4:00P-5:15P  TR  (40) 3 cr

This course will examine social and sexual politics, familial relations, and competing versions of
"history" in eight of Shakespeare's later plays.  We will pay special attention to how social and
economic systems and social codes are worked out (or not, depending on one's viewpoints)
through strategies of genre, scapegoating, misrecognition, marriage, death and revenge.  We will
ground our reading of the plays in Renaissance social and cultural history; and look at the
transition from Queen Elizabeth to King James, 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.

Requirements will be three papers, attendance and participation, and a final exam.