1:00P-2:15P TR (30) 3 cr

This course will examine social and political politics, familial
relations, and competing versions of "history" in eight of
Shakespeare's Elizabethan plays. We will pay special attention to
how social and economic systems organize familial and love
relations, how conflicts between individuals and social codes are
worked out (or not, depending on one's viewpoint), through
strategies of genre, scapegoating, misrecognition, marriage,
death and revenge. We will ground our reading of the plays in
Renaissance social and cultural history, looking at the effects
of female rule in a patriarchal culture, an emerging capitalist
economy, and other factors that strongly influenced gender,
family and class relationships. We will read several comedies,
history plays, and tragedies; and look at how the choice,
structure, and conventions of genre alter, disguise or reveal the
debates and crises circulating in early modern England and the
theatre.

Plays will include RICHARD II, 1 HENRY IV, MUCH ADO ABOUT
NOTHING, MERCHANT OF VENICE, ROMEO AND JULIET, and HAMLET.
Requirements will be two papers, a midterm, attendance and
participation, and a final exam.