Term 1 Schedule
In 2024-25, the primary texts for Term 1 will be Henry IV Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2 which students should purchase in the Arden editions.
Week 1: Introduction
Primary texts:
- Shakespeare, William, Henry IV Part 1Link opens in a new window (Arden Shakespeare Third Series), ed. David Scott Kastan, 2002 – please purchase this edition and not any other. The text is available to purchase on Amazon Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window(£11.15), resellers such as AbeBooksLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, and can be accessed digitally on Drama OnlineLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window with your Warwick login.
- Shakespeare, William, Henry IV Part 2Link opens in a new window (Arden Shakespeare Second Series), ed. A. R. Humphreys, 1976.
Secondary texts:
- Sanders, Julie (2016) ‘What is Adaptation?’Link opens in a new window and ‘What is Appropriation?’Link opens in a new window in Adaptation and AppropriationLink opens in a new window, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 17-41.
- Kidnie, Margaret Jane (2005) ‘Where is Hamlet? Text, Performance, and Adaptation’ in Barbara Hodgdon & W. B. Worthen [eds] A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance, Chichester: Blackwell, pp. 101-20.
Further texts:
- Leitch, Thomas (2012) ‘Adaptation and Intertextuality, or, What isn’t an Adaptation, and What Does it Matter?’Link opens in a new windowin Deborah Cartmell [ed.] A Companion to Literature, Film and Adaptation, Chichester: Blackwell, pp. 87-104.
- Kastan, David Scott (2002) ‘Introduction’Link opens in a new window to The Arden Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV, London and New York: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, pp. 1-132.
- I would recommend listening to the late Dame Hilary Mantel's talk on Adaptation which formed part of her Reith Lecture series in 2017. The lecture is accessible via BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b08x9947.
Week 2: Shakespeare's intertextuality
Seminar 2 individual prep: You have all been set a Shakespeare play. Using the resources linked to on the course Moodle, find out about three adaptations of this play in three different media and post a short description of each (1-2 sentences) on the Forum on the Moodle.
Primary texts:
- Holinshed, Raphael, Chronicles (1577). Please read the extracts 'Owen Glendower and the Welsh rebellion' and 'The Battle of Shrewsbury', which are accessible hereLink opens in a new window.
- Daniel, Samuel, The Civil Wars Between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York (1595).
Please read sections 85-115, which are accessible hereLink opens in a new window. - Anonymous, The Famous Victories of Henry V (circa 1580). A modern language version of the text is accessible hereLink opens in a new window.
Secondary texts:
- Kastan, David Scott (2002), ‘Appendix 1: The Sources of 1 Henry IV’Link opens in a new window inThe Arden Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV, London and New York: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, pp. 339-44.
Further texts:
- Heal, Felicity, Archer, Ian W. and Kewes, Paulina [eds] (2013), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's ChroniclesLink opens in a new window, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Norwich, John Julius (2018) Shakespeare's Kings, London: Faber & Faber.
- Patterson, Annabel M. (1994) Reading Holinshed's ChroniclesLink opens in a new window, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
- Woolf, Daniel & Chui, Jane Wong Yeang (2016) English Vernacular Historical Writing and Holinshed’s ChroniclesLink opens in a new window, in Malcolm Smuts [ed.] The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 213–230.
Archival material: Early European Books
Week 3: Early adaptations
Seminar 3 individual prep: Find out about three pre-1900 adaptations of your previously assigned play in three different media and post a short description of each (1-2 sentences) on the Forum on the Moodle. (Hint: you may wish to use Early English Books Online, the Folger Digital Image Collection, or Prompt Books from the Folger Shakespeare Library, all of which are linked to on the Moodle. There are potted stage histories for each play in The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, also linked to on the Moodle.)
Primary texts:
- Cox, Robert and Francis Kirkman (1932) 'The Bouncing Knight, or, the Robers Rob'dLink opens in a new window' in John James Elson [ed.], The Wits: or, Sport Upon Sport, Cornell University Press, pp. 47-59.
- Kenrick, William (1766) Falstaff’s Wedding: A Comedy. Being a sequel to the second Part of the Play of King Henry the Fourth. Written in Imitation of ShakespeareLink opens in a new window, London.
Secondary texts:
- Craik, T.W. (1997) 'The Further Fortunes of FalstaffLink opens in a new window' in John Batchelor, Tom Cain, Claire Lamont [eds] Shakespearean Continuities, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 348-60.
- Depledge, Emma (2018) 'Shakespeare in the Civil War and Interregnum Years, 1642–1659'Link opens in a new window in Shakespeare's Rise to Cultural Prominence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 13-38.
- Elson, John James (1932) 'The Drolls'Link opens in a new window in The Wits: or, Sport Upon Sport, Cornell University Press, pp. 18-26.
Further texts:
- Kahan, Jeffrey [ed.] (2004) 'General Introduction' in Shakespeare Imitations, Parodies and Forgeries: 1710-1820, Volume 1, London and New York: Routledge, pp. xv-xlvi.
- Lanier, Douglas (2002) 'Unpopularizing Shakespeare: A Short History' in Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 21-49.
- Škrobánková, Klára (2017) 'Enter the Clowns: Adapting Shakespeare After 1642'Link opens in a new window in Linguaculture 8:2, pp. 43-57.
- Sutherland, James R. (1993) 'Shakespeare's Imitators in the Eighteenth Century'Link opens in a new window in The Modern Language Review 28: 1, pp. 21-36.
Archival material: Folger Digital Image Collection
Week 4: Auteur Shakespeare
Seminar 4 individual prep: Prepare a case for the Shakespearean play you’d like the class to explore in Term 2. It will help if you are able to point to several examples of adaptations, productions, or other cultural reworkings of this text that your classmates might be interested in exploring in detail. Please post a short summary of no more than 5 sentences to the Moodle. We will decide which two plays will be studied in Term 2 during this seminar.
Primary text: Welles, Orson, dir. (1966) Chimes at Midnight, Internacional Films and Alpine Films. Available on KanopyLink opens in a new window with your university log-in.
Secondary texts:
- Hilb, Benjamin (2015) 'Contesting Olivier and JFK: The Opposition to Wartime Propaganda in Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight'Link opens in a new window in Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 17: 2, pp. 164-88.
- Horton, Robert (2017), An American in King Henry's Court: Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight'Link opens in a new window in Linguaculture 2, pp. 32-41.
- Smith, Emma (2020) ‘The Shakespeare Films of Orson Welles’Link opens in a new window in Russell Jackson [ed.] The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 187-99.
Week 5: Queering Shakespeare
Seminar 5 individual prep: Choose which of the two plays selected by your class you want to focus on in Term 2. Research three adaptations you’d consider leading a class on in Term 2, and post a summary of each adaptation to the forum on the Moodle. You will be put into groups for Term 2 in this seminar. Please do bear in mind that each group will be deciding upon a maximum budget per person for Term 2 expenditure, so it would be sensible to include in your selection at least some texts that would be free for the class to access.
Primary text: Van Sant, Gus, dir. (1991), My Own Private Idaho, New Line Cinema. Available on Box of BroadcastsLink opens in a new window.
Secondary texts:
Further texts:
- Ferguson, Ailsa Grant (2011) '"An anagram of the body": Shakespeare and the Body/Text Commodified in My Own Private Idaho'Link opens in a new window in Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 6: 2, pp. 1-26.
- Patricia, Anthony Guy (2016), 'Introduction: The Presence of the Queer in the Shakespeare Film'Link opens in a new window in Queering the Shakespeare Film, London and New York: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, pp. xvii-xxvii.
Week 7: Celebrity Shakespeare
Week 7 group prep: With your groups, prepare a list of up to three adaptations, in order of preference, that you would like to lead a class on next term. You should consult with your fellow group members in person or by email ahead of the session. Please include in your list the cost to students of accessing each of your choices (you can get an estimate for most things online). We discussed a budget to spend on term 2 texts and adaptations. You are therefore welcome to include on your lists items that cost money to purchase (as long as they are within your group’s chosen budget), but if you do so, at least one of your top two choices must be free to access. (If your first choice is free, a second choice is probably not necessary.) You can see a substantial list of adaptations that are free to access online on the list of adaptations posted to the Moodle. Many plays and films are included in the library’s online resources such as Drama Online and Box of Broadcasts.
Primary texts:
- Eyre, Richard, dir. (2012) The Hollow Crown, Series 1, Henry IV - Part 1, BBC. Available on Box of Broadcasts.
- Eyre, Richard, dir. (2012) The Hollow Crown, Series 1, Henry IV - Part 2, BBC. Available on Box of BroadcastsLink opens in a new window.
Secondary texts:
- Földváry, Kinga (2020) "Sad Stories of the Death of Kings': The Hollow Crown and the Shakespearean History Play on Screen'Link opens in a new window in Russell Jackson [ed.] The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 105-18.
- Kolkovich, Elizabeth Zeman (2018) ‘Queering Poins: Masculinity and Friendship in Henry IV, The Hollow Crown, and the RSC’s “King and Country”’Link opens in a new window in Shakespeare Bulletin 36: 4, Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 635-56.
- Pittman, L. Monique (2016) ‘Shakespeare and the Cultural Olympiad: Contesting Gender and the British Nation in the BBC’s The Hollow Crown’Link opens in a new window in Borrowers and Lenders 9:2, pp. 1-30.
Week 8: Superhero Shakespeare
Week 8 individual prep: Identify a piece of academic secondary reading you would like to set the class for your session in Term 2. Each group member should find a separate piece of reading, though you should liaise with your partner(s) in order to ensure you’re not setting the same reading as them. The reading should be either an article in a scholarly journal or a book chapter. Please read it before setting it! If you cannot find anything on the primary text, something on the writer/director, the genre, the style, or adaptation theory more broadly would also be appropriate.
Primary text: Branagh, Kenneth, dir. (2011), Thor, Marvel Studios. Available on Box of BroadcastsLink opens in a new window and Disney+Link opens in a new window with a subscription.
Secondary texts:
- Blackwell, Anna (2018) ‘Performing the Shakespearean Body: Tom Hiddleston Onstage and Online’Link opens in a new window in Shakespearean Celebrity in the Digital Age: Fan Cultures and Remediation, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 55-96.
- Hatfull, Ronan (2019) ‘“Shakespeare in the Park?”: William Shakespeare and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’Link opens in a new window in Foundation 48: 4, pp. 45-57.
Further texts:
- Coogler, Ryan (2018) 'The Ancestral Plane'Link opens in a new window scene in Black Panther, Marvel Studios.
- Cretton, Destin Daniel (2021) 'Shang-Chi Meets Trevor & Morris'Link opens in a new window scene in Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings, Marvel Studios.
- Waititi, Taika (2017) 'The Tragedy of Loki'Link opens in a new window scene in Thor: Ragnarok, Marvel Studios.
- Watts, Jon (2019), 'Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Crown'Link opens in a new window scene from Spider-Man: Far From Home, Marvel Studios.
- Wheon, Joss, dir. (2012) 'Shakespeare in the Park' scene in The Avengers (2012), Marvel Studios.
Week 9: Gendering Shakespeare
Primary text: Lloyd, Phyllida, dir. (2016), The Donmar Warehouse's All-Female Shakespeare Trilogy: Henry IV, Donmar Warehouse. Available on Digital Theatre+Link opens in a new window.
Secondary texts:
- Miller, Gemma (2015) ‘What a piece of work is (wo)man: the revelations of cross-gendered Shakespeare’Link opens in a new window in Shakespeare 11: 1, Taylor & Francis, pp. 94-100.
- Walter, Harriet (2016) ‘Introduction’ and ‘Henry IV’ in Brutus and Other Heroines - Playing Shakespeare’s Roles for WomenLink opens in a new window, London: Nick Hern Books.
Further texts:
- Reason, Matthew (2019) ‘A prison audience: women prisoners, Shakespeare and spectatorship’Link opens in a new window in Cultural Trends 28:2-3, Taylor & Francis, pp. 86-102.
- Power, Terri (2015) Shakespeare and Gender in PracticeLink opens in a new window, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Note for studentsFor a detailed account of another play in Lloyd's trilogy, I recommend reading Chapter 4: 'Case Study - An All-Female Julius Caesar'.
Week 10: Multiverse Shakespeare
Primary text: Thorn, Abigail (2022) The Prince, Methuen Drama.
Secondary texts: Iftikhar, Asyia (2022), 'The Prince review: Abigail Thorn’s debut play reinvents Shakespeare with a queer, trans twist'Link opens in a new window and 'YouTuber and playwright Abigail Thorn explains why Shakespeare has ‘so much trans potentialLink opens in a new window" in Pink News.