English 317MJ - Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton

A seminar on three major early modern dramatists--Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton--focusing on the range of genres, characters, conflicts, and aspirations explored in their plays. These playwrights, along with their contemporary Shakespeare, shaped the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century theatre into a site for performing authority and conquest, national and individual identity, trickery and carnival, desire and sexuality, and complex unfoldings of revenge. Readings of several plays by each of the three dramatists will be supplemented by recent studies of early modern theatricality.

This course is open to Juniors and Seniors.; Prereq: ENGL-199 or ENGL-200 and ENGL-210 or ENGL-211.