English 117A

Book List

Shakespeare, William: The Norton Shakespeare (Second Edition)

Description

We will read as much as possible of the Complete Works, up to and including Hamlet (generally thought to have been written in 1600). In fact we will begin and end with that extraordinary play, exploring the individual elements that run throughout Shakespeare’s earlier career and come together there: tragedy, comedy, history, poetry, satire, revenge, love, madness, mistaken identity, parent-child conflict, theatricality, creativity. As Theseus says in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, another work we will examine in detail, “The lunatic, the lover and the poet / Are of imagination all compact.”