Shakespeare: Text and Performance
MODULE CODE
CREDIT VALUE
Module Aims
Aim 1
Examine a range of Shakespeare’s drama.
Aim 2
Enhance students’ close reading skills of Shakespeare’s plays;
Aim 3
Encourage students to engage with the plays as performance texts.
Aim 4
Situate the plays in relation to a range of historical and critical contexts.
Aim 5
Consider recent productions and appropriations of Shakespearean texts in a variety of media, including film.
Aim 6
Explore critical and theoretical approaches to Shakespeare.
Aim 7
Interrogate questions affecting Shakespeare's wider cultural significance
Module Content
This module explores a range of Shakespeare’s plays including tragedies, comedies, histories as well as the so-called ‘problem plays’ and romances. The plays will be explored as both texts for critical enquiry and as scripts for performance in the renaissance period and in contemporary theatrical and film interpretations of the text. The module will explore the social, political, cultural and theatrical contexts which gave rise to the plays and also investigate how a range of different contexts influence ‘modern’ interpretations on film and stage.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, a student will be able to:
Teaching Methods
This module is delivered on campus through lectures and seminars. Lectures will foreground the wider theoretical and generic issues appropriate to the module, and seminars will follow up these issues with reference to specific texts (both primary and secondary), providing the opportunity for more detailed application and discussion of these debates.
In seminars you will be expected to offer opinions, listen to the opinions of others, and debate key points that enhance your understanding of the literary texts and its importance to academic study, as well as providing the opportunity to acquire key employability skills. In seminars, therefore, you also develop key skills in debating, critical thinking, close reading, analysis, comparative studies, diplomacy as well as subject-specific knowledge and understanding.
Students are expected to come to the lectures having read the designated play or plays or watched a particular performance for that week and be fully prepared to discuss it in the seminar that follows the lectures.
Assessment Methods
This module is assessed through one Essay and one Reading / Performance Diary.
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Compulsory
Optional
