Assignments:

Annotated Bibliography: For this 5 - 7 page paper and presentation, you will read around 7 articles or book chapters (from different books) or two full books on varying approaches to your topic. You will summarize the approaches, noting where necessary the significant differences between approaches. The topics are divided into literary criticism; pedagogy; and general background. The paper is due on disk (for publication to the web) on the day you present your topic. 

For English Majors-ways of Reading Shakespeare

Shakespeare and Censorship

Start with the annotated bibliography at the back of Shapiro's 1599. A good primary text: Extracts from the accounts of the revels at court, in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I., from the original office books of the masters and yeomen. With an introd. and notes by Peter Cunningham

Whitehall, Globe, Blackfriars--Shakespeare's performance spaces

Start with Staging in Shakespeare's theatres / Andrew Gurr. Gurr has other important books on this topic, includng Playgoing in Shakespeare's London, The Shakespeare Company, The Shakespearean Stage, and others. For illustrations look at Illustrations Of The English Stage, 1580-1642 / R.A. Foakes.

Shakespeare and Patronage

Start with Kernan, Alvin: Shakespeare: the King's Playwright (on reserve). Also look at Schmidgall, Gary: Shakespeare and the Courtly Aesthetic, and Shakespeare's romances and the royal family / David M. Bergeron.

Will Kemp and Robert Armin--Shakespeare's Comedians

Start with Oxford Guide chapter 16 and use bibliographical essays. Also read bibliograhical section associated with "A Contest of Wills" in Shaprio's 1599.

Elizabethan Ireland

Start with bibliographical essay in Shaprio's 1599.

Arden, Stratford, and Shakespeare's other life

Start with bibliographical essay in Shaprio's 1599.

Bowdler and other editors of Shakespeare.

Start with General introduction of Shakespeare: a Textual Companion (on reserve). Use his bibliography.

Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare

Start with Oxford Guide, chapter 29, and use their bibliography. Other suggestions: A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, available through ABC Express from UNCA GENERAL; PR2991 .F45 2000.

Shakespearean Performance: 

Start with Oxford Guide chapter 36 and its bibliography. Also look at Perspectives on Shakespeare in performance / J.L. Styan. ABC Express: PR3091 .S79 1999. Also look at Shakespeare in the South : essays on performance / Philip C. Kolin, editor . c1983. ABC Express: PR3105 .S47 1983.

Textual issues in Shakespeare. 

Start with Wells, Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. Other works include F. P. Wilson's Shakespeare and the new bibliography; ABC Express PR3071 .W5 1970. Also W.W. Greg, The editorial problem in Shakespeare; WCU: PR3071 .G7; and Hinman, Charlton: The Printing and Proof-reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare-WCU: PR3071 .H5 v.1, 2; (good for a once-over).

Post-Colonial Shakespeare.

Start with Oxford Guide chapter 33 and use its bibliography.

Source Study

Start with Chapter 27 in Oxford Guide and use the bibliographical essay.

Teaching Through Performance
Start with Teaching Shakespeare through performance / edited by Milla Cozart Riggio 1999. ABC Express PR2987 .T366 1999. Also Charles Frey's Experiencing Shakespeare : essays on text, classroom, and performance. WCU: PR2976 .F66 1988 . 
Teaching Through Film and Multimedia. 
Start with Salomone (on reserve) and Coursen (on reserve). Also check out Shakespeare in the Changing Curriculum; Aers, Lesley (ed.)--Wheale, Nigel (ed.); Publication: 1991. ABC Express PR2987 .S484 1991 
  Teaching the Tempest
Start with Approaches to teaching Shakespeare's The Yempest and other late romances / edited by Maurice Hunt. Available from ASU MAIN STACKS: PR2981.5 .A67 1992 
Teaching Hamlet., MacBeth, or Romeo & Juliet. 
Start with Swope's Ready-to-use Series (e.g. Activities for Teaching Hamlet. WCU CMC LA-LI CET ha 1994. )

You can also do a teaching topic on any play we do in class.

Final Paper (7-10 pages)

1. Analyze the use of one kind of imagery in at least two of the plays, and compare how they are used. For instance, you might examine animal imagery, imagery of gardens, imagery of disease and illness; imagery of food and feeding; imagery of sex, corruption, and prositution. To get started, read Chapter 28 in the Oxford Guide. Also consult Caroline Spurgeon's definitive book on this topic, Shakespeare's Imagery and What it Tells Us (on reserve). WCU: PR3081 .S64 1958. 
2. Try staging three key scenes from one of the plays we have read this semester. Be detailed; discuss setting, blocking, costumes, and direction. Then examine how these scenesis staged in two film productions, and read about its staging in Kennedy's Looking at Shakespeare: a visual history of twentieth-century performance (on reserve). WCU: PR3100 .K46 1993. Read about other performances. Discuss how the differences in staging affect the way the play can be interpreted. 
3. Examine the characterization of two or three Shakespearean women from different genres, one in a history play (Henry IV or Richard III); one in a tragedy (Hamlet, Julius Caesar, or Othello), and/ orone in a comedy or romance ( As You Like It, Tempest). Examine the way the characters are created, and discuss their similarities and differences. Speculate on the reasons for these differences, including the problem of boy actors. Look at Adelman, Janet. Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of maternal origin in Shakespeare's plays, Hamlet to the Tempest (on reserve) PR3065 .A37 1992. Also look at As she likes it : Shakespeare's unruly women / Penny Gay (on reserve): PR2991 .G38 1994. 
4. M.M. Mahood writes in Bit Parts in Shakespeare (available online for WCU students) that the small roles tell us as much or more about a play's thematic content. Read the introduction to Mahood's book and then apply her thesis to a play that she does not discuss in her book. Make an argument for what Shakespeare is trying to do with the small parts, and how these characters support his argument.
5. In Shakespeare Without Women (PR2991 .C337 2000--on reserve), Dympna Callaghan discusses not only how the problem of female impersonation (male actors) would have complicated the audience's understanding of gender, but also how Shakespeare plays with this idea in his plays. Pick two plays we have read this semester and apply Callaghan's thesis to them. Be detailed; point out passages in which Shakespeare exploits the ambiguities inherent in using male actors to play female parts.