Shakespeare: Text and Performance

English 425/10493
3 Credits
W 6.00 – 8.45 pm
Duda Hall 116 

M. G. Aune
Office Hours: TTh 10.00 – 11.30 & W 3.00-6.00
and by appointment
aune(at)cup.edu
724.938.4341
223 Azorsky Hall

Calendar

Subject to change. NB: I expect you to have the works listed after “Read:” read and annotated before class so that we may discuss them.  I also assume that you will have read the relevant introductions, and footnotes. “Topics:” list the lecture and discussion points for that week.

Part One: Editing as Mediation

Week 1 27 August

Topics: Taming of the Shrew, Development of Early Modern Theater, Key dates: 1558, 1564, 1576, 1603, 1616, 1625, 1642, Mediation

 

Week 2 3 September

Topics: Textual editing

Read: Taming of the Shrew; Norton Shakespeare. “The Dream of the Master Text” (68-78), quarto, foul papers, fair copy, playbook/promptbook, bad quarto, copy text/control text, First Folio, memorial reconstruction, gloss, textual variant, through line number, textual crux

 

Week 3 10 September

Topics: Print and manuscript publication, collaboration, authorship, canon, apocrypha

Read:  Romeo & Juliet

 

Week 4 17 September

Topics: Shakespeare’s poetry, Passionate Pilgrim, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, “A Lover’s Complaint,” sonnet, sonnet sequence, stigma of print, patronage, dark lady, fair youth, rival poet

Read: Sonnets 1-5, 18, 20, 127-138, Introduction pp. 1937-45

 

Week 5 24 September

Topics: Shakespeare’s Biography, education, Catholicism, Lost Years, St. George’s Day, fantasies, power and representation, patronage, Tudor Myth, anti-Stratfordians, collaboration, rivals

Read: Merchant of Venice, Norton Shakespeare. “Shakespeare’s Life and Art” (42-67).

  

Week 6 1 October

Topics: Early modern culture, everyday life, death, money, commodities, enclosures, sumptuary laws, social class, gender, primogeniture, print culture, the Reformation, the Bible, otherness, dowry, family metaphor,

Read: Hamlet, Norton Shakespeare. “Shakespeare’s World” (2-30).

Week 7 8 October

Topics:

Read: Hamlet

Week 8 15 October No Class, Mission Day

Due: Editing Project (In English department office by 12.00 noon on Thursday 16 October)

 

Part Two Performance as Mediation

Week 9 22 October

Topics: amphitheater, hall theater, metatheater, subversion, Master of Revels, lords’ rooms, yard, galleries, tiring house, trap, heavens, frons scenae, discovery space, costumes, visual/verbal

Read: King John, Norton Shakespeare “The Shakespearean Stage” (79-94)

Week 10 29 October

Topics: Lord Chamberlain’s Men, King’s Men, joint stock company, cross-dressing, traveling company, the Globe, Blackfriars, boy companies, formalist/realist, doubling, clowns

Read: Macbeth, Norton Shakespeare “The Shakespearean Stage” (94-99)

Week 11 5 November

Topics: Holinshed

Read: Macbeth

Week 12 12 November

Topics: Performance project and groups

Read: As You Like It

Week 13 19 November

Topics: how to watch Shakespeare, performance cruces, modernizing, cross-gender casting, point of view, omissions/additions, open silences

Read: As You Like It

Screen: As You Like It (2006)

Week 14 24 November No Class, Thanksgiving Break

Week 15 3 December

Topics: As You Like It, performance project rehearsal, conclude discussions, clips

Due: Review Project

10 December Wednesday, Performance Projects, 6.00 – 8.45 pm, regular room

This webpage was designed for the use of the students of California University of Pennsylvania by M. G. Aune.  Last updated 7 September 2008.