William Shakespeare

English 445 WI: William Shakespeare: War Plays

Books required:
Bantam Edition paperbacks of Shakespeare Alive!, Richard III, Henry IV, Part One; Henry V, Troilus and Cressida, Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus

Outline of course and subjects:
When Shakespeare began his career, England had become involved in what would become a twenty-year political, religious, commercial, defensive AND proto-imperialist war against the Spanish Empire. Shakespeare’s early career capitalized significantly on the English public’s interest in war, and his later plays deepened his (and their) interest in the origins and consequences of organized, state-sanctioned violence. The U.S. has also been involved in a series of wars lasting more than twenty years that continues to this day and promises to escalate under a new administration. In studying the plays in this writing-intensive course, we will come to see how, in Ben Jonson’s words Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for all time,” even as we consider biographical, historical, religious, literary, and cultural contexts of these plays that make them very much products of their time. Close study of each play will be our focus, but in our study we will necessarily need to consider problems of political authority; trauma; justice in war; nationalism, ethnicity, and race; masculinity, patriarchy, and the “woman’s part” in war, issues that the plays variously treat and that they encourage us even today to consider further. Such discussion will extend beyond class to digital discussion and mini-essays that will be generated out of such discussion and a more extensive comparison paper that will focus on some war-related subject or problem that is crucial to each play.

I will introduce each play with one or two interpretive lectures or commentaries, which will be followed by group and then general class discussion as well as some showings of videos.

Course requirements:
Attendance and in-class participation (10%)

Written work: required posts (questions and responses) on laulima (10%)
four revised response-based mini-essays (20%)
scene analysis (10%)
comparison paper involving 2 plays and some research on
a war-related subject (25%)
Mid-term exam on history plays and Troilus & Cressida (20%)
Final exam on Roman plays and course as a whole (15%)
Extra credit Up to 3% for a report on a ninth, war-related play
or a video report on a film production of one of the plays