ENL 4333 () Shakespeare Fall 2006


Class: MWF 3:00-3:50,

Office: Immediately after class, TUR 4111

E-Mail: irac@english.ufl.edu


Ira Clark's advanced Shakespeare course covers 13 plays. It opens with a familiar comedy to help students become accustomed to reading highly rhetorical and poetic texts and to envisioning performances from dramatic texts. We will proceed with a cluster of comedies that illustrate Shakespeare's dramatic and stylistic development. We will next read a cluster of histories and finally one of tragedies with reprieve through one final romance. All along we will concentrate on helpful ways to read Shakespeare's plays: for examples, as representations of Shakespeare's era, as means of raising problems about our own era, as ways of considering other eras and cultures. And we will focus on the questions and debates Shakespeare's plays have stimulated over theological, political, social, psychological, gender, and other issues.


Grades will be based on a combination of 12 pop tests, dropping the lowest grade (50% of the grade), a 3000-word paper on one of the comedies or histories (20% of the grade) and a 4000-word paper on a tragedy (30% of the grade). Each paper must be preceded by a 500-word paper proposal (receiving a check, plus, or minus) and the final topic must be agreed upon in advance by the student and teacher. Both papers should be tightly argued, fully exemplified and interpreted, and stylishly written. They must be typed.

The development of the course should be from lecture towards discussion, with students gaining independence and proficiency in understanding the period, interpreting the plays, and arguing articulately both orally and in writing for readings. Students will thus be responsible for contemplating as well as reading every play assigned before the class meets to discuss it, so that you can listen profitably to the lectures on the backgrounds and participate knowledgeably in discussions of the works.

This course abides by the University's policies on plagiarism and academic honesty. Except for grave illness or death in the immediate family, I neither accept late work nor grant incompletes. For a student to earn credit for the course, that student must complete all work.



August 23 Introduction

25 Love's Labour's Lost



28

30

September 1 Much Ado About Nothing


6

8


11 As You Like It

13

15



18 All's Well That Ends Well

20

22



25 Richard II

27

29


October 2 Henry IV, Part 1 Paper 1 Proposal due in class.

4


9 Henry IV, Part 2

11

12 Paper 1 due by 9:00 a.m. Clark's mailbox.

13



16 Romeo and Juliet

18

20



23 Antony and Cleopatra

25

27



30 Hamlet

November 1

3


6

8



13 Othello

15

17



20 King Lear (Conflated Text)

22



27

29 Paper 2 Proposal due in class.

December 1


4 The Tempest

6


12 Tuesday. Final Paper due by 9:00 a.m. Clark's mailbox.

The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al, is available at Goerings' Book Store.

Ira Clark