- CC 300 BX - Shakespeare & His World
- 3 Credits
TR 11:50am-1:05pm - Professor Crawford
(Cross-listed with ENGL 410X & ENGL 510X)
What is Shakespearean tragedy? There is, in a sense, no single answer to this question. In Shakespeare’s earliest tragedies we find the work of a hotshot newcomer, a young playwright awakening to his incredible poetic abilities and his peculiar power to horrify and entertain. In the tragedies of his first maturity we find an experimental Shakespeare, an accomplished writer engaged in an attempt to render human character as it had never been rendered before. In the plays of his great tragic period we find evidence of a man deep in crisis, a man obsessed with sadism, damnation, madness, patricide, sexual betrayal, and fear. And in Shakespeare’s last plays, finally, fury gives way to mercy, restless questioning gives way to a kind of peace, and tragedy gives way to something like comedy, something that, in strange ways, begins to approach sacrament or prayer.
This course asks what we should make of Shakespeare’s many tragic strains. Is there a single impulse or vision that drives them all? Can we see the character of the older, sadder, wiser Shakespeare in the young sensationalist entertainer? How, throughout his career, does Shakespeare tap into, and redefine, the possibilities and problems of tragedy? We will meditate on these questions through careful readings of a few Shakespearean tragedies. Along the way we will throw sidelong glances at Shakespeare’s efforts in other modes – comedy and romance – and we will engage with a handful of critical essays on the nature of the tragic mode and of Shakespeare’s particular achievement in that mode.
