Handbook

Subject Area: English

The course is an opportunity for you to enjoy and understand Shakespeare’s tremendous achievement in the theatre. We will take a wide variety of critical approaches to a diverse selection of his plays across multiple genres. We will perform close readings of his dazzling language, but also map character networks through forms of distant reading. We will ask whether Shakespeare’s substantial borrowings from other writers represent homage, collaboration, or even plagiarism, and we will examine the historical contexts and theatrical traditions in which he worked. We will think about how Shakespeare has over the centuries come to be such a canonical figure, and we will ask what Shakespeare has to tell us about politics and society today, in the age of Brexit, Trump, and Turnbull. By the end, you will have gained a sophisticated appreciation of the breadth and depth, the complexity and the pleasures of Shakespeare’s theatrical art.