Aims
This course aims to:
• promote understanding of Shakespeare as a great generic engineer
• focus closely on four plays challenging or defying generic categorisation
• situate all four within Shakespeare’s career and dramatic landscape as well as their modern critical reception
Content
We begin by thinking about Shakespeare’s earlier career in 1590s theatre, from the excesses of Titus Andronicus and multiplication of lovers in comedy, through the turning-point of status as a sharer in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to the ambitious generic engineering that followed.
Much Ado About Nothing, from 1597, is known for Beatrice’s & Benedict’s “merry war” of wit, but darker currents coil, in Don John’s machinations with Hero’s humiliation and mock-death, the rash credulity of Claudio and Don Pedro, deeply compromised as a ruler, and the incompetence of Dogberry. The sunnier As You Like It was yet to come, but Much Ado points a bleaker way.
Troilus and Cressida is believed to date to 1601–02, as an intervention in the ‘Poetomachia’. A dark, curious play, set long ago yet full of neologisms, it radically undermines received history, leaving no reputation unscathed while refusing either to kill its protagonists (though not others) or provide a happy ending amid scabrous commentary. Found thoroughly dubious by everyone from Dryden to F S Boas (who mislabelled it a ‘problem play’), it achieved popularity in the Twentieth Century, which found its anti-war sentiments exact to modern needs.
Measure, for Measure dates to 1604 and, like Troilus, refuses its required generic ending in the principals’ marriage, surrounding that with shotgun marriages, a wrongly prosecuted clandestine marriage, a dubiously pardoned murderer, a bed-trick, and a mock-death. Probably Shakespeare’s penultimate comedy, its biting humour sustained it into the Eighteenth Century, but its sexuality horrified the Nineteenth, and if again popular laughter is rarely achieved in performance.
Cymbeline was probably Shakespeare’s penultimate solo play, in 1610. Much the longest ‘Late Play’, it has claims as the most polygeneric and severely ironic of all his works, featuring a scene in which no-one on stage knows who anyone else is, and some don’t know who they are themselves, before multiplying concatenated mock-deaths by a real one and heading for a final scene with at least 24 revelations.
The final session is plenary, considering the evolutions of Shakespeare’s extraordinary generic engineering over 20 years and two major venues.
Presentation of the course
Each session will begin with a mini-lecture + PowerPoint presentation, lasting 30–45 mins, and subsequently open to question and answer, and contributions by all.
Course sessions
1. The London theatre & Shakespeare’s career in the 1590s.
2. Much Ado About Nothing 1: An older heroine and a war of wit
3. Much Ado About Nothing 2: A callow lover and traducements of justice
4. Troilus and Cressida: abrupting tragedy.
5. Measure, for Measure 1: marriage-law and bed-tricks
6. Measure, for Measure 2: abrupting comedy
7. The London theatre & Shakespeare’s career in the later 1600s.
8. Cymbeline 1: Tragical-Comical-Historical-Pastoral
9. Cymbeline 2: Ironies around a headless trunk
10. Plenary: Shakespeare’s restless generic engineering
Learning outcomes
You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.
The learning outcomes for this course are:
• an understanding of tragedy and comedy as companionate, not opposites
• an understanding of Shakespeare as a great generic engineer
• the historical and theatrical contextualisation of four of his generic experiments
Required reading
Any modern, annotated editions of the set texts are acceptable, but the Arden 3s listed below are recommended. Complete Shakespeares that lack scholarly and critical annotation will be of less help.
*McEachern, Claire, ed, Much Ado About Nothing (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006)
ISBN 9781903436837
* Bevington, David, ed, Troilus and Cressida (1998; rev, ed, London: Arden Shakespeare, 2015) ISBN 9781472584748
*Braunmuller, A, R, ed & Watson, Robert, N, Measure for Measure (Arden: 2020)
ISBN 9781904271437
*Wayne, Valerie, ed, Cymbeline (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2017) ISBN 9781904271307
