English 114A

Book List

Dekker, Thomas: The Shoemaker's Holiday; Gibbons, Brian, ed.: Christopher Marlowe: Four Plays; Heywood, Thomas: The Fair Maid of the West; Kyd, Thomas: The Spanish Tragedy; Lester, G. A., ed.: Three Late Medieval Plays; Lyly, John: Galatea and Midas; Mr. S: Gammer Gurton's Needle; Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus

Other Readings and Media

Also a course reader.

Description

This course offers a wide-ranging survey of sixteenth-century drama up to and beyond the building of the first commercial theaters in London in the 1570s. After sampling the medieval mystery and morality traditions, we will consider the formal and theatrical experimentalism of the early Tudor plays, ranging from the avant-garde to the absurd. In proceeding from there to a diverse selection of works of the professional stage, we will attend not only to generic forms and representational strategies, but also to the theater itself as a material institution within an emergent early modern marketplace.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.