English 317 - Topic: Early Modern Drama

'All the world's a stage.' This course surveys the era of literary history that invented this powerful idea. The drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is a drama obsessively self-conscious, bursting with disguises, confidence tricks, cross-dressers, rituals, masques, and plays-within-plays. Reading Shakespeare as well as his rivals and peers (Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, and others), we will consider how theater, and the idea of theater, illuminates such concepts as desire, evil, gender, and ideology. Plays will likely include Titus Andronicus, Doctor Faustus, The Alchemist, and The Duchess of Malfi.'

Instructor Permission Required. Prereq: English 200 and English 210 or 211.