ENL 4161 Fall 2019 Gants

We have long characterized William Shakespeare as the transcendent “genius” of the English Renaissance, and his thirty-odd plays stand among the best that appeared on the nascent public theatre. Yet he did not work in a vacuum. Dozens of playwrights composed hundreds of plays from the erection of the Red Lion playhouse in 1567 to the closing of the theatres in 1642, in the process making the stage the preëminent medium for literary expression. During this seventy-five-year explosion of creativity, actors, playwrights, con-artists, aristocrats, and burghers all had a hand in generating some of the greatest works of prose and poetry in the English language. In this course we will study the best (and worst) plays, interludes, pageants, and entertainments of this period to gain a better appreciation of their experimental range and striking imaginative achievement. We will focus on both depth and breadth, i.e. we will read a wide variety of works as well as examining in detail select plays. An appreciation of the texts will emerge from close readings, in-class discussions, exploration of their historical contexts, and individual study.