Winter 2004

This information effective for Winter 2004. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Literature

[LIT-080Z]

80Z. Introduction to Shakespeare

MWF 3:30 p.m.–4:40 p.m.
Instructor: Michael Warren

Course Description:

Introduction to Shakespeare is designed to be valuable to students in many ways: it satisfies the T4 requirement, it fulfills a lower-division requirement for the literature major, and it provides training in reading and writing about literature. Above all, it introduces students to major works by one of the most important figures in Western literature—a writer whose works have played a major part in cultural debates inside and outside the English-speaking world—one of the great verbal artists whose work still challenges its interpreters and gives pleasure.

The course presumes no prior knowledge of Shakespeare, although nearly everyone coming to the class seems to have read at least one play before, usually Romeo and Juliet. I do require students who take the course to have fulfilled the Subject A requirement in advance.

The class will meet on MWF from 3:30 p.m. till 4:40 p.m. I require regular and prompt attendance at all lectures. There will not, I regret to say, be mandatory, TA-led discussion sections. In consequence, students will need to be particularly responsible, dedicated, and independent in their studies.

In Winter Quarter 2004 the texts for the course will probably be:

• Sonnets
  
• The Taming of the Shrew
  
• Antony and Cleopatra
  
• Measure for Measure
  
• The Tempest
  
• The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents
  
• A Reader of Critical Essays

I have chosen these plays because their understanding involves important historical and interpretive issues: relations between the sexes and the nature of marriage; the concept and the rights of authority—the nature of order, law, and justice in society; the construction of the foreign as other; and the role of art in human culture. They are all full of brilliant language, and each usually provides exciting experiences in the theater.

I shall order Pelican editions of these works at the Bay Tree Bookstore; it is desirable that we all use the same editions. They are relatively inexpensive. The Bedford Companion is a supplementary book of materials about the age of Shakespeare, history, social customs, playhouse structures, etc. The supplementary reader will contain some critical essays.

My method is to begin with a couple of lectures on the Sonnets in which I exemplify the kind of attentive reading that students should learn if they wish to be sensitive and successful readers of literature and, especially, of poetry and drama. After that, five or six lectures are devoted to each play so that we explore each text thoroughly. I pay particular attention to questions of interpretive choice in relation to the language in performance, since I believe in attending to the origins of these plays in the Elizabethan playhouse and to their production in theaters today. In this connection, I shall use videotapes from time to time in lectures to illustrate problematic passages by showing different interpretations.

Written work for the course will probably consist of four brief quizzes, one on each play; three papers, each of four to five pages; and a final.

In advance of the class, I would urge interested students to see any Shakespeare productions that they can.