English 203: Readers and Texts
Shakespeare on Page, Stage, and Screen
Fall, 2014
Ronald Herzman
Useful Information:
My office is in Welles Hall, 220. I am there a lot, in addition to my official office hours,
which are:
M 2:15-4 / T 10-12:30
If you can't find me, you probably haven't been looking very hard.
If I am not in my office when I have a scheduled office hour, you might want to walk
down to the department office (Welles 226) and ask if anyone knows where I am.
Email: [email protected]. You are welcome to email me, but it is probably a good
idea to ask yourself whether what you need can be gotten sooner by contacting someone
else first. I am usually pretty good at getting back to you, but often there are
circumstances that slow me down a bit. Be patient. Like you, I am pretty busy.
Phone: office x5265 / home 243-5476. You are welcome to call me at home, but it is
probably not a great idea after 10 PM.
The only required text for the course is The Necessary Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington
(Pearson). In addition to the works of Shakespeare themselves, you will be required to
read various introductions and essays in this edition. Other readings for the course will
be posted on MyCourses. And, as indicated below, you are responsible for seeing the six
films that we will be studying.
Course:
In this course we will take a close look at Shakespeare as poet and as playwright, and
Shakespeare as he has been interpreted on film. Thus the course will deal with three
distinct genres, and is structured so that we will cover all three genres every week.
Monday classes will be all about poetry. Wednesday will be all about drama. Friday will
be all about film.
This course serves as the gateway course for English majors and concentrators.
Which is to say, this course allows you to take any of the other offerings in the
department, at whatever level. After taking this course, you should feel confident that
you have a set of tools and practices that will enable you to do the work required of an
English major with sophistication and confidence. If the course goes well, you should
also have a good deal more to say than before about why you might want to do so. In
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other words, this course is partly about technique and partly about meaning: it will teach
you "how," but it should also, albeit somewhat indirectly, teach you "why."
The course assumes that you already have a fair amount of experience as a reader and
interpreter of texts. What the course will try to do is build on that experience by
exploring a set of agreed-on conventions for how to talk about texts and how to write
about them. The course should enable you to become part of an ongoing conversation
that has extended for many centuries, not only about the importance of Shakespeare, but
about reasons for reading and writing more generally. This conversation will take place
in the classroom, in your written work, and hopefully in informal ways as well. Among
other things, the course should convince you, if you are not already convinced, to be a
life-long theatergoer and moviegoer whenever the name of the game is Shakespeare.
The course makes the claim that the reasons for reading and writing can be found to a
preeminent degree in Shakespeare. Not for nothing is he the biggest biggie in the English
literary canon. But the practices that we will explore and share in interpreting
Shakespeare will be useful wherever you take them. If you can go toe to toe with
Shakesepeare, you should be ready for the other challenges that will come your way as an
English major.
Because the English language has changed a great deal since Shakespeare's time, because
Shakespeare did more to stretch and reinvent the English language than anyone else,
because Shakespeare wrote for an audience that had many different assumptions from
those in the twenty-first century, and because Shakespeare deals with issues that are
profound and sometimes even troubling, you will be confronting some very difficult
material. And you will also no doubt be frustrated by the density of Shakespeare.
Moreover, by their nature, poetry and drama present difficulties in interpretation, as does
film, though in a somewhat different way. To put it another way, doing the course right
calls for real concentration and commitment on your part and will scarf up a good bit of
your time if you are doing it right. You should embrace the difficulty, and see it as your
friend rather than your enemy. I hope that the course extends a lesson that we intuitively
know but sometimes would prefer to forget, namely that "difficult" and "fun" are not
mutually exclusive categories. I am going to push hard, and at times this will also prove
to be frustrating. But if you play through it, there should be moments of genuine delight
in discovery, and genuine satisfaction in pushing farther than you previously have.
Class Schedule:
8/25 Introduction / Why
this course? Why
Shakespeare? Shakespeare
and Genre.
9/1 Labor Day / No class
8/27 Discussion: "Don't
Send Your Kids to an IvyLeague School"
(MyCourses). / How to read
a play. / Hamlet 1.1-1.2. /
Bevington (B) xi- xxviii
9/3 Hamlet, Act 1, all. /
8/29 View and discuss the
first part of Shakespeare in
Love. / The theater in
Shakespeare's time / B
xxxiii-lvi
9/5 Shakespeare in Love,
2
Response paper due / B
xxviii-xxxiii
9/10 Hamlet, Act 2 / B lviilxxxi
continued. The Antitheatrical Prejudice.
9/12 View and discuss
Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet
(1996) / B lxxxi-lxxix
9/15 Sonnet form and
function. Read Sonnets 1530
9/22 Sonnets 31-45
9/17 Hamlet, Act 3 / Scene
response paper due
9/19 Branagh's Hamlet,
continued / B lxxxiv-c
9/24 Hamlet, Act 4
9/29 Sonnets 46-60
10/1 Hamlet, Act 5 /
10/6 Sonnets 61-75
10/8 Hamlet / Scene
analysis paper due
10/13 Fall Break / No class
10/15 1 Henry IV, Act 1
10/ 20 Sonnets 76-90
10/22 1 Henry IV, Act 2
10/27 Sonnets 91-105
11/3 Sonnets 106-120
10/29 1 Henry IV, Act 3 /
Final scene paper due
11/ 5 1 Henry IV, Act 4
11/10 Sonnets 121-135
11/12 1 Henry IV, Act 5
11/17 Sonnets 136-154
11/19 Selections from
Richard II, 2 Henry 4, and
Henry V.
11/24 The Sonnet after
Shakespeare, readings TBA
/ Sonnet presentations
12/1 The Sonnet after
Shakespeare / Sonnet
Presentations
12/8 The Sonnet after
Shakespeare / Sonnet
Presentations.
11/26 Thanksgiving Break
/ No class
9/26 View and Discuss
Franco Zeferelli's Hamlet
(1990).
10/3 Zeferelli's Hamlet,
continued.
10/10 View and Discuss
Laurence Olivier's Hamlet
(1948)
10/17 Olivier's Hamlet,
continued
10/24 View and Discuss
Grigori Kosinstev's Hamlet
(1964).
10/31 Kosintsev's Hamlet,
continued
11/7 View and Discuss
Orson Welles' Chimes at
Midnight (1966) /
Summary of scholarly
article / chapter due
11/14 Chimes at Midnight,
continued.
11/21 Chimes at Midnight
and some clips from Henry
V Olivier Version (1944),
Branagh Version (1989).
11/27 Thanksgiving Break /
No class
9/8 What is a sonnet?
Where do sonnets come
from? / Read "Sonnets," B
880-884 / Shakespeare
Sonnets 1-15.
12/3 Shakespeare as
Dramatist: Comedy,
Tragedy, History.
12/5 An assortment of
Hamlets. / Film paper due
12/12 Final Examination
8 AM
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Note:
Each Friday's class will consist of some combination of viewing and discussion of a film.
By no means will we be able to view all of the required six films during this class time,
however. That will be your obligation, not unlike your obligation to read the sonnets
and the plays in the syllabus before you come to class.
There will be several opportunities to view the required films outside of class: I will
arrange a showing or showings of each of the films on a relatively large screen, times
TBA; a "showing" by borrowing the DVDs from the library, where they will be waiting
for you on four-hour reserve; your own ingenuity finding the films on Netflix or Amazon
Prime, or .... Some of you may even want to own some of theses films, and of course
there is that option as well
Requirements:
There will be three projects that you will be required to complete, one on each of the
three genres. Note that to receive a passing grade for the course, all three projects must be
completed.
For the Sonnets: For the first five Mondays of the course (not counting opening day) we
will begin class with a recitation, that is to say, five students will each read aloud one of
the sonnets required for that day's discussion. For the next five weeks, we will repeat the
procedure, except that this time you will recite your sonnet from memory. For the final
three weeks, there will be group presentations in which you will compare selected
Shakespearean sonnets with the sonnets of another author. For this leg of the project,
more specific instructions will be given as we near the latter part of the semester. This
project will count for roughly 20% of your final grade.
For the Plays: You will construct a paper in which you take a scene from one of the
plays that we are reading and show how it is related to the play as a whole. This exercise
too will be in three parts. For the first part, you will be asked to write a response paper:
after reading the scene, what strikes you as important, significant, or interesting? For the
second part, you will be asked to write about the scene with more precision. You will be
asked to analyze the scene very carefully. For the third part, you will be asked to write
about the scene in relation to the play from which it is taken. Again, more specific
instructions will be given as we proceed. This project will count for roughly 40% of your
final grade.
For the Films: You will be asked to read a significant piece of film criticism. Then you
will be asked to write a paper in which you relate this work of criticism to one or more of
the films we are studying. In other words, you will be asked to become part of an
ongoing conversation, one in which you become more sophisticated in your ability to use
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secondary sources and to incorporate them into your own work. This project, also to be
done in stages, will count roughly 30% of your final grade.
The final 10% of your grade will be determined by your active class participation.
Note also that I am asking for a brief response paper on 9/3. I will grade this paper, but
the grade will not count in the final evaluation of your work. Among other things, this
paper will give me some idea of who you are, and will also alert me to any serious
writing problems that we will need to be aware of.
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