ENGL 339 B1: Shakespeare

S. Brown

This course is a sampling of Shakespeare's works. We will read five plays, surveying Shakespeare's creative experiments with the elements of comedy, history, tragedy, and romance. Our aim will be to read carefully, critically (with lots of questions), and historically - and to use our increasing knowledge and engagement with the language of the plays to enjoy them more than we have before! We will think about how Shakespeare's texts are put together, considering questions of genre, rhetoric, and dramaturgy. We will also think about audiences: from Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre goers to contemporary consumers of Shakespeare in various media.

Recommended editions to be ordered to the University Bookstore

As You Like It, ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. New York: The Modern Library, 2010

The Oxford Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream, ed. Peter Holland. OUP, 2008

The Oxford Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part 1, ed. David Bevington. OUP, 2008

The Oxford Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part 2, ed. Rene Weis. OUP, 2008

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Winter's Tale, ed. Stephen Orgel. Oxford Paperbacks; Reprint edition, 2008