ENGLISH 34 -- SHAKESPEARE

1. Required texts for the year:

a) Shakespeare: _23 Plays and the Sonnets_, ed. C. B. Harrison. (Those who can afford to do so will find it convenient and profitable to substitute for this the individual volumes in the Yale Shakespeare).

b) _The Taming of the Shrew_, and probably one or two other plays not yet decided upon, in the Yale Shakespeare. (These plays are not included in the Harrison volume).

c) _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _Macbeth_, _King Lear_ and _Antony and Cleopatra_, in the Yale Shakespeare. (The detailed study of these plays requires more annotation than Mr. Harrison supplies).

d) Brooke & Paradise, _English Drama, 1580-1642_. (The plays in this volume will be needed for outside reading and term essays).

2. Schedule of Assignments: Fall Term

(As on attached sheet)

3. Outside reading and essay:

An essay of about 1500 words is due on December 16th. It should develop your own ideas about some aspect of one or more plays read outside of class. The following plays are suggested:

I. Shakespeare:

Histories: The three parts of _Henry VI_; _King John_.

Comedies: _Comedy of Errors_; _Love's Labour's Lost_; _Two Gentlemen of Verona_; _Merry Wives of Windsor_.

II. Plays in Brooke & Paradise, _English Drama, 1580-1642_, especially those by Peele, Lyly, Kyd, Marlowe, Dekker, Jonson.

The following essay-topics are merely suggestive:

1. Shakespeare and Roman comedy (Plautus and Terence).

2. Jonson and Shakespeare as comic dramatists.

3. Shakespeare and Lyly.

4. Marlowe and Shakespeare's history plays.

5. The Elizabethan ghost.

6. Elizabethan stage clowns.

7. Methods of characterization in Shakespeare and/or one of his contemporaries.

8. Dramatic structure in Jonson and Shakespeare compared.

9. The image patterns in any one Elizabethan play.

10. The Machiavellian villain.

11. The use of dramatic place (e.g. Belmont vs. Venice) as an aspect of meaning.

12. The malcontent as a stage type.

13. Plays within plays.