'Get thee a wife, get thee a wife. There is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.' So Benedick cheerfully encourages Don Pedro to marry, just as he will, by re-imagining the inevitability of infidelity in something near sacramental terms. We'll take this as a point of entry into the worlds of Shakespeare's middle comedies (Much Ado, As You Like It, Twelfth Night) and look back at how he got here and forward to the problem comedies and romances, from his plot structure, his sense of verbal play, his idea of gender relations and social concerns to the assumptions underlying the qualified optimism of his endings. We'll consider most of the comedies, but in addition to the three mentioned above we will give special attention to The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest. There will be some forays into theory: Bahktin, Barber, Frey; some other readings: Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis; some of the sonnets; John Lyly's Endymion; and we'll be interested in contemporary approaches to the plays from the margins as well as from the middle.

Requirements: collaborate with one other seminar colleague in leading discussion on one of the scheduled topics. Write a critical paper or complete a project (e.g., an editing project, a bibliographical study, a website, a lesson plan) of medium length on any course related subject of interest.