The goal of the course is to begin to understand why, in a poem charmingly called “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr William Shakespeare,” Ben Jonson called Shakespeare “Soul of the Age! / The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!” and also insisted in the same poem that Shakespeare was “not of an age but for all time!” Tall order? Sure. But here’s how we’ll do it. We will investigate Shakespeare’s dramatic output generically, treating an early and a late play in each genre: comedy (The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado about Nothing), history (Richard III; Henry IV, Part 1), tragedy (Romeo and Juliet, Othello), and romance (The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest). We will also pay some attention to an important theme in these plays: marriage. Although the approach here is primarily to see these plays as literary texts, students will have a chance, if interested, to investigate the material conditions under which the plays were performed. We may also, if the class wishes, set up occasions to read the plays through out loud and/or to see film versions.
REQUIREMENTS: A fair amount of reading, some short reaction letters and also short responses (posted on the class’s Laulima site), a group oral report on one of the introductions to a Shakespearean genre in the course text, a written report on a critical article on one of the plays that we will be reading, two short comparative essays, a midterm on the first half of the course, a final examination on the second half of the course (with some short answer essays on the entgire semester), faithful class attendance, and frequent class participation.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage (2007).
Stephen Greenblatt et al., eds., The Norton Shakespeare: The Essential Plays/The Sonnets, 3rd ed. (2015).