ENGL 342 - Studies in Shakespeare

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Advanced study of Shakespeare’s work and its cultural significance in various contexts from his time to today.

Topic for 2014/15b: Making Shakespeare’s Plays. This course explores the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays were produced (and reproduced) in his lifetime. Shakespeare wrote his plays for the sole purpose of performance, but these plays survived only because they were published in print as well. We consider the ramifications of this inherent contradiction and seek answers to such questions as the following: what exactly is a Shakespeare play? How was it created? What is the correlation between the manuscripts, performances, and printed texts of Shakespeare’s plays? What is the correlation between the processes of writing, performing, and printing them? How did his contemporaries see Shakespeare as an author of plays? In our investigations, we pay special attention to Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and King Lear. Mr. Markus.

One 2-hour period.