Shakespeare’s plays allow their audience and readers to respond feelingly to some of the most fundamental issues of being human. Complex and nuanced productions (on stage or screen) and scholarship have meditated on how these plays offer such opportunities. This module considers both the plays and the theories about the plays. It rewards a committed and ambitious approach to them, depending on independent and imaginative reading by students of, and around, both the texts and their stage and film productions.

·         Advance complex and developed readings of Shakespeare’s plays, grounded upon detailed knowledge of the primary texts and their historical and cultural contexts (English Benchmark Statement 5.9-11)

·         Analyse the relationship of individual passages to the overall structure of a play, in terms of theme, staging, and language (EBS 5.13)

·         Engage critical and constructively with a wide range of sophisticated scholarly interpretations of the plays (EBS 5.12)

·         Read play-texts with an appreciation of the possibilities they offer on stage (EBS 5.13)

This module is short-fat:

·         1 hour a week small group seminar (in which students advance their own readings of that week’s play)

·         1 hour a week whole group workshop (in which the lecturer details current critical readings of the play, and students discuss these readings in terms of three set passages from that week’s play)

·         1 hour a week lecture (on historical or cultural contexts, exemplified from plays across the syllabus)

English Benchmark Statement 3.2:

·         critical skills in the close reading, description and analysis of texts

·         ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of complex texts, concepts and theories

·         sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects upon communication of circumstances, authorship, textual production and intended audience

·         responsiveness to the central role of language in the creation of meaning and a sensitivity to the affective power of language

·         rhetorical skills of effective communication and argument, both oral and written

·         command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology

·         bibliographic skills appropriate to the discipline

Weeks

1          analysing passages from plays; selecting, reading and using literary criticism; basic literary theory called on by current Shakespeare scholarship

2          Troilus and Cressida

3          Coriolanus

4          Measure for Measure

5          All’s Well That Ends Well

[week 6 is a reading week; a practice ‘take-home’ exam will be set]

7          Lear

8          Macbeth

9          Antony and Cleopatra

10        The Winter’s Tale

11        The Tempest

The choice of edition is yours:  Arden, Cambridge, or Oxford stand-alone editions of the plays are preferable to collected editions such as the Norton or Oxford, because of the depth of footnotes, up-to-date and full introductions, inclusion of sources, and ease in carrying and reading.  They are readily available second-hand.

You should try to read and/or see either staged or filmed versions of the plays over the summer before the semester starts, in order to leave time to re-read the plays and to read criticism about them during the semester.

The choice of edition is yours:  Arden, Cambridge, or Oxford stand-alone editions of the plays are preferable to collected editions such as the Norton or Oxford, because of the depth of footnotes, up-to-date and full introductions, inclusion of sources, and ease in carrying and reading.  They are readily available second-hand.

You should try to read and/or see either staged or filmed versions of the plays over the summer before the semester starts, in order to leave time to re-read the plays and to read criticism about them during the semester.