Shakespeare changed the nature of drama in England. Arriving in London in the last decade of the sixteenth century, Shakespeare began his play-writing career by adapting the forms of already-successful plays - plays about historical characters (both English and Roman), the Senecan ‘Tragedy of Blood’, Romantic Comedy and plots centering on the Machiavellian villain. From the very first, however, Shakespeare transformed everything he touched: characters developed from the elementary stock characters of earlier traditions - such as the young Hero and Heroine, the Stern Father and the Tyrannical Ruler who must be overthrown - into recognizable human beings. Chronicle plays dealing with the sequence of English monarchs in consecutive order were replaced by studies of good governance - what made a ‘good’ king? And how - after over a hundred years of turbulence - was England to be well managed? The last decade of the sixteenth century, and the first decade of the seventeenth century, saw the greatest period of English drama. The theatre became an established part of London life, both presenting and subverting contemporary political and social ideas. Shakespeare, acknowledged as the greatest of English writers, needs to be studied both through his own texts and in relation to the literature and society of his time. This course will show the chronology of the plays, his development as a dramatist, and his principal themes.
Prerequisites:
None
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the course students will have gained a knowledge of various aspects of the plays of Shakespeare, and detailed acquaintance with six plays. They will know something of the political and social background of the period, and will have a clearer grasp of just why the plays of Shakespeare can still, even today, teach us about ourselves.
Method of presentation:
From the start, there will be detailed study of texts, with questions and discussion. Each single text will act as a ‘hub’, the focus for ideas about two or three related plays, and students should be prepared to read recommended extracts from these other plays as well as looking in depth at the prescribed texts. Some sessions may be illustrated by extracts from versions of plays on DVD.
Field study:
This course includes trips to the V&A Museum and the Globe Theatre
Required work and form of assessment:
Mid-term paper (25%); Research paper (25%); Final two- hour examination (40%); class participation (10%).
content:
Week 1: Survey of Shakespeare’s life and works
Students are often intimidated when attempting to read Shakespeare for the first time; but a simple exercise on the principles of versification will make it easier to understand “blank verse”. There will then be a brief introduction to Shakespeare’s fore-runners both in Europe and England - mediaeval Miracle and Morality plays, Commedia del’Arte, Senecan tragedy and the plays of Christopher Marlowe. There is no agreement about which of Shakespeare’s plays was the first to be performed, but as a young playwright seeking success, he followed the prevailing fashion, writing in three popular genres - the Romance tradition, bloodthirsty Senecan tragedies, and wife-beating farces. But in each new play, he broke with convention, setting his own stamp on traditional material. We will look briefly at The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Titus Andronicus and The Taming of the Shrew before preparing to look at an early tragedy in “Romeo and Juliet”.
Week 2: Romeo and Juliet
One of the best-known plays, often regarded as a simple story of ill-fated love. Students who have read or seen it when they are younger are shown that it is a deep study of hate as well as love, seeming to begin as a romantic comedy and ending as a tragedy. In this class there is an introduction to Shakespeare’s use of his
sources, his skill in creating minor as well as principal characters, and a close critical reading of selected passages. The concept of the young HERO will be looked at, and comparisons drawn with known archetypes.
Week 3: Early comedy
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is one of only two of Shakespeare’s plays which have no obvious source material. As well as skillfully blending four completely different comic plots, it is a play particularly rich in patterns of imagery, and a study of these will act as a good introduction to the reading of Shakespeare’s themes as developed through his language.
Week 4: Shakespeare’s View of English History
Shakespeare effectively ‘invented’ the History Play - previously there had been only ‘Chronicle Plays’, dealing merely with the events of different reigns in sequence. Shakespeare was the first writer to explore through drama ideas of motivation, cause-and-effect and the use of ‘spin’ by monarchs or would-be-monarchs. His plays are often studies in power struggles and ambition, with the flawed personalities of recognisable human beings (rather than stereotypical “Kings”) shown to effect changes in society. Henry IV Part One introduces us to one of the greatest Shakespearean characters, Sir John Falstaff, and offers ‘twin’ heroes in Prince Hal and Harry Hotspur, only one of whom will live to become Henry V, often regarded as England’s greatest king.
Week 5: Field Trip to the viewing theatre of the V&A Museum, to see an archived performance of
“Henry IV Part One”
The class will meet at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The theatre collection contains an archive of filmed productions from the last twenty years; this particular production, from the Royal National Theatre in 2005, was particularly fine, and makes clear many of the themes in the play.
Week 6 : The Mature Comedies
Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It or Twelfth Night
Depending on the availability of current performances, we shall look in detail at one of the three plays above. Much Ado About Nothing uses the familiar plot-device (common to Hollywood ‘screwball’ comedies of the Thirties and many contemporary “rom-coms”) of the hero and heroine who think they hate each other and have to be educated into love. As You Like It was one of the great romantic comedies which were popular from their first performance to this day. The play uses a pastoral setting, with some conventional characters: but Shakespeare also subverts it by showing the drawbacks of country life, and introducing the cynical comments of Jacques and Touchstone. Here we find also the device of the heroine in male disguise, developed to even more poignant effect in Twelfth Night where Viola, in love with Duke Orsino, unselfishly woos for him the woman he thinks he loves.
Week 7: Hamlet
Universally recognised as possibly the greatest work of dramatic poetry ever written - but why? The play opens with an atmosphere of darkness and tension, and its first words, “Who’s there?” are a basic element in philosophical enquiry. The character of Hamlet is sometimes thought of as ‘the melancholy Prince’ or the ‘moody’ Dane - yet Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s wittiest, funniest characters. “Hamlet” is a play that cannot be ‘solved’, but arguing one’s way through it is one of the richest journeys imaginable. In the first of two sessions on Hamlet, we look at attitudes to death and ghosts, and trace Hamlet’s thought through the
soliloquies.
Week 8: Field Trip: visit to the Globe Theatre
The class will meet at the Globe Theatre reconstruction in Southwark, for a tour of the theatre with an official guide, preceded by visiting the permanent exhibition in the undercroft. We then walk along the river, noting sites associated with the Elizabethan age such as the Bear Garden and the Clink prison. We enter Southwark Cathedral, formerly the church of St Mary Overie which would have been Shakespeare’s parish church when he lived near the Globe. It has many interesting features, including Elizabethan monuments, a Shakespeare memorial window, and a plaque to Sam Wanamaker, who initiated the new Globe. We end at the George Inn, the remainder of a Stuart galleried inn, which shows some features which were adapted for the new playhouses.
Week 9: Hamlet and Revenge
The genre of Revenge plays was enormously popular from about 1585 till 1620, and since one element of the story is Hamlet’s need to avenge the murder of his father by his uncle, Hamlet has too often been regarded as a Revenge play, albeit one which is very much better than others in the genre. In fact, as always, Shakespeare improves on and transcends the original, creating instead a focus on the acceptance of Providence: at the end of a play full of bloodshed, Hamlet dies at peace, leaving the audience to mourn his loss. As well as looking at the text of the play, we shall look at one or two short extracts from other, more bloodthirsty examples of the genre.
Week 10: Macbeth
By way of contrast, Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest and probably darkest play. Unlike Hamlet, who inherits his tragic situation while guiltless himself, Macbeth allies himself with the forces of the evil supernatural and embarks on a bloody trail of murders. The play’s language is immensely rich, steeped in patterns of imagery until one seems unable to escape from the darkness of bloody murder, while at the same time increasingly aware of the ambivalence and equivocation surrounding the hero until the final ‘trick’ of the supernatural forces leading to his death.
Week 11: The Late Romances, especially The Tempest
We come now to the late plays, sometimes known as ‘romances’ or ‘tragic-comedies’. This type was popular in the Jacobean theatre, and produced by Beaumont and Fletcher, and other dramatists. They seem to reach a tragic climax in the first half, and then to turn to comedic mode and end with a happy resolution. A feature of Shakespeare’s late plays is reconciliation within the older generation through the love of the younger, and questions are also raised about the roles of Nature versus Nurture in the development of Man’s nature. The nature of power is crucial to an understanding of this play - is Prospero the ideal Wise Mage who has earned the right to govern others because his own self-discipline, or is he a tyrant and a bully seeking a vindictive revenge on those who wronged him many years ago?
Week 12: Language and Imagery
Shakespeare wrote at the time when Early Modern English was developing. A standard was being established in the written medium, but there was still a wide variety of dialects which carried no social implications and gave opportunities to the dramatist. We need to be aware of differences from present-day usage in lexis, syntax and pronunciation; Shakespeare’s use of blank verse, his principal dramatic medium, developed from early regular and largely end-stopped lines, to the looser structure of the later plays. His use of rhyme diminishes, while prose dialogue increases. Imagery develops from the poetic similes of the early plays to rich and
sometimes complex metaphor.
Required readings:
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by Peter Alexander (paperback available for £14.99) In addition to the six plays required:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Henry IV Part One
Much Ado About Nothing / As You Like It / or Twelfth Night
Hamlet
The Tempest
Macbeth
It would be helpful for you to “skim-read” or refresh your memories of a selection of the following plays:
Henry V
Julius Caesar
Romeo and Juliet
Recommended readings:
Bate, Jonathan: The Genius of Shakespeare. London: Picador, 1997
Berry, Ralph: Shakespeare in Performance. London: Macmillan, 1992
Harold Bloom: Shakespeare - The Invention of the Human. London, Fourth Estate, 1998
W.H. Clemen: The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery. London, Methuen, 1977
Kermode, Frank: Shakespeare's Language. London: Penguin, 2000
Pickard, Liza: Elizabeth’s London. London: Weidenfeld, 2003
James Shapiro: 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare Faber and Faber, 2005
Stern, Tiffany: Making Shakespeare. London: Routledge 2004
Wells, Stanley: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge, CUP, 1986.
There is also a very enjoyable series of volumes published by Cambridge University Press, called Players of Shakespeare. Each volume contains about twelve essays by actors, usually from the Royal Shakespeare Company, and each essay details the actor’s experience of playing a particular role - volume 3 (1993), for instance, contains an essay by Simon Russell Beale on playing Thersites in Troilus and Cressida and Philip Franks on playing Hamlet. The essays are usually lively and full of insight - I strongly recommend them.
Notes:
This course is offered during the regular semester and in the summer. For summer sections, the course schedule is condensed, but the content, learning outcomes, and contact hours are the same.
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Marianne Williamson studied English Literature at the University of London, and Education at the University of Cambridge. She has taught in Cambridge, London and Edinburgh, and was a Head of English and Drama for eighteen years. She has published numerous books and articles on English literature.
Shakespeare The Dramatist
Shakespeare changed the nature of drama in England. Arriving in London in the last decade of the sixteenth century, Shakespeare began his play-writing career by adapting the forms of already-successful plays - plays about historical characters (both English and Roman), the Senecan ‘Tragedy of Blood’, Romantic Comedy and plots centering on the Machiavellian villain. From the very first, however, Shakespeare transformed everything he touched: characters developed from the elementary stock characters of earlier traditions - such as the young Hero and Heroine, the Stern Father and the Tyrannical Ruler who must be overthrown - into recognizable human beings. Chronicle plays dealing with the sequence of English monarchs in consecutive order were replaced by studies of good governance - what made a ‘good’ king? And how - after over a hundred years of turbulence - was England to be well managed? The last decade of the sixteenth century, and the first decade of the seventeenth century, saw the greatest period of English drama. The theatre became an established part of London life, both presenting and subverting contemporary political and social ideas. Shakespeare, acknowledged as the greatest of English writers, needs to be studied both through his own texts and in relation to the literature and society of his time. This course will show the chronology of the plays, his development as a dramatist, and his principal themes.
None
By the end of the course students will have gained a knowledge of various aspects of the plays of Shakespeare, and detailed acquaintance with six plays. They will know something of the political and social background of the period, and will have a clearer grasp of just why the plays of Shakespeare can still, even today, teach us about ourselves.
From the start, there will be detailed study of texts, with questions and discussion. Each single text will act as a ‘hub’, the focus for ideas about two or three related plays, and students should be prepared to read recommended extracts from these other plays as well as looking in depth at the prescribed texts. Some sessions may be illustrated by extracts from versions of plays on DVD.
This course includes trips to the V&A Museum and the Globe Theatre
Mid-term paper (25%); Research paper (25%); Final two- hour examination (40%); class participation (10%).
Week 1: Survey of Shakespeare’s life and works
Students are often intimidated when attempting to read Shakespeare for the first time; but a simple exercise on the principles of versification will make it easier to understand “blank verse”. There will then be a brief introduction to Shakespeare’s fore-runners both in Europe and England - mediaeval Miracle and Morality plays, Commedia del’Arte, Senecan tragedy and the plays of Christopher Marlowe. There is no agreement about which of Shakespeare’s plays was the first to be performed, but as a young playwright seeking success, he followed the prevailing fashion, writing in three popular genres - the Romance tradition, bloodthirsty Senecan tragedies, and wife-beating farces. But in each new play, he broke with convention, setting his own stamp on traditional material. We will look briefly at The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Titus Andronicus and The Taming of the Shrew before preparing to look at an early tragedy in “Romeo and Juliet”.
Week 2: Romeo and Juliet
One of the best-known plays, often regarded as a simple story of ill-fated love. Students who have read or seen it when they are younger are shown that it is a deep study of hate as well as love, seeming to begin as a romantic comedy and ending as a tragedy. In this class there is an introduction to Shakespeare’s use of his
sources, his skill in creating minor as well as principal characters, and a close critical reading of selected passages. The concept of the young HERO will be looked at, and comparisons drawn with known archetypes.
Week 3: Early comedy
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is one of only two of Shakespeare’s plays which have no obvious source material. As well as skillfully blending four completely different comic plots, it is a play particularly rich in patterns of imagery, and a study of these will act as a good introduction to the reading of Shakespeare’s themes as developed through his language.
Week 4: Shakespeare’s View of English History
Shakespeare effectively ‘invented’ the History Play - previously there had been only ‘Chronicle Plays’, dealing merely with the events of different reigns in sequence. Shakespeare was the first writer to explore through drama ideas of motivation, cause-and-effect and the use of ‘spin’ by monarchs or would-be-monarchs. His plays are often studies in power struggles and ambition, with the flawed personalities of recognisable human beings (rather than stereotypical “Kings”) shown to effect changes in society. Henry IV Part One introduces us to one of the greatest Shakespearean characters, Sir John Falstaff, and offers ‘twin’ heroes in Prince Hal and Harry Hotspur, only one of whom will live to become Henry V, often regarded as England’s greatest king.
Week 5: Field Trip to the viewing theatre of the V&A Museum, to see an archived performance of
“Henry IV Part One”
The class will meet at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The theatre collection contains an archive of filmed productions from the last twenty years; this particular production, from the Royal National Theatre in 2005, was particularly fine, and makes clear many of the themes in the play.
Week 6 : The Mature Comedies
Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It or Twelfth Night
Depending on the availability of current performances, we shall look in detail at one of the three plays above. Much Ado About Nothing uses the familiar plot-device (common to Hollywood ‘screwball’ comedies of the Thirties and many contemporary “rom-coms”) of the hero and heroine who think they hate each other and have to be educated into love. As You Like It was one of the great romantic comedies which were popular from their first performance to this day. The play uses a pastoral setting, with some conventional characters: but Shakespeare also subverts it by showing the drawbacks of country life, and introducing the cynical comments of Jacques and Touchstone. Here we find also the device of the heroine in male disguise, developed to even more poignant effect in Twelfth Night where Viola, in love with Duke Orsino, unselfishly woos for him the woman he thinks he loves.
Week 7: Hamlet
Universally recognised as possibly the greatest work of dramatic poetry ever written - but why? The play opens with an atmosphere of darkness and tension, and its first words, “Who’s there?” are a basic element in philosophical enquiry. The character of Hamlet is sometimes thought of as ‘the melancholy Prince’ or the ‘moody’ Dane - yet Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s wittiest, funniest characters. “Hamlet” is a play that cannot be ‘solved’, but arguing one’s way through it is one of the richest journeys imaginable. In the first of two sessions on Hamlet, we look at attitudes to death and ghosts, and trace Hamlet’s thought through the
soliloquies.
Week 8: Field Trip: visit to the Globe Theatre
The class will meet at the Globe Theatre reconstruction in Southwark, for a tour of the theatre with an official guide, preceded by visiting the permanent exhibition in the undercroft. We then walk along the river, noting sites associated with the Elizabethan age such as the Bear Garden and the Clink prison. We enter Southwark Cathedral, formerly the church of St Mary Overie which would have been Shakespeare’s parish church when he lived near the Globe. It has many interesting features, including Elizabethan monuments, a Shakespeare memorial window, and a plaque to Sam Wanamaker, who initiated the new Globe. We end at the George Inn, the remainder of a Stuart galleried inn, which shows some features which were adapted for the new playhouses.
Week 9: Hamlet and Revenge
The genre of Revenge plays was enormously popular from about 1585 till 1620, and since one element of the story is Hamlet’s need to avenge the murder of his father by his uncle, Hamlet has too often been regarded as a Revenge play, albeit one which is very much better than others in the genre. In fact, as always, Shakespeare improves on and transcends the original, creating instead a focus on the acceptance of Providence: at the end of a play full of bloodshed, Hamlet dies at peace, leaving the audience to mourn his loss. As well as looking at the text of the play, we shall look at one or two short extracts from other, more bloodthirsty examples of the genre.
Week 10: Macbeth
By way of contrast, Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest and probably darkest play. Unlike Hamlet, who inherits his tragic situation while guiltless himself, Macbeth allies himself with the forces of the evil supernatural and embarks on a bloody trail of murders. The play’s language is immensely rich, steeped in patterns of imagery until one seems unable to escape from the darkness of bloody murder, while at the same time increasingly aware of the ambivalence and equivocation surrounding the hero until the final ‘trick’ of the supernatural forces leading to his death.
Week 11: The Late Romances, especially The Tempest
We come now to the late plays, sometimes known as ‘romances’ or ‘tragic-comedies’. This type was popular in the Jacobean theatre, and produced by Beaumont and Fletcher, and other dramatists. They seem to reach a tragic climax in the first half, and then to turn to comedic mode and end with a happy resolution. A feature of Shakespeare’s late plays is reconciliation within the older generation through the love of the younger, and questions are also raised about the roles of Nature versus Nurture in the development of Man’s nature. The nature of power is crucial to an understanding of this play - is Prospero the ideal Wise Mage who has earned the right to govern others because his own self-discipline, or is he a tyrant and a bully seeking a vindictive revenge on those who wronged him many years ago?
Week 12: Language and Imagery
Shakespeare wrote at the time when Early Modern English was developing. A standard was being established in the written medium, but there was still a wide variety of dialects which carried no social implications and gave opportunities to the dramatist. We need to be aware of differences from present-day usage in lexis, syntax and pronunciation; Shakespeare’s use of blank verse, his principal dramatic medium, developed from early regular and largely end-stopped lines, to the looser structure of the later plays. His use of rhyme diminishes, while prose dialogue increases. Imagery develops from the poetic similes of the early plays to rich and
sometimes complex metaphor.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by Peter Alexander (paperback available for £14.99) In addition to the six plays required:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Henry IV Part One
Much Ado About Nothing / As You Like It / or Twelfth Night
Hamlet
The Tempest
Macbeth
It would be helpful for you to “skim-read” or refresh your memories of a selection of the following plays:
Henry V
Julius Caesar
Romeo and Juliet
Bate, Jonathan: The Genius of Shakespeare. London: Picador, 1997
Berry, Ralph: Shakespeare in Performance. London: Macmillan, 1992
Harold Bloom: Shakespeare - The Invention of the Human. London, Fourth Estate, 1998
W.H. Clemen: The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery. London, Methuen, 1977
Kermode, Frank: Shakespeare's Language. London: Penguin, 2000
Pickard, Liza: Elizabeth’s London. London: Weidenfeld, 2003
James Shapiro: 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare Faber and Faber, 2005
Stern, Tiffany: Making Shakespeare. London: Routledge 2004
Wells, Stanley: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge, CUP, 1986.
There is also a very enjoyable series of volumes published by Cambridge University Press, called Players of Shakespeare. Each volume contains about twelve essays by actors, usually from the Royal Shakespeare Company, and each essay details the actor’s experience of playing a particular role - volume 3 (1993), for instance, contains an essay by Simon Russell Beale on playing Thersites in Troilus and Cressida and Philip Franks on playing Hamlet. The essays are usually lively and full of insight - I strongly recommend them.
This course is offered during the regular semester and in the summer. For summer sections, the course schedule is condensed, but the content, learning outcomes, and contact hours are the same.
Marianne Williamson studied English Literature at the University of London, and Education at the University of Cambridge. She has taught in Cambridge, London and Edinburgh, and was a Head of English and Drama for eighteen years. She has published numerous books and articles on English literature.