Shakespeare I
Shakespeare in the 1590s
- Course Code
- ENAM 0830
- Course Type
- Seminars
- Subject Credit
- Course Availability
Each seminar runs only subject to sufficient student demand. Shakespeare came up to London from the country, where he had already been associated with household players, just after 1590. He entered a lively world of public performance, already marked by such major dramatic presences as Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd. In this, the first half of his career, he showed a readiness to turn his hand to anything (including fairly trashy piecework collaborations with other playwrights). The seminar explores the variousness of this output, both comic and tragic. It also investigates Shakespeare’s enormous contribution to one craze of the 1590s, the English history play, and concludes (as it began) with Shakespeare’s contemplation of Roman history.
Sample Syllabus:
- Introducing Shakespeare
- Titus Andronicus
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Romeo and Juliet
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Themes and Issues
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry V
- Julius Caesar