Shakespeare

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 6
• Convenor: Dr Gillian Woods
• Assessment: a 2000-word essay (40%) and 3000-word essay (60%)

In this module you will have the opportunity to explore the full span of Shakespeare's career: from his earliest comedies to his late romances, interrogating his histories and tragedies along the way. You will develop practical research and writing skills, and exploit the potential of the academic and theatrical resources available in Birkbeck and London.

Paying particular attention to the context in which Shakespeare produced his plays, we will illuminate the drama by exploring a range of critical approaches, including close reading, theatre history, gender studies and queer theory, critical race studies and eco-criticism.

Indicative syllabus

• Reading, error and understanding
• Players and playhouses 
• Gendered history
• Bending and breaking genres
• The supernatural
• Eco-studies and the Early Modern environment
• The racialised body; seeing whiteness and blackness
• Forms of authority

Texts

• The Comedy of Errors
• The Merchant of Venice
• As You Like It
• Henry VI: Part 1
• Romeo and Juliet
• Macbeth
• Othello
• Measure for Measure
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• The Tempest

By the end of this module you will have:

• consolidated and broadened your knowledge of a full range of Shakespeare's plays and genres
• fostered a critical engagement with Renaissance literature and its cultural contexts
• developed skills of close reading, and the capacity to locate these close readings within broad historical and critical narratives
• developed your understanding of the theatricality of Shakespeare's plays.