COURSE:
This course will focus on Shakespeare’s tragedies and romances, starting with an early experiment in tragedy, Titus Andronicus, and moving into the later plays including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, Pericles and The Tempest. Weekly assignments will enable students to experiment with a range of interpretive approaches Shakespeare. Assignments will focus, for example, on close reading with attention to the early meanings of words, on the analysis of a filmic adaptation of one play, on performance analysis (with attention to sound, tone, and early conditions of theatrical performance), and on what it may be like to “edit” a passage from Shakespeare’s King Lear.
TEXTS:
The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Orgel, is our central text for this course. This is now available at the Seminary Coop Bookstore (under English 16600). If you currently have the Bevington edition, you may use that excellent edition as well.
COURSE WEBSITE:
Weekly assignments will be posted on our central course website. Also, for the curious, additional resources on Shakespeare and Renaissance language, history and culture are available for you at: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/modlits/eng16600.html.