Handbook

The course is an opportunity for you to enjoy and to 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 Shakespeare's dazzling language and experiment with forms of "distant reading", examining character and plot through network analysis. We will ask whether Shakespeare's substantial borrowings from other writers represent adaptation or plagiarism, and we will explore the historical contexts and theatrical traditions in which he worked. We will think critically about how Shakespeare has over the centuries become such a canonical figure, and we will ask what Shakespeare has to tell us about politics and society today, in the age of Twitter and Trump. By the end of the course, you will have gained a sophisticated appreciation of the breadth and depth, the complexity and the pleasures of Shakespeare's theatrical art.