The Chandos Portrait

What Did Shakespeare Look Like?

The Portrait Controversy

Shakespeare II - En 356

Dr. Richard Regan

Spring 2010

Office hours: Monday 2-3, Wednesday 2-3, Thursday 2-3, and by appointment.

Texts: Signet Classic editions of the plays listed below.

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

Modified contract: an 8-10 page optional 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.

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

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.


All of the BBC productions are available on streaming video from the Library link:
http://fairfield.ativ.alexanderstreet.com.libdb.fairfield.edu/video/browse/playwright/2960

Powerpoint Slide Shows from Hardy Cook and the Shaksper archives

Shakespeare's Life

Shakespeare's Theater

Shakespeare's Texts

The Elizabethan World Picture


Theater related websites

Shakespeare's Globe Online

"The Elizabethan Theatre": a lecture with slides

Designing Shakespeare (home)

Designing Shakespeare (digital resources)

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

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.

American Shakespeare Podcast Central (Blackfriars Playhouse)


Mobile Phone Shakespeare

iTunes Store: Search <Shakespeare> for a free app for the iPhone with searchable text

Mobile Open Source Shakespeare


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 University, 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 only 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

Enter your NetID number as your user name. The password is your NetID password. This login will work as soon as the class begins.

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

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ (scroll to the Windows links)


Schedule

Week of:

January 18 - Introduction to Comic Theory and As You Like It

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


January 25 - As You Like It

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Gardner, Erickson, and Howard

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

"Instruction Versus Deception: from Rosalynde to As You Like It"

"Orlando and the Golden World: the Old World and the New in AYLI"

The Works of the Bard: including a SEARCH engine

Scanning Shakespeare's Lines

Shakespeare: Subject to Change (Cable in the Classroom)


February 1 - Twelfth Night

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

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

Literary Romance

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

"The BBC Twelfth Night: Relationships Revealed"

"...the Nature of Shakespearian Comedy"


 

February 8 - Sonnets

Read: the poems and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Empson, Smith, and Nowottny

Class Notes

A Guide to the Sonnet

"The amazing web site of Shakespeare's Sonnets"

Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609): A Guide to Electronic Texts

Was Shakespeare Shakespeare? The Authorship Controversy


February 15 - Julius Caesar

(Monday schedule meets on Tuesday)

Read: the play and articles by Mack and Kahn

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

PAPER TOPICS

"Caesar"s Reviving Blood: Shakespeare and the Religion of Revolution"

William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (from Perseus at Tufts)

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

"Shakespeare and the Tragic Virtue"

EXAM (after Julius Caesar, perhaps next week)


February 22 - Hamlet

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction

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"


March 1 - Hamlet

Read: articles by Mack, Ornstein, Heilbrun, and Belsey

"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"

 


SPRING HOLIDAYS


 

March 15 - 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

Shakespeare's Unruly Women

Shakespeare and Women (RSC)

Women in Shakespeare

Bibliography on Shakespeare's Women


 

March 22 - Measure for Measure

 

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the article by Poulsen

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

Essays from the Holy Cross site on Measure for Measure

"Desperate Measures: Politics and the Process of Performance"

"Vincentio's Fraud: Boundary and Chaos, Abstinence and Orgy in Measure for Measure" (click on title)

"The Role of the Clown in Shakespeare's Theatre"


EXAM

March 29 - King Lear

 

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


EASTER HOLIDAY


April 5 - King Lear

PBS Site on Ian McKellan's Lear

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

PAPERS DUE


April 12 - King Lear

Notes on Macbeth


April 19 - Antony and Cleopatra

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Danby, Adelman, and Novy

CLICK to go to the class on the play.

Plutarch on Antony and Cleopatra

"The Tragedy of Imagination: Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra"

"Roman Letters and Egyptian Performatives"

A Review of Janet Adelman's "Suffocating Mothers"

Notes on Romeo and Juliet

playing in the Black Box April 20-28


April 26 - The Winter's Tale

 

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

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"


May 3- The Tempest

Read: the play and the Signet Introduction, and the articles by Knox, 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"


FINAL EXAM: Monday, May 10 at 9 am


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