Introduction to Shakespeare
These goals will be accomplished through careful reading and discussion of the texts; analysis of plays performed on both stage and screen; and written work, including short response papers and a longer analytical essay. In order to meet the objectives outlined above, the work of the course will be structured so as to meet the following specific learning outcomes and to encourage the development of the following skills:
Study, create, or participate in the creation of some forms of literary production as a means of exploring human experience and understanding the creative process.
Students will study the plays and poems of Shakespeare, usually recognized as the greatest author in the English language and especially famous for the wide range of human experiences and emotions, such as love, revenge, or political ambition, represented in his works. By reading a selection of plays in different genres (tragedy, comedy, history) covering the periods of Shakespeare’s career, they will also learn how a creative artist varies and deepens his interpretation as he matures.
Acquire the critical and technical vocabulary enabling them to describe and analyze, and formulate an argument about, literary productions.
Students will acquire and be able to use the technical vocabulary necessary for describing poetry and elements of poetry (e.g., sonnets and blank verse; image, symbol, and metaphor) and dramatic construction (the parts of a tragedy, e.g., exposition, climax, denouement; soliloquy, dialogue, aside; plot, character, setting, dramatic irony). Students will also learn about Elizabethan theatrical conditions and the appropriate vocabulary for describing them (e.g., amphitheater, indoor theatre, discovery space, “the top,” boy players, sharers).
Assess how formal qualities of literary productions determine the nature of the experience offered and affect the response of the audience.
The impact on the reader of authorial choices such as generic difference (e.g., tragic catharsis versus comic reconfirmation of community) and of poetic patterns (prose versus verse in history plays, the Shakespearean or Petrarchan sonnet form) will be examined.
*Examine multiple interpretive possibilities of any literary work, and know that such interpretations both reflect the cultures that produce(d) them and change over time.
Using such works as [Macbeth] students will examine the way cultural beliefs (e.g., divine right of kings; debates about revenge; differing Protestant and Catholic attitudes toward ghosts) affect interpretation. They will also be introduced to the history of Shakespeare criticism, which exemplifies the development of multiple interpretive possibilities and methods of literary criticism (e.g., humanist, feminist, historicist) over time.
Assess the relationships of works of literature to the cultural-historical nexus that produce(d) and use(d) them.
The course will examine Shakespeare’s cultural-historical nexus with particular attention to the simultaneous existence of contending attitudes towards such matters as hierarchy and degree, royal authority, patriarchy, revenge, and gender, and then analyze the ways that Shakespeare’s plays embody and articulate these tensions.