Love & Death in Shakespeare Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Program Fall 2017 Semester CEA Study Center Only - London

Love and death, though universal, were experienced diversely by the Elizabethans, whose writers produced a frenzy of plays in the 1580s-1590s that defined for generations our understanding of two of life's staples. It might be said the sonneteers of the era 'invented' love for while physical death is all-consuming, love remains open to a variety of lively interpretations. The notion of the beloved who must be wooed by poetry remains today a busy means of social exchange. In this course we will track how Shakespeare translates the Elizabethan construction of love to full stage productions, en route laughing at its absurdities, fearing its breakdown, satirizing its ritual and, for the most part, in concordance with 'happy ever after.' We will pursue Shakespeare's cognitive development through the early, formal courtship rhyming of Love's Labour' Lost to the infamous and eternal love in death of the teenagers Romeo and Juliet. From Verona we move to Messina to love as expressed through word games by Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Our final exposure to Shakespearean love will be through Twelfth Night, set in modern-day Croatia, and suffused with separation, restoration and the love-in-vain of a servant for his aristocratic keeper.

Death, on the other hand, was not in any sense an engagement with lyrical perfection, nor was it cherished for its magic. Elizabethan life-expectancy was around 42 years, much lower for the poor; death in childbirth was common and disease and crime widespread. Moreover, gibbets swaying the rotting corpses of executed criminals and piles of bodies expired from plague were a common sight in 1590s London. But far more important than the near-mundane act of dying was the prospect of the after-life, 'The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns,' as Hamlet says (somewhat puzzlingly, since the ghost of his father has done exactly that). Protestantism played a key role in the Elizabethan mind-set about death, the prospect of hell being none too enticing. Alongside love, we will look at both physical and metaphysical death in Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Othello so as to gauge not only the base Elizabethan understanding of our two overarching themes but to assess if Shakespeare satirizes, subverts, or plain overturns them in his desire to keep the audiences coming in.

Performance will play a key part of this course. In terms of theater productions, we are fortunate to be in the capital of Shakespeare. Five of the eight plays we will study are scheduled by some of the world's leading theater companies. Attendance at these performances is mandatory as is our motivation to understand the living text. There is Shakespeare on the page and there is Shakespeare on the stage; the golden way of grasping one of the world's greatest playwrights is to indulge ourselves in both. We will make time for in-class discussion of performances as set against our own textual readings, and students will write a review for credit of one stage production.