English 190

Book List

Aeschylus: The Oresteia; Aristophanes: The Clouds; Euripedes: The Bacchae; Jonson, Ben: The Alchemist; Kyd, Thomas: The Spanish Tragedy; Lyly, John: Gallathea; Marlowe, Christopher: Doctor Faustus; Seneca: Thyestes; Shakespeare, William: The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, Twelfth Night; Sophocles: Antigone, Oedipus

Description

In a poem for the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected works, Ben Jonson expressed a characteristic ambivalence about classical drama.  On the one hand, he praised it as the standard by which all subsequent playwriting should be judged, while on the other hand, he derided “insolent Greece” and “haughty Rome” for having fallen short of Shakespeare.  Jonson did not stop to consider the difficulties of comparing plays that derive from different eras, different cultures, and different conceptions of the theater.  But our class will.  At the same time, we will explore how Renaissance dramatists both imitated their extraordinary precursors and strove to outdo them.

Please read the paragraph about English 190 on page 2 of the instructions area of this Announcement of Classes for more details about enrolling in or wait-listing for this course.

This section of English 190 satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.