The Droeshout Engraving

What Did Shakespeare Look Like?

The Portrait Controversy

Shakespeare - En 255

Dr. Richard Regan

Fall 2007

Office hours: Mon 11:30-12:15, Wed 1-1:45 (in classroom), 3-4,* Th 11:30-12:15
* except on Ed Tech committee days

Texts: Signet Classic editions of the plays listed below.

Grading: modified contract system. Three tests and an optional paper, each of equal weight in the final grade.

Attendance: for every three cuts, a point will be deducted from your semester average. Excused absences by written note from a Dean's office, Student Services/Health Center, or your faculty advisor. Excessive absences may result in a failing grade.

Required: 1) two tests based closely on the texts of the plays; 2) weekly summaries/responses to critical articles or WWW sites. These are graded as quizzes and can raise or lower the final grade.

Modified contract: an 8-10 page paper to be eligible for a grade of A or A-. Papers may be rewritten after a conference. Topics must be in writing and approved in conference.

You should submit your papers electronically, written in Microsoft Word. Word has a feature called Track Changes which we can use to write comments on papers (in color). Click here to download a document that contains some suggestions for writing in Word and for emailing papers as attachments.

Final Exam: essays and passages for analysis.

Students with documented learning disabilities, please see me. Alternative methods of testing and evaluation are available.


Campus Cable Listings of the BBC productions


Theater related websites

Shakespeare's Globe Online

"The Elizabethan Theatre": a lecture with slides

Designing Shakespeare

Royal Shakespeare Company

Shakespeare in Performance Institute Acting Exercises

Interactive Shakespeare Project

Shakespeare at Hampton Court

Touchstone: Shakespeare in Performance


Internet MetaSites for Shakespeare

Terry Gray's Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet

SH:in:E

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Early Modern Literary Studies

Was Shakespeare Shakespeare? The Authorship Controversy

The Shakespeare Discussion List Archive

Shaksper Website

Teachers First

Shakespeare and Other Writers

Polydore Vergil's Anglica Historica (1555)

Surfing with the Bard


Podcasts (allow several minutes for download)

Shakespeare for Today (55 minutes)

Professor Ronald Rebholtz, Stanford University, Reunion Homecoming 2004
http://itunes.stanford.edu/

American Shakespeare Center
Blackfriars Playhouse
The ASC offers a number of different podcasts, including This Week at the Blackfriars, the Blackfriars Backstage Pass, the American Shakespeare Center Chronicles, and Doctor Ralph Reveals All.
You can find links to all of these podcasts at the American Shakespeare Center's Podcast Central; you can also subscribe to all ASC podcasts through the iTunes Music Store Podcast Directory, or through any number of web-based podcasting sites, including Podcast Pickle.


Here are the instructions for viewing the Class pages and video clips. You'll need a password from Dr. Regan: rjregan@mail.fairfield.edu

Streaming video is a part of the course because I've written classes to be interactive with excerpts from performances. You will need a broadband internet connection. Cable or DSL will work. Satellite is probably OK too. Dialup is too slow for video.

As you scroll down the course page, for each of the plays you will see a link called "Click." That will take you to the Class, and when you click on a video clip you will see a password box. The password will be given out in class, a security measure because the TEACH Act passed by Congress in 2002 allows only enrolled students to have access to copyrighted materials for educational purposes. Our method of streaming will open the clip on your computer in QuickTime, though if you are a Windows user RealPlayer may open it instead. QuickTime comes standard on Macs, and if you Windows users do not have it, you can download it (bundled with iTunes) from:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download.

These video clips are also available from iTunes U, together with audio podcasts of our classes and some documents for each play. The clips can be expanded to full screen. Documents can be viewed as .pdf files in iTunes, but the audio and video files can be synched to your iPod. If you are on the class roster, you have access through:

http://itunes.fairfield.edu

If you are a Windows user, you can get iTunes free at:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/


Schedule

Week of:

September 3- Introduction, Theory of Comedy, The Taming of the Shrew

 

Read the Works of Shakespeare at MIT

Open Source Shakespeare

Shakespeare Searched

The Internet Shakespeare Editions

RhymeZone Shakespeare Search Engine

Life in Elizabethan England

Shakespeare's Education

An Early Modern Chronology


September 10 - The Taming of the Shrew

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Mack, Greer, Bamber, and Slights

CLICK to go to the Class on the play.

"Personations: The Taming of the Shrew..."

"'Caparisoned like the horse': Tongue and Tail in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew"

The Works of the Bard: including a SEARCH engine

Scanning Shakespeare's Lines

Shakespeare: Subject to Change (Cable in the Classroom)

 


September 17 - Richard III

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Rossiter, Ornstein, and Kahn

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

 

Richard III Onstage and Off

Richard III Society Online Library

Thomas More's "The History of King Richard III"

"The Misogyny of Richard III..."

Polydore Vergil's account (1555)


September 24 - A Midsummer Night's Dream

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Myers, Kermode,` Bamber, and Slights

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

 

"...Petrarch and Pyramus in the Woods of Athens"

A Study Guide to A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Web and MOO

A Hypertext Version of A Midsummer Night's Dream


October 1 - Henry IV, Part One

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Ornstein, Kahn, and Goldman

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

 

"The Education of a Prince"

"The Prudence and Kinship of Prince Hal..."

Polydore Vergil's account

 


October 8 - film and studio production excerpts from 2 Henry IV and Henry V
(no class Monday; Monday schedule meets on Tuesday)

"Hal Imitates the Sun" (Part Two)

"Holy War in Henry Fifth" (Henry V)

Polydore Vergil's account

EXAM


October 15 - Twelfth Night

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Bamber, Kimbrough, and Howard

Romantic comedy, with an inlay of literary romance

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

A Film Website

"Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night": Contemporary Film and Classic British Theatre"

"The BBC Twelfth Night: Relationships Revealed"

"...the Nature of Shakespearian Comedy"

PAPER TOPICS DUE


October 22 - Hamlet

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Mack, Ornstein, Heilbrun, and Belsey

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

"A Romance of Electronic Scholarship"

"Shakespeare and the Public Discourse of Sovereignty: 'Reason of State' in Hamlet"

"Who Knows Who Knows Who’s There? An Epistemology of Hamlet (Or, What Happens in the Mousetrap)"

Enfolded Hamlet

"On Seeing Madame Bernhardt's Hamlet"

"Making Mother Matter: Repression, Revision, and the Stakes of 'Reading Psychoanalysis Into' Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet"

 


October 29- Hamlet

"Multiplicity of Meaning in the Last Moments of Hamlet"

Hamlet on the Ramparts (see "Films")

EnterText - Hamlet on Film

The Ophelia Page

"'Too Much in the Black Sun': Hamlet's First Soliloquy, A Kristevan View

"An English Renaissance Understanding of the Word 'Tragedy'"

"Shakespeare and the Tragic Virtue"


November 5- Othello

Read: the Play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Mack and Sprengnether

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

"'That Which Heaven Hath Forbid the Ottomites':The Turks in Shakespeare's Othello"

Patrick Stewart's Othello

Shakespeare on Screen: Threshold Aesthetics in Oliver Parker's Othello

(access to video clips)

Cinthio's Tale: The Source of Shakespeare's Othello

Women in Shakespeare


November 12 - King Lear

EXAM

Read: the Play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Mack, Bamber, and Brown

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

"Two Lears for TV"

"King Lear in its Own Time: The Difference That Death Makes"

Joyce Carol Oates, "Is This the Promised End..."

"Faires and Gods: A Socio-Religious Context for King Lear


November 19 - King Lear

PAPERS DUE

 

PBS Site on Ian Holm's Lear

"King Lear Beyond Reason: Love and Justice in the Family"

"Performing the Bodies of King Lear"

The Complete Text of Shakespeare's King Lear with Quarto and Folio Variations, Annotations, and Commentary

(see "Introductory notes on Tragedy" links)

A Hypertext Version of King Lear

 


THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY


November 26 - The Winter's Tale

Read: the Play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Tillyard, Knight, Kahn, and Neely

Allegory

Dante's definition of allegory

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

 

Literary Romance

"Poetry vs. Plot in The Winter's Tale"

"Teaching the Late Plays as Family Romance"


December 3 - The Tempest

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Leininger and Greenblatt

Allegory

Dante's definition of allegory

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

"Natural and Colonial Education in Shakespeare's The Tempest

"Dating The Tempest"


December 10 - Conclusion


FINAL EXAM: Wednesday, December 19 @ 9 am


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