We study eight major plays that illustrate the variety of things Shakespeare could do in the theater: Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale. 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 and natural and religious knowledge, shared traditions of 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 dramatic experience. To achieve these objectives, we'll rely mainly on close reading and discussion. There will be several papers, including some informal writing, and a final examination.