ENL 6226 Spring 2005
Studies in the Renaissance: Tudor/Stuart Drama

Class: T 4:00-7:00, TUR English Department Seminar Room

Office: MWF 2:00 - 3:00, TUR 4111

In this course we will concentrate on reading about 25 plays from Elizabeth's reign to the closing of the theaters in 1642. As we do so we will focus on a number of contexts in which to understand them--such contexts as production and casting, illusion/reality, language, rhetoric, and style, the development of techniques and genres, the relationship to society, family, gender, economics, and politics. . . . The class will read along lines of historical development first tragedies, then comedies, and finally tragicomedies. The course should progress from lecture toward discussion, with students gaining independence and proficiency in understanding the period, analyzing critical methods, interpreting plays, and arguing articulately for particular contexts and readings both orally and in writing.

Students will thus be responsible for contemplating as well as reading every play assigned before the class meets to discuss it.

Your grades will be based on two 20-minute class reports with attendant written two-page analyses-outlines on an assigned critical approach (20% each, see attachment) and three papers. Paper 1 (about 1500 words, 15%) should argue for a detailed interpretation of some technical consideration, possibly one inside a single scene or act within an assigned tragedy. Kinds of topics could be theatrical considerations such as double time, doubling, disguisings, props, symbolic staging, a soliloquy, asides; rhetorical considerations such as a repeated or outstanding device including rimes, puns, riddles, orations, sound effects; emblematic considerations such as image clusters, repeated allusions, a song and dance. Paper 2 (about 3000 words, 20%) should present a detailed interpretation of some comedy. Beyond such concerns above it might expand theatrical considerations to a play-within-a-play, an induction or dumb show, a multiple plot, a theme, generic constraints and possibilities; rhetorical considerations to narrative or dialectic or logical argument or schematic development; emblematic considerations to symbolic complexes; or it could extend the concerns themselves into history of ideas in theology or philosophy or psychology and character development, into history of social or economic or political attitudes, and so on. Paper 3 (about 5000 words, 25%) should present some non-Shakespearean play of the era not assigned to the class. This might well be a contextual-critical introduction to a slightly known play. All your papers should be tightly argued and fully exemplified, stylishly written, and conform to the MLA Style Manual article format.

This course abides by the University's policies on plagiarism and academic honesty. Except for grave illness or death in the immediate family, a student who turns in an assignment late earns an automatic E. For a student to earn credit for the course, that student must complete all work.

JAN 4 Introduction

11 Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy; Marlowe: Doctor Faustus.

18 Marlowe: Tamburlaine I; Edward II.

25 Arden of Feversham; Chapman: Bussy D' Ambois.

FEB 1 Tourneur: The Revenger's Tragedy; Webster: The Duchess of Malfi.

8 Middleton & Rowley: The Changeling.

15 Ford: Tis Pity She's a Whore.

17 Paper on a tragedy due in Clark's mailbox by 9:00 a.m.

22 Gascoigne: Supposes; Lyly: Gallathea.

MAR 8 Greene: Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay; Dekker: The Shoemakers Holiday.

15 Beaumont: The Knight of the Burning Pestle; Middleton: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.

22 Jonson: The Alchemist; Bartholomew Fair.

29 Jonson: Epicoene; Dekker & Middleton: The Roaring Girl.

APR 5 Shirley: Hyde Park.

7 Paper on a comedy due in Clark's mailbox by 9:00 a.m.

12 Chapman: The Widow's Tears.

19 Beaumont & Fletcher: A King and No King.

25 Paper 3 due in Clark's mailbox by 9:00 a.m.

The following texts are available at Goerings': Drama of the English Renaissance, I: Tudor Period & II: Stuart Period, ed. Russell A. Fraser & Norman Rabkin.

Ira Clark