Advanced Seminar in Shakespeare

Catalog description

The seminar focuses on Shakespeare's last plays including those known by the generic title of 'romances' - Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest - as well as his collaborations - All is True (Henry VIII) and The Two Noble Kinsmen - and finally the currently much discussed 'lost play' Cardenio, which links Shakespeare in intriguing ways to that other great writer of the early modern period, Cervantes. As we study the final works of Shakespeare's career, we will consider the critical-theoretical question of lateness itself. What is a late work? What does that mean specifically in the case of Shakespeare? We will pay particular attention to dramatic form and historical context - including ways in which the plays themselves call the notion of historical context into question.