In this introductory course on Shakespeare, we will examine the language and poetry of several of his plays, consider the socio-historical and literary-dramatic contexts from which they emerge, and analyze the critical and artistic responses to the plays in literature and film. We will explore two comedies (A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice) and three tragedies (Othello, King Lear, Macbeth), and we will also examine the multiple and divergent interpretations of some of these plays by actors, directors, and filmmakers whose own work may be seen as attempting to join or intervene in the conversation Shakespeare was having with literary sources that informed his work. We will study what it is about Shakespeare's plays that make them especially open to a range of interpretations across history and genre, providing artists and audiences with a creative springboard for modern retellings on arguably universal themes (desire, revenge, bigotry, ruthless ambition, tyranny). We will have occasion to study early and recent film versions of the plays, from Laurence Olivier's turn as Macbeth (1948), Shylock (1973), and Lear (1984) to cinematic adaptations by Roman Polanski (Macbeth, 1971), Peter Brook (King Lear, 1971), Michael Hoffman (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1999), Michael Radford (The Merchant of Venice, 2004), and Tim Blake Nelson (O, 2001).