ENGL 215 - Pre-modern Drama: Text and Performance before 1800

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2015/16a:  Medieval Drama and Performing.  The York Cycle.  The York Cycle of plays began after the plague in England devastated the population in 1349. York’s medieval streets and its civic guilds produced annual plays that were produced into the 1560s. Thus, they were staged during the time of Shakespeare. This class will examine the documentary artifacts of the York Cycle (its manuscripts, accounts of viewings, production notes, etc.) to think about what it would require for an entire civic community to produce and perform this play on a yearly basis. We will examine all of the York Cycle and think about it not just as a medieval artifact, but about how its dramatic shape can change depending on the historical, political, and religious pressures during the several centuries it was performed. The class will consider the architecture, history, and space of York as a medieval city. We will think about what it means to stage it in relation to civic architecture and space, the construction and use of pageant wagons, the questions of costuming, music, visual Catholic iconography in the British Isles, and how this cycle could be performed even into the Reformation. Ms. Kim.

Topic for 2015/16b:  (Same as WMST 215 ) Gender Transgression on the Early Modern Stage. This course explores the theatre as a site for representing challenges to the gendered social order of early modern England. Our subjects include cross-dressing women (and men!), disobedient wives, scolds, witches, husband-murderers, incestuous siblings, and characters whose erotic desires cross boundaries of both gender and class. The plays are varied: some were staged in public theatres or at court, others read in private homes; some plots were drawn from history and legend, others “ripped from the headlines;” some were written by men, others by women. Our approaches to them will be various as well: we will situate them in their historical and cultural contexts, examine their structure and language, and read them through the lens of contemporary theory and criticism. Throughout the semester we’ll pay special attention to the plays as plays, learning to read them as scripts for performance, watching videos, and occasionally performing scenes ourselves.  Ms. Dunn.

Two 75-minute periods.