This course is an advanced study of selected Shakespearean plays and the Elizabethan era/world in which Shakespeare lived and worked. We will consider Shakespeare as a professional dramatist in the Early Modern English theatre along with some of the literary questions raised with regard to Shakespeare’s life and works. There is an emphasis on the context and critical reaction to those works through the lens of contemporary literary theory which will allow us to consider Shakespeare’s plays both as products of their author's time and as contemporary cultural works.

Bevington, David, Ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 7th Edition. New York: Pearson, 2014. ISBN-13: 978-0321886514

Klages, Mary. Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum, 2007. ISBN-13: 978-0826490735

Students will:

• analyze the Elizabethan age in order to understand the multiple contexts for and pressures on literary and dramatic production during that time;
• study the life and selected dramatic works of Shakespeare as products of his own society;
• express their understanding of the relationship between literature and the historical/cultural contexts in which it was written;
• demonstrate an understanding of contemporary literary theory, including movements such as new historicism, cultural materialism, postcolonial criticism, feminism, reader-response criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, and post-structuralism, among others;
• deploy ideas from works of criticism and theory in their own reading and writing;
• evaluate journal articles and professional studies of Shakespeare in order to be able to write in appropriate genres and modes for an audience of professional scholars, and
• demonstrate a fuller and deeper understanding of all the facets of Shakespearean drama and its relation to the past and present worlds.