Shakespeare & the Renaissance

Shakespeare and the Renaissance

with Mr. Haller

Fall 2022 syllabus and calendar

As a student of literature, as your teacher, as a curious and enchanted witness to our culture, I tell you that the pleasure and potential of this course simply thrill me. When Hamlet returns from seeing his dead father’s spirit, he tells his unbelieving friend, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” In Haller’s room this semester, we will revive the spirit and matter of Elizabethan England, one of the most maddeningly vital and aesthetically robust moments in human history, and we will pity all who chose to be undreaming office drones this period. Lay on!

Course description:

Our richer appreciation of Shakespeare’s drama, themes, achievement and value will derive from studying his works in the broader context of the Renaissance. Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Shakespeare’s Richard III, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet and Twelfth Night: by reading these great works, we will map territory in three dramatic realms, namely history plays, tragedies, and comedies. We’ll pursue insightful reading and discussion, but also appreciate how the plays unfold as spectacle and what they reveal about the Elizabethan stage and people. Film versions of three of the plays will illuminate Shakespeare in performance, while reading more of Shakespeare’s sonnets affords us fuller comprehension of his cycle’s accomplishments and surprises.

We’ll intersperse this with CDs of period music, including pieces composed by King Henry VIII, dances written for Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers, and music performed at the Globe Theater. We will also view and discuss art and architecture, clothing, artifacts, portraits and places.

Our remaining British reading will be short works (or short excerpts from long works) from Shakespeare’s contemporaries: Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Jonson, Marlowe, the speeches and poems of Elizabeth herself, Raleigh, Bacon, Howard, Holinshed, etc. We’ll encounter sonnets from other poets’ cycles, a masque, works in prose, Renaissance literary theory, angry complaints against the theater, etc. Our purpose is to reveal the cultural, aesthetic and conventional underpinnings of Elizabethan literature.

As for the rest of Europe, we will also cover some Continental works whose styles and outlooks deeply influenced Shakespeare and his contemporaries, works such as Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, Machiavelli’s The Prince, and the sonnets of Petrarch. Such works were sufficiently important to the Elizabethans as to merit translation into 16th century English, so they merit our attention, too.

Course description, as offered in last year’s registration packets:

In this semester elective, we will explore the richness of the literary and theatrical achievement of Elizabethan England by reading three of Shakespeare’s plays in the broader context of the Renaissance. Through three different genres (history, tragedy, and comedy), and by viewing films, we will appreciate how Shakespeare’s plays unfold as spectacle and what they reveal about the Elizabethan stage and people. Further, by reading many excerpts and short works, we will appreciate the cultural accomplishments of the Renaissance. The authors students will explore include Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Jonson, Marlowe, the speeches and poems of Queen Elizabeth herself, Raleigh, Bacon, Howard, Holinshed, Castiglione, Machiavelli, etc. Finally, exposure to the visual arts and music will round out an exciting, enriching study of a remarkable period in western civilization.

Your grade in this class

You’ll take a midterm (Wednesday, October 26) and a cumulative final on the exam day on the last week in late December.

In socially-distanced groups, we will make videos (on our own time) of the hilariously awful mechanicals’ play at the end of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare wrote the scene to satirize the terrible, poorly-acted, illogical stage shows that some acting troupes offered--the kind that’s so bad it’s funny. So it‘ll be important for us to plan our stupidity carefully. (Where are you going to hide your lines?) On Thursday, October 27, we’ll watch these videos. Haller will also show you the video he and some teachers did in 2003, plus clips from a Globe Theater production.

We’re also going to write, but your assignments will differ from traditional literary analysis English essays. Here is a list of papers and due dates. You’ll get more instruction about these assignments as they come up.

Friday, September 9: You will submit a 2 ½ - 3 page review and evaluation of a website, found on your own, that explores some topic relevant to this course: Tudor history or culture, visual aids for this time period, Shakespearean theater, the era’s architecture or art, food, music, etc. Attached to your 2-3 pages essay will be three actual screenshots of this site, the kinds of print-offs that have the web address on the page. Haller will not allow duplication of sites; everyone will find his or her own individual website. We’ll keep a list handy of who has found what. First come, first serve.

Friday, October 7, a choice of two essays: Our Norton Anthology includes dozens of authors whom we will simply have no time to experience in class. Choose one of them and read some of his/her work as offered in the Anthology. Read the biographical introduction to that author, too, and then start thinking about how this person’s work fits into the English Renaissance tradition. In 2 ½ - 3 pages, using quotations from this author’s work and from the biographical intro, explain such matters as this author’s style, themes, purposes, similarities to and differences from other authors of the period, quality, your impressions, etc. As with the website assignment, there will be no duplication of authors. First come, first serve. OR....you can complete a 2 1/2 - 3 page film review of the 1955 Laurence Olivier film of Richard III. Analyze at least three major strengths and/or weaknesses of the film as a representation of the play, including a required, substantial analysis of Olivier's performance in the main role. Support your judgments with refined, attentive references to the film and to the play itself.

Friday, December 2: A 2 ½ - 3 page film review, this time over Olivier’s film version of Hamlet. Analyze at least three major strengths and/or weaknesses of the film as a representation of the play, including a required, substantial analysis of Olivier's performance in the main role. Support your judgments with refined, attentive references to the film and to the play itself.

Three essays, 50 points each = 150. Two tests, 50 points each = 100. Midsummer video = 40. Plagiarism will result in zeroes. Likely point total in the course = 290 points, more if we add some little reading quizzes or other homework checks. Late work = 25% off each day an essay’s late. Use the makeup calendar on my website to keep up with work you missed while absent. You have two days of makeup time for each day you missed. I’m available a little before school and am here fairly late most days after school.

. . . And, as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown,

the poet’s pen turns them to shapes,

and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.