Information for 2024-2025

 

Convenor: Prof. Paul Botley

Teaching methods

1 x 1 hour lecture weekly; 1 x 1.5 hour seminar weekly.

Lecture: location TBC

Seminars as detailed on Tabula

Module Description

We will survey a wide range of early modern plays by Shakespeare and some of his most significant contemporaries such as Lyly, Marlowe, and Middleton. We'll explore the ways in which some of the major issues and themes dramatised in Shakespeare’s plays – for instance, love, war, sexuality, religion, law, race – function in an early modern context while continuing to challenge readers and spectators today. We'll read Shakespeare alongside other plays which compare and contrast in their treatment of these themes, to consider what is both typical and special about his work in its context. We'll consider how Shakespeare’s career developed (from early to late comedy, through history and tragedy) and investigate how later collaborators (directors, actors, adapters, audiences and readers) transformed the plays to be especially meaningful for them.

Module aims

The module aims are to read and analyse a wide range of Shakespeare's plays in different genres and periods of his career and a selection of the plays of near-contemporary dramatists, in order to compare and contrast Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean early modern drama. Students will critically analyse the plays: as literature; as texts for performance; and in their historical contexts (religious, social and political). You will also gain an understanding of a wide range of critical responses to Shakespeare and early modern drama and evaluate some of these in depth in your assessments.

Learning outcomes and Assessments

Sample: First Assessment Extracts and Rubric 2023-2024Link opens in a new window

Level 5 (Y2)Link opens in a new window<Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window

Level 6 (Y3)Link opens in a new window<Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window

Syllabus / Lecture List for 2024-2025

 

Autumn term

Reading Week

Spring Term

Reading Week

Reading list

A full bibliography covering primary and suggested secondary reading will be available on Talis Aspire (link hereLink opens in a new window). This bibliography has not yet been fully revised for the academic year 2024-2025.

Essential Primary texts for autumn 2024 (to buy, ideally) are:

• Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Third edition. Edited by S. Greenblatt et al. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2016).
• Thomas Middleton and Cyril Tourneur: The Revenger's Tragedy. Edited by R. A. Foakes. Revels Student Editions (London, 1996). The edition of the same play edited by Brian Gibbons in the New Mermaids series is a good alternative.
• Marlowe, Christopher. Tamburlaine, parts I and II: Doctor Faustus, A- and B-texts ; The Jew of Malta ; Edward II. Edited by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen. Oxford World's Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Since we are studying only Edward II in class, you may prefer to invest instead in a single-play text: Christopher Marlowe: Edward II. Edited by Martin Wiggins and Robert Lindsey. New Mermaids (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).
• Lyly, John. Galatea. Edited by Leah Scragg. Revels Student Editions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012).
• Thomas Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Edited by Alan Brissenden. New Mermaids (London: Bloomsbury, 2002). This play is available via the University Library on Drama Online, but you may wish to buy this book too if you want a print copy.

Summer Reading: Please note that it is our expectation that students will return after the summer having read the non-Shakespearean plays on the syllabus and made a good start on Shakespeare. All the lectures will assume that you have knowledge of the non-Shakespearean plays. Please don't ignore this advice!