[Fall 2006] ENGL W4725x Shakespeare: Whose Contemporary?
Prof. Helen Barr
This course is designed for both undergraduates and graduates, although the assessment criteria are different in each case (see below). COURSE DESCRIPTION 'He was not of an age, but for all time'. Was Ben Jonson right, and what does it mean for Shakespeare to be 'of an age'? This lecture course will examine a range of cultural responses to a selected corpus of Shakespeare's plays, using materials which span the sixteenth to the twenty first centuries Shakespeare's drama will be placed alongside playtexts written by his contemporaries, 17th and 18th century re-writings, critical reception (including performance diaries), modern stage history, and adaptations for film and television. This framework will allow students to study the dramatic potential of Shakespeare's plays through comparison of vastly different readings, re-writings and stagings, beginning with examination of how far Shakespeare's play writing was in keeping with practice in his own time. The approach will demonstrate how individual scenes, settings, characters, and even the whole conception of a 'play' can be invested with radically different significances depending on the agendas of critics, directors and actors; agendas which are themselves subject to larger cultural pressures. What can we learn about 18th century dramatic taste, for instance, from Nahum Tate's rewriting of Lear; or why did Dryden and Davenant's version of The Tempest oust Shakespeare's version from the stage? The course will also address the question of why certain plays appear to appeal to given cultural 'moments'? What can we learn about these 'moments' from the neglect, or revival, of certain plays, and the details of performance history that are left to us. Why, for instance, was the so-called problem play Troilus and Cressida given such revival on the British stage in the 1990s? The corpus of plays has been selected in order to give access to a representative sample of plays from different genres and periods in Shakespeare's writing career and also to show something of the range and variety of interventions into Shakespeare from the 16th century onwards. The range of plays will facilitate students' seeing how different kinds of plays can be 'updated' or 'dismissed' at given periods, and sometimes, in rather surprising ways. The choice of plays is also determined by the attempt to track intriguing and/or controversial responses which are accessible for students. The filmed/TV versions are readily available, and the 16th-19th century materials will be available to students in The Shakespeare Collection so they can read these materials first hand. There will be two lectures on the topic(s) shown for each week. I have deliberately taken two weeks for each of Taming of the Shrew and Merchant of Venice. Especially for 20th/21st century audiences, these are particularly uncomfortable plays and they also have a very rich record of performance and adapatation, so I wanted to give as full a space to these as possible.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS — Attendance and participation in discussion part of lecture — For undergraduates there will be a mid-term and final examination (both together totalling 40% of assessment) plus two short papers (5 pp) mid term and final (both together totalling 60% of assessment) — Graduates will be required to submit three ten page papers during the course of the semester (each paper counts towards 33.3% of overall assessment) NOTE: Students will need to have read Shakespeare's version of each of the plays listed. In addition, where a 16th century version (e.g. A Shrew) is listed, students will be expected to have read it, and to have watched the film or TV adaptations mentioned. Further reading (which will be confined to one or two articles or chapters) will include reference to performance history in The Shakespeare Collection and in the editions of the plays produced by Cambridge University Press. Some critical essays will form an essential part of examining contemporary responses: e.g. Kott, Marcus, Burt, Sinfield, Thompson, Traub. Follow-up secondary criticism will be made available to students as part of lecture materials.
TENTATIVE SYLLABUS
WEEK 1:	The Taming of the Shrew and The Taming of A Shrew
WEEK 2:	The Taming of the Shrew dir. F.Zeffirelli (1966) and The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare Retold BBC 2005)
WEEK 3:	Midsummer's Night Dream; Beerbohm Tree and performance history and Midsummer's Night Dream (Shakespeare Retold BBC 2005)
WEEK 4:	Twelfth Night and Malvolio; Burnaby's Love Betray'd (1703) and queer interventions
WEEK 5:	Merchant of Venice and Lansdowne's Jew of Venice (1701)
WEEK 6:	Merchant of Venice performance history cont'd and Merchant of Venice dir. Michael Radford (2004)
WEEK 7:	Troilus and Cressida, Dryden's Troilus and Cressida (1725); 20th c. performance history
WEEK 8:	Richard II and Thomas of Woodstock; performance history
WEEK 9:	Richard III dir. Richard Loncraine (1995) and Al Pacino, Looking for Richard (1996)
WEEK 10:	Henry V: Olivier vs Branagh
WEEK 11:	Macbeth and Throne of Blood dir. A.Kurosawa (1957) and Macbeth (Shakespeare Retold BBC 2005)
WEEK 12:	Lear Nahum Tate and performance history, especially Peter Brook, both stage and film
WEEK 13:	The Tempest and Dryden and Davenant The Enchanted Island (1667) and The Tempest dir. Derek Jarman (1980)