Compulsory for the MA Shakespeare Studies; optional for Ma Humanities Integrated Studies, MA English Literature and the new-route PhD in Shakespeare
Exclusions
Description
This module, looking at Shakespeare’s work in detail from 1601 to 1613, is designed to help you critically interrogate seventeenth-century Shakespeare, and to develop skills for discussing plays and poems in depth. It will explore ‘page’ issues (how to read an edition; what quartos and folios are; book paratext; scansion; close-reading); stage issues (Shakespeare’s theatre and its history; Shakespeare’s actors and acting; performance paratext; music); and writing issues (Shakespeare’s chronology and sequencing; Shakespeare's development of themes).
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
Demonstrate a sophisticated knowledge of selected seventeenth-century plays and poems by Shakespeare;
Demonstrate an understanding of chronology and its associated problems in the seventeenth-century;
Demonstrate a critical understanding of the theatre and print context in which Shakespeare worked in the seventeenth-century;
Demonstrate an advanced ability to close-read selected seventeenth-century Shakespeare texts in stage-focused and page-focused ways.
Assessment
18459-01 : Essay : Coursework (100%)
Assessment Methods & Exceptions
4,000 word essay
Reassessment: Resubmission of failed component(s)
Other
Reading List
Kastan, ed., A Companion to Shakespeare (1999)
W. Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor et al. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1986) or susequent editions of the same.
Dutton and Howard, eds., A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, 4 vols. (2003), vols. 1 and 4
McEachern, ed., Cambridge Companion to Shakespeaean Tragedy (2002)
