Shakespeare II
Tragedies and Comedies
- Course Code
- ENAM 0835
- Course Type
- Seminars
- Subject Credit
- Course Availability
Each seminar runs only if there is sufficient student demand. Shakespeare’s career from 1600 is renowned for its deep analysis of the human capacity for depravity and for ruin. The seminar examines this increasingly sombre mood, contemporary with Elizabeth’s last years and the developing sense in England of what is often described as a ‘Counter-Renaissance’. We will read a problematic late comedy before approaching four of the great tragedies. These provide analyses of the human capacity to err disastrously in a manner that had been unmatched since ancient Athens. Yet at the end of his public career, Shakespeare discovered a new balance, and the course will conclude with a look at the late ‘tragicomic’ plays.
Sample Syllabus:
- Introducing Shakespeare
- Twelfth Night
- All’s Well that Ends Well
- Hamlet
- Othello
- King Lear
- Antony and Cleopatra
- Pericles
- The Winter’s Tale
- The Tempest