Spring 2006 Courses

English 140: Introduction to Shakespeare (Tarnoff)

M/W/F 10:50-11:50 am, OLRI 243

...‘tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings

In the Prologue to Henry V, Shakespeare entreats us to turn ordinary actors into royalty, the narrow space of the stage into “the vasty fields of France,” words into the objects they signify.  As we engage with a set of texts written for performance, we will be asked to see the very things that we do not see and, at the same time, to think about the work of reading as a highly dynamic and collaborative endeavor.  We will consider the theater, a public space that gives license to acts of voyeurism, in a historical context by examining the material circumstances and cultural anxieties that inform Shakespeare’s narratives.  We will also explore how acts of looking or spying are figured differently across the genres we survey (comedy, tragedy, romance, history play) and how spectatorship serves to construct notions of the public and the private as well as give rise to erotic encounters, cases of mistaken identities, and outbreaks of violence.

 Plays:  Taming of the Shrew, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Twelfth Night, Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, Winter’s Tale, The Tempest.

Requirements:  3 papers and a final exam.

Spring 2006 Course Listings