12:20p-1:10p MWF (70) 3 cr

We will read 10-12 of Shakespeare's plays, paying particular attention to his development as an artist and the relation of his plays to 16th and 17th century English culture. The emphasis in the class, in fact, will be upon recovering as much as we can, through the plays and other sources, about the circumstances--political, social, material--in which the plays were written and performed. There will be a mid-term and a final examination; in addition, there will be nigh-weekly very short writing assignments ("microthemes"), two of which will be revised to be longer analytic papers (3-5 pages). In addition to serving as drafts for the longer papers, the microtheme assignments will be designed expressly to prepare you for class discussion (very important) and the examinations.