The class will consider the work of William Shakespeare as a poet, dramatist, and cultural touchstone. In addition to producing the language’s most respected corpus of plays and of poetry, the bard’s work has also been an inspiration to hundreds of artists in genres as diverse as painting, ballet, opera, filmmaking, sculpture, architecture, and many others. We will engage all the sonnets, and read descriptive passages and speeches from nearly all the 36 plays, with an ear tuned to his unique language and image-making. We will also consider adaptations: listening to symphonies, and criticizing paintings inspired by his work. In order to understand his composite gifts of characterization and narrative structure, we will read, in addition to principle selections from the major plays, three in their entirety: one comedy, one tragedy, and one history.

The written component of the class is comprised of, in addition to your keeping a diligent reading journal, and producing a short paper regarding adaptation, two longer essays: one reflective and one interpretive which will pass through a revision process in response to instructor-reviewed drafts; that is: though our struggle is with literary texts, your own composition marks the field of contest.

Required texts include Ted Hughes' Essential Shakespeare (at the bookstore), and your own copies (any edition will do) of the three plays we're reading in toto.