm exam (10%)
A long essay, probably on a play not on the course reading list (35%)
A final exam (10%–really a second midterm)
Class attendance (5%)

Since this is the closest thing we have to a capstone course in the major, I will run the class accordingly: not so much lecturing, lots of small-group work, lots of opportunity for students to discover things on your own, thus demonstrating what you have learned as English majors. Since all “Studies” classes are writing intensive, I will also spend time in class talking about how to do research on and write about Renaissance drama.

Course Text (available at the UH-Mānoa Bookstore in the Campus Center)

David Bevington, gen. ed., English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology (Norton, 2002).