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21L.703

Studies in Drama

3-0-9 units. HASS-H · Undergraduate

Intensive study of an important topic or period in drama. Close analysis of major plays, enriched by critical readings and attention to historical and theatrical contexts. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication through student presentations and research essays. Previously taught topics include: Renaissance Drama; Shakespeare with his Contemporaries; Oscar Wilde; and Stoppard and Company. May be repeated for credit with permission of instructor if content differs. Limited to 12.

Spring 2014 · Studies in Drama: Stoppard and Company

Topics

  • Introductions; British comedy and you
  • Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1966 / 67).
  • Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead , across media.
  • The Real Inspector Hound (1969 / 70).
  • Travesties (1974 / 75); discussion of Aracdia in performance; exchange of essay on Travesties with a partner.
  • Presentations of one another’s ideas about Travesties , with commentary.
  • Travesties and Top Girls (play first performed in 1982).
  • Scenes from an Execution (1985 radio version; 1990 staged).
  • Scenes from an Execution and Serious Money (1987).
  • Serious Money ; exchange of essay on Serious Money with a partner.
  • Hapgood (1988); exchange of reader’s report on partner’s essay on Serious Money .
  • Hapgood and Twilight: Los Angeles , 1992 (1994).
  • Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992.
  • Arcadia (1993).
  • The Invention of Love (1997).
  • Class discussion
  • Labors of love, where we’ve arrived.
  • From Kohout to Cahoot, from Wittgenstein to Dogg.
  • Rock ’n’ Roll (2006); voluntary sharing of students’ Stoppardian scenes.
  • Rock ’n’ Roll .
  • Exchange of reader’s report on partner’s major essay / project.
  • A Number (2002).
  • Student presentations on major project
  • Student presentations on major project (cont.)

Readings

Fall 2008 · Studies in Drama: Too Hot to Handle: Forbidden Plays in Modern America

Unlike film, theater in America does not have a ratings board that censors content. So plays have had more freedom to explore and to transgress normative culture. Yet censorship of the theater has been part of American culture from the beginning, and continues today. How and why does this happen, and who decides whether a play is too dangerous to see or to teach? Are plays dangerous? Sinful? Even demonic? In our seminar, we will study plays that have been censored, either legally or extra-legally (i.e. refused production, closed down during production, denied funding, or taken off school reading lists). We'll look at laws, both national and local, relating to the "obscene", as well as unofficial practices, and think about the way censorship operates in American life now. And of course we will study the offending texts, themselves, to find what is really dangerous about them, for ourselves.

Readings

Spring 2005 · Studies in Drama: Theater and Science in a Time of War

This course explores the creation (and creativity) of the modern scientific and cultural world through study of western Europe in the 17th century, the age of Descartes and Newton, Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Molière. The class compares period thinking to present-day debates about the scientific method, art, religion, and society. This team-taught, interdisciplinary subject draws on a wide range of literary, dramatic, historical, and scientific texts and images, and involves theatrical experimentation as well as reading, writing, researching and conversing.

Readings

  • Brecht, Bertolt. Galileo . New York, NY: Grove Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780802130594.
    Required
  • Churchill, Caryl. Plays: One . London, UK: A&C Black, 1985. ISBN: 9780413566706.
    Required
  • Ford, John. ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Other Plays . Edited by Marion Lomax. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780192834492.
    Required
  • Kushner, Tony. Death and Taxes: Hydriotaphia and Other Plays . New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group, 1998. ISBN: 9781559361569.
    Required
  • Shakespeare, William. King Lear . Edited by R. A. Foakes. London, UK: Thomson Learning, 1997. ISBN: 9780174434603.
    Required
  • Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780691024325.
    Required
  • Barish, Jonas. “Puritanism, Popery, and Parade.” The Antitheatrical Prejudice . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780520052161.
    Listed reading
  • Behn, Aphra. “Not to sigh and to be tender.” In Lycidus . 1688.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “To the Honourable Edward Howard, on his Comedy Called The New Utopia.” In Poems on Several Occasions . 1684.
    Listed reading
  • Betterton, Thomas. “The Qualifications of a Player.” In Actors on Acting . Edited by Toby Cole and Henen Krich Chinoy. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780517884782.
    Listed reading
  • Bordinat, Philip, and Sophia B. Blaydes. Sir William Davenant . Boston, MA: Twayne, 1981, chronology and chapter 1. ISBN: 9780805767957.
    Listed reading
  • Brockett, Oscar G., and Franklin J. Hildy. History of the Theater . Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2002, chapters 5 and 9. ISBN: 9780205358786.
    Listed reading
  • Brome, Richard. The Antipodes .
    Listed reading
  • Listed reading
  • Butler, Martin. “The Condition of the Theatres in 1642.” In The Cambridge History of British Theatre. Vol I, Origins to 1660 . Edited by Jane Milling and Peter Thomson. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780521650403.
    Listed reading
  • Butler, Martin. Theatre and Crisis: 1632-1642 . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984, chapters 1-3. ISBN: 9780521246323.
    Listed reading
  • Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. “A Dialogue Between the Body, and the Minde.” In Philosophicall Fancies . 1653.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Of the Motion of the Planets.” In Philosophicall Fancies . 1653.
    Listed reading
  • ———. Sociable Letters . Edited by James Fitzmaurice. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, letter 9, pp. 18-19. ISBN: 9780815324515.
    Listed reading
  • Clare, Janet. “General Introduction: The Theatre and Cultural Revolution.” In Drama of the English Republic, 1649-1660 . Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780719044823.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Theatre and Commonwealth.” In The Cambridge History of British Theatre. Vol. 1, Origins to 1660 . Edited by Jane Milling and Peter Thomson. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780521650403.
    Listed reading
  • Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millenium . USA: Oxford University Press, 1970, conclusion and appendix: The “Free Spirit.”. ISBN: 9780195004564.
    Listed reading
  • Dillon, Janette. “Theatre and Controversy, 1603-1642.” In The Cambridge History of British Theatre. Vol. 1, Origins to 1660 . Edited by Jane Milling and Peter Thomson. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780521650403.
    Listed reading
  • Dunn, Richard S. “The Century of Genius.” In The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1689 . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1970.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “The Puritan Revolution.” In The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1689 . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1970.
    Listed reading
  • Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things . New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1973, forward, preface, and chapters 1 and 2.
    Listed reading
  • Harris, Ellen T. “Musical Declamation.” In Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780193152533.
    Listed reading
  • ———. Handel and the Pastoral Tradition . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 109-128. ISBN: 9780193152366.
    Listed reading
  • Hawley, Judith. “Keep the Bunsens Burning.” The Guardian , April 3, 2004.
    Listed reading
  • Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714 . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1982, appendices A-D. ISBN: 9780393300161.
    Listed reading
  • ———. The World Turned Upside Down . New York, NY: Penguin, 1984, chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780140137323.
    Listed reading
  • Jonson, Ben. “Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court.” In Ben Jonson’s Plays and Masques . Edited by Robert M. Adams. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1979. ISBN: 9780393090352.
    Listed reading
  • Keller, Evelyn Fox. “Spirit and Reason at the Birth of Modern Science.” In Reflections on Gender and Science . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780300065954.
    Listed reading
  • Knutson, Roslyn L. “Working Playwrights, 1580-1642.” In The Cambridge History of British Theatre. Vol 1, Origins to 1660 . Edited by Jane Milling and Peter Thomson. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780521650403.
    Listed reading
  • Lovejoy, Arthur. “The Principle of Plenitude and the New Cosmography.” In The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea . New York, NY: Harper, 1960.
    Listed reading
  • Milling, Jane. “The Development of a Professional Theatre, 1540-1660.” In The Cambridge History of British Theatre Volume I: Origins to 1660 . Edited by Jane Milling and Peter Thomson. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780521650403.
    Listed reading
  • Listed reading
  • Morton, A. L. “Religion and Politics in the English Revolution.” In The World of the Ranters . London, UK: Laurence and Wishart, 1970. ISBN: 9780853152200.
    Listed reading
  • Norbrook, David, ed. The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse . New York, NY: Penguin, 1993, pp. 163-601: selections by Parker, Herrick, Marvell, Mure, Philips, Milton, Brome, Lovelace, Anonymous, and Wild. ISBN: 9780140423464.
    Listed reading
  • Ollard, Richard. This War Without an Enemy . New York, NY: Atheneum, 1976. ISBN: 9780689107597.
    Listed reading
  • Parry, Graham. Selections from The Seventeenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1603-1700 . Boston, MA: Longman, 1989. ISBN: 9780582493766.
    Listed reading
  • Pearson, Henry Greenleaf. “Introduction.” In The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature . Edited by Robert Emmons Rogers. Boston, MA: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1921.
    Listed reading
  • Philips, Katherine. “Upon the Double Murther of K. Charles I in Answer to a Libellous Copy of Rimes by Vavasor Powell.” Poems . 1667.
    Listed reading
  • Ridley, Jasper. “Henry VIII and the Religious Revolution.” In The History of England . London, UK: Routledge, 1982. ISBN: 9780710007940.
    Listed reading
  • Roach, Joseph R. In The Player’s Passion . Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1985, preface and chapter 1. ISBN: 9780874132656.
    Listed reading
  • Sanders, Julie. Caroline Drama . Tavistock, UK: Northcote House, 1999, biographical and historical outline and chapter 1. ISBN: 9780746308776.
    Listed reading
  • Seaver, Paul S. Wallington’s World . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988, preface and chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780804714327.
    Listed reading
  • Sellar, Walter Carruthers, and Robert Julian Yeatman. 1066 and All That . London, UK: Methuen, 1991, compulsory preface and pp. 70-81. ISBN: 9780413772701.
    Listed reading
  • Shapin, Steven. “The Philosopher and the Chicken: On the Dietetics of Disembodied Knowledge.” In Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780226470146.
    Listed reading
  • Shapin, Steven. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995, chapters 2, 3, and 4. ISBN: 9780226750194.
    Listed reading
  • Listed reading
  • Stone, Laurence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 . New York, NY: Penguin, 1990, pp. 483-527. ISBN: 9780140137217.
    Listed reading
  • Tate, Nahum. “The History of King Lear.” In Adaptations of Shakespeare . Edited by Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier. London, UK: Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9780415198943.
    Listed reading
  • Tyler, Margaret. The Mirrour of Princely Deeds and Knighthood ." 1578, preface.
    Listed reading
  • Weber, Eugen, ed. The Western Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Atomic Age . Boston, MA: DC Heath, 1959, pp. 362-397 and 410-423: Selections by Grimmelshausen, Mun, Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Hobbes.
    Listed reading
  • Discussion of Brecht’s Galileo
    Listed reading
  • Brecht, Bertolt. Galileo .
    Listed reading
  • If you have already read Galileo , please review the play and read: Lovejoy, Arthur. “The Principle of Plenitude and the New Cosmography.”
    Listed reading
  • Shakespeare, William. King Lear .
    Listed reading
  • Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things . Chapter 1.
    Listed reading
  • Tate, Nahum. King Lear .
    Listed reading
  • SES #: 6 · Topics: Discussion with Historian of Science Arne Hessenbruch · READINGS: Shapin, Steven and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump . Chapter 1.
    Reading assignment
  • John Ford’s The Broken Heart
    Listed reading
  • Ford, John. The Broken Heart .
    Listed reading
  • Brockett. History of the Theater . Chapter 9.
    Listed reading
  • SES #: 8 · Topics: Guest Scholar · READINGS: Selections from The Western Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Atomic Age . Edited by Eugen Weber.
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 9 · Topics: Discussion of Brome’s The Antipodes and Caroline Theater · READINGS: Brome, Richard. The Antipodes .
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 10 · Topics: Discussion of Shirley’s The Cardinal · READINGS: Shirley, James. The Cardinal .
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 11 · Topics: Visit from Prof. Mary Campbell, Poet and Author of Wonder and Science · READINGS: Readings in poetry and science.
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 12 · Topics: Visit from Prof. Ellen Harris on Davenant and Music · READINGS: Readings on masques, music, and voice.
    Reading assignment
  • Churchill, Caryl. Light Shining in Buckinghamshire .
    Listed reading
  • SES #: 16 · Topics: Poetry, Language, Wit · READINGS: Selections from Browne, Milton, and Marvell.
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 17 · Topics: Discussion of Two Versions of Hydriotaphia · READINGS: Kushner, Tony. Hydriotaphia .
    Reading assignment
Fall 2003 · English Renaissance Drama: Theatre and Society in the Age of Shakespeare

Topics

  • Introduction and Course Overview
  • Wrightson, Keith. English Society.
  • Kyd, Thomas. The Spanish Tragedy.
  • Shakespeare. Hamlet.
  • Marlowe, Christopher. The Jew of Malta .
  • Jonson, Ben. The Alchemist .
  • Webster, John. The Duchess of Malfi .
  • Ford, John. The Broken Heart .
  • Arden of Faversham .
  • Thomas Middleton/William Rowley. The Witch of Edmonton .
  • Beaumont, Francis. The Knight of the Burning Pestle .
  • Fletcher, John. The Island Princess .

Readings

Prerequisites & course information

Same subject as 21T.246[J] Prereq: Two subjects in Literature U (Fall) 3-0-9 units. HASS-H Can be repeated for credit.

Sources