Shakespeare: Comedies and Romances

Catalog description

Sometime around the late sixteenth century, enterprising cultural producers in early modern London began to develop a new commercial venture called 'playing': a business that offered ordinary people a few hours of dramatic entertainment for the price of one penny. In addition to watching the professional players onstage, spectators also participated in a form of play themselves, in a sense, because theatrical experience provided a unique opportunity to engage imaginatively with otherwise inaccessible people, worlds, and ideas. More than four hundred years later, the drama of the period now ranks among the most esteemed texts in all English literature, and the name 'Shakespeare' has become a byword for literary genius. This course will offer a selection of Shakespeare's delightful and sometimes surprisingly edgy comedies and late romances. As we read through these works, we will endeavor to understand what, and how, they meant in their original context, thereby developing a historically informed perspective on their influence over our own cultural landscape.