Staging Pol in/age/of Shakespe

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This is an exploratory undergraduate seminar focused on the relationship between selected works within Shakespeare's corpus of playwriting and the history of political thought. The plays present political, social, legal, and religious questions at stake in the public presentation of some basic forms of rule: Republics, early and late Roman; Merchant Republics; Renaissance/Early Modern Monarchies; and Utopias. We will read seven plays: Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Henry V, Richard II, and The Tempest. We will be using the Signet Classics editions of the texts so that we share the same pagination for seminar discussion. These works are available at the University bookstore and also on Amazon. Secondary works (which I will supply in advance) will be assigned for each of these plays, and will enable us to consider some of the conceptual issues at stake in the politics of these plays as well as the diversity of contemporary interpretations, and perhaps give you a leg up on thinking about your seminar papers. Some of the political themes and problematics considered will be: the moral and political responsibilities of rulers and counselors in different regimes of power; tyranny and just rule; power and legitimacy; women, gender, and race in political struggles; authority and subversion; public and private justice, and the production of order.