Shakespeare in Action

Catalog description

This course begins with the premise that Shakespeare’s dramas are not only works of dramatic literature that trace an action across five acts, but also play scripts for actors who performed 400 years ago. As such, they require their own set of reading skills. Through regular writing assignments, class discussions, and acting workshops, students acquire the skills required to understand the words on the page as clues to their enactment on the early modern stage. The course surveys plays across Shakespeare’s theatrical career–comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances. Critical reading includes both literary criticism and theatrical history. This course doesn’t require a background in acting and isn’t aimed at actors per se. Rather, the course, which is pitched to both readers and actors, situates the plays in the theater for which they were written. Satisfies the LTRQ Ways of Knowing requirement. Satisfies the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major. Satisfies a dramatic literature requirement in the Theatre major and minor. Satisfies a requirement in the Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor. Prerequisites & Notes First-year students require permission of the instructor.