In this course we will read plays from the second half of Shakespeare's career, probably: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. Emphasis on careful reading, improving your writing about imaginative literature, increasing your appreciation of what happens when a text goes onto the stage, and consideration of how Shakespeare was both "of an age" and "for all time" (Ben Jonson). Class will be primarily discussion with some mini-lectures. Frequent dramatic readings, monologues and some scene work. There will be quizzes to ensure prompt reading and several papers, including one on the cultural context of one of the plays.

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