Shakespeare and His Contemporaries on the Stage

Code

ENGL2018

School

English

Level

2

Credits

20

Semesters

Spring UK

Summary

Shakespeare & Contemporaries on the Stage offers an in-depth exploration of the historical and theatrical contexts of early modern drama. Drawing on the most innovative and experimental works by Shakespeare and key contemporaries (e.g. Marlowe, Webster, Middleton), this module invites students to explore the three-dimensional stagecraft of these writers. Lectures will introduce the physical environments of the first professional indoor and outdoor theatres, the political and institutional contexts that shaped dramatic production, and the conditions of performance for which dramatists wrote, seeing early modern playwriting as a vibrant and collaborative process.

Semi-practical workshop sessions will allow students to explore how practical performance elements such as parts, staging, props, costume and music shape meaning. Through a combination of historical research, close reading and creative exploration in workshops, students will build confidence in analysing the ways in which the extant texts imply and provoke performance and draw on these knowledge bases in written assessments. Theatre trips (when possible) and optional screenings of selected plays will allow students the opportunity to see examples of how texts have been interpreted by contemporary directors, and students will respond to the most up-to-date examples of Shakespeare in modern performance.

Target Students

Only available for second-year students on SH and JH English programmes, including 2+2 programmes; students participating in exchanges from the School partner institutions; and second or third-year students on the Liberal Arts programme.ENGL1001 Drama, Theatre and Performance is a pre-requisite for this module.

Classes

• One 1-hour workshop each week for 11 weeks
• One 1-hour lecture each week for 11 weeks
• One 1-hour lecture each week for 11 weeks

Assessment

• 50% Coursework 1: 1 x 1500 word performance analysis essay
• 50% Coursework 2: 1 x 2000 word historical essay

Assessed by end of spring semester

Educational Aims

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and understanding
• critical and theoretical approaches to the study of early modern plays in performance (A1)
•the historical and practical contexts of early modern playmaking (A2)
•the analysis of performance and the understanding of performance elements (A4)

Intellectual skills
•engage in close analysis of early modern dramatic texts and contemporary ‘original practices’ performances (B1)
•extrapolate performance possibilities from a playtext and reflect on them in the light of critical material (B2)
•research historical and theoretical ideas and relate them to the questions posed by plays (B3)

Professional practical skills
•articulate knowledge and understanding of the key theatrical and theoretical concepts relating to early modern drama (C1)
•analyse performance texts with an awareness of how circumstances of authorship, textual production, conventions and audiences affect what they communicate, in both original historical context and contemporary production (C2)
•write accurately and grammatically, demonstrating awareness of the importance of style and register in communication, and present written material using conventions appropriate to drama work, including bibliographies (C3)
•construct and communicate a sustained analysis of texts, verbally and in writing (C4)
• carry our research (including the use of archival materials and scholarly databases), to evaluate the material so acquired (C5)

Transferable (key) skills
•work productively with others in semi-practical workshop classes to explore elements of early modern practice (D1)
•communicate effectively in formal written essays (D2)
•retrieve information from a range of written and electronic sources and present findings and own analysis in a clear fashion (D5)
•reflect upon and assess their own progress in group and individual work (D6)

Conveners

• Dr Anna Blackwell