Text Box: Shakespeare: Earlier Plays Professor David Willbern MWF 9:00 - 9:50 Reg. No. 049369 Text Box: 309 Text Box: The course is a representative survey of the first half of Shakespeare's career: roughly 1590-1600. We will read nine plays: comedies, histories, and tragedies. Specifically: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Richard II, Henry IV Part One, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Julius Caesar. One focus will be on the ways in which Shakespeare's dramas foreshadow the modern notion of identity as performance, and the problems of identity maintenance under such a notion. We will examine concepts of self, sexuality, family, and power as enacted in these early-modern plays. Always underlying dramatic performance are the particularities of language. My readings of Shakespeare's plays remain focused on the specific densities of his poetic text. Readings will be enhanced by excerpts from films of the plays, and by Internet links to various resources on Shakespeare and the early-modern period. This will be a multimedia, Web-oriented class. Many course assignments and requirements can be completed online, although class attendance will still be necessary. For a preview, see the course Web site: http://icarus.ubetc.buffalo.edu/willbern/shakespeare/index.htm This course satisfies an earlier literature requirement. Text Box: Shakespeare: Earlier Plays Professor Andy Stott TTh 9:30 - 10:50 Reg. No. 143648 Text Box: 309 Text Box: This course will consider plays from the first half of Shakespeare’s career, 1590-1600, a period in which he developed and extended his thematic interests, generic repertoire and literary techniques. Our readings of Shakespeare will attempt to locate him in the Elizabethan theatre business, and explore the social and cultural contexts of Shakespearean drama. The course will emphasize classroom discussion, close-reading skills, and the composition of formal papers. Text to be studied will include Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Titus Andronicus, Richard II, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet. The set texts will be Stephen Greenblatt (ed.), The Norton Shakespeare, and Russ Macdonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare. This course satisfies an earlier literature requirement.