MWF 9-9:50 a.m.
William Oram
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TTh 10:30-11:50 a.m.
Gillian Kendall

We study eight major plays that illustrate the variety of things Shakespeare could do in the theatre: A Midsummer Night's Dream , Henry IV Part I, As You Like It , Measure for Measure , King Lear , Macbeth , Coriolanus , and The Tempest . Our basic objectives are two. One is to develop fluency in understanding the playwright's means of getting in touch with his intended audience: conventions of figurative language and verbal patterning; Renaissance vocabulary of social, natural, and religious knowledge; shared traditions and myth and symbol; conventions of scene construction and staging, and shared ways of distinguishing among kinds of play (tragedy, comedy, history, and romance). 

The other and more basic objective is to grasp as clearly as we can what each play has to show and tell us once we're fluent: its distinctive slant on the human predicament, and its total quality as a theatre experience. To achieve these objectives, we'll rely mainly on close reading and discussion. There will be two papers on assigned topics and two examinations; a midterm and a final. The required edition of Shakespeare's plays is the Riverside . (Limited to 25 per section).