English 90am. Shakespeare After Hamlet

Instructor: Gordon Teskey
Monday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

How did Shakespeare’s art develop in the years following Hamlet (1600-1601), which ends with a roar of cannons, warning of great tragedies to come? The second half of Shakespeare’s career (1601-1611) includes such magnificent plays as Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and The Tempest. His style becomes more gnarly and tough, more expressive and free. His view of human character becomes harsher, yet his vision of love grows deeper. The course ends with The Tempest, Shakespeare’s magical farewell to the stage. Shakespeare’s art will be explored through performance of scenes. There are fascinating film versions of these and other late plays, including a version of Hamlet set in New York City, where the “To be or not to be” speech is left on a telephone answering machine. In this course we examine how for us today, as in Shakespeare’s own time, what we think of as Shakespeare’s plays is the result of interaction between what was written on the page and what was performed on the stage—or, in our case, in film versions. Final projects for this seminar will involve taking an individual play and comparing the text with two film versions.

This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.