Please note none of the teaching or reading will be in Spanish. All module core set texts and readings are in English and students are not expected to have any Spanish at all.

Team-taught by Teresa Grant (English) and Rich Rabone (Hispanic Studies), this module will give students a chance to read a selection of the best plays of English and Spanish authors in the period c. 1590-1660. Some of the greatest playwrights of all time were writing during this well-named Golden Age, with Shakespeare and Calderon at their head. As the syllabus below reveals, there was some considerable overlap in themes and plots: Shakespeare was borrowed by the Spanish, and Shirley (and others) borrowed back heavily in return. However, the political and religious outlook of the two stages was very different, and this profoundly affected the mores depicted on stage and any possible lesson an audience is supposed to learn. We'll look at two plays a week (one English, one Spanish) chosen to show how similarity and difference can co-exist. We'll learn about the background of each theatrical space, in historical, physical, political, religious and social terms. We'll have a look at some of the most important theoretical writings on theatre from both countries in the long seventeenth century, investigating how genre is understood, how classical writers on drama were negotiated and what playwrights thought the point of writing for the stage was.

Seminars will be an interactive discussion rather than a lecture, and each week on rotation students will be asked to give short presentations which introduce the plays. Come to class prepared to talk but remember that we are not expecting you to come as an expert—questions are usually just as helpful as observations to a seminar so you mustn't feel you have to come with all the answers. The tutors are each expert in one country’s drama and are looking forward to learning from each other as well as from you.

If you don't do the essential reading set for the week, we'll find that the seminars quickly come unstuck. Usually, the primary texts are essential, and the secondary ones as recommended (though there may be weeks where a piece of secondary material is essential). Try to do all the essential reading, and at least one recommended piece each week please.

Representative Syllabus 2024-25 (Talis Aspire reading list will be available shortly)

Week 1: The Background. 'The Golden Age of Spain' (pp. 57-68) and 'Tudor and Stuart Periods' (pp. 113-64) in A. M. Nagler (ed.), A Source Book in Theatrical History (New York, 1959). From Theatre/Theory/Theatre, ed. Daniel Gerould (New York, 2000): Philip Sidney, selections from The Defense of Poetry (1583); Lope de Vega, The New Art of Writing Plays (tr. Marvin Carlson); John Dryden, selections from An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668). Please make sure you have read the plays for week 2 before week 1 because it's really hard to talk about theory without having some literary examples: Tirso de Molina (attrib.), El burlador de Sevilla/The Trickster of Seville (played 1616?; pub. 1630); Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1592)

Week 2: Hell and how to get there. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1592) and Tirso de Molina (attrib.), El burlador de Sevilla/The Trickster of Seville (played 1616?; pub. 1630).

Week 3: Imitation/Translation. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1595?) and Lope de Vega, Castelvines y Monteses/Capulets and Montegues (1647).

Week 4: Punishment. Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed With Kindness (1603/1607) and Calderón, El médico de su honra/The Physician of his Honour (1637).

Week 5: Get Real! Francis Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) and Calderón, La vida es sueño/Life is a Dream (1636).

READING WEEK

Week 7: Revolt. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (1599) and Lope, Fuenteovejuna (1619). 

Week 8: Class. Lope, El perro del hortelano/The Dog in the Manger (1618) and James Shirley, The Gentleman of Venice (c. 1639).

Week 9: Gender. Ana Caro de Mallén, Valor, agravio y mujer (1620s or 30s)/Valour, Outrage, and Woman (translated as The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs) and Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Philaster (c. 1610).

Week 10: Sliding Doors. Calderón, La dama duende/The Phantom Lady (1629) and Samuel Tuke, The Adventures of Five Hours (1662)