English 445 is a one semester introduction to the work of the greatest writer in English, William Shakespeare. We will read about one quarter of his plays, including representatives of each of the major genres in which he worked, the comedies, tragedies, history plays and romances. We will also read some of his Sonnets, among the greatest lyric poems of the Renaissance. Shakespeare’s works have been inspirational for artists in many forms of art, opera, ballet, music, the visual arts, and film, and your research project for the course could consider some of these adaptations or issues involving in staging these plays 500 years after they were written. So this will be a multidisciplinary approach to this complex and generative figure in our culture.
