Spring 2007 Courses

ENGL 312-01: Renaissance Drama (Parker)

M/W/F 2:20-3:20pm, CAR 105

This course is designed to examine some of Shakespeare's greatest contemporaries and rivals, in particular Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, with special attention to the London theater's sub-genres: revenge tragedy, city-comedy and tragi-comedy. Other authors will include Francis Beaumont, George Chapman, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster. Our thematic focus will change with individual plays but they all seem concerned to some extent with the relation of the Renaissance theater to the sacred medieval drama that it replaced; with money's centrality to the playhouse and to London culture more generally; and with the social role of women — a role that boys had to play on stage, as women were excluded from professional acting. Gender boundaries, the struggle for supremacy between the sexes, the appropriate object of sexual desire — all consequently became paramount issues. One major goal of the course will be learning to write skillfully about these plays; students can expect regular writing workshops, library exercises, two papers, a midterm and final.

Spring 2007 Course Listings