Shakespeare Portal (List View)

A 2020 winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Hamnet is a retelling of Shakespeare’s lost years that focuses on his relationship with Anne Hathaway. At times magical and surreal, it has hues of magic realism and a unique style. We will discuss the themes, imagery, character development, and many allusions to different plays of Shakespeare in a relaxed and interactive way.

This module looks at two late plays frequently overlooked in Shakespeare studies: Pericles, Prince of Tyre and Cymbeline. In Pericles, Shakespeare and collaborator George Wilkins present a medievalist fairy-tale of adventure on the high seas, set in the ancient Mediterranean and narrated by Middle English poet, John Gower. In Cymbeline, a princess’s attempt to rid herself of the suitor she loathes and reunite with the man she loves leads to a tangle of escapes, pursuits, and mistaken identities. Decried by some critics for their eccentric and eclectic plots, both plays feature grand voyages across land and sea, benevolent magic, and the loss and recovery of true love.

This module continues the examination of Shakespeare’s late work with two baffling and beautiful plays. The Winter’s Tale begs the question: where does art end and magic begin? Containing the bard’s most famous stage direction—“Exit, pursued by a bear”—this tale of jealousy and forgiveness transforms from domestic tragedy into pastoral comedy, before finally arriving at one of Shakespeare's strangest endings. The Two Noble Kinsmen, Shakespeare’s final work, gives Chaucer’s Middle English "The Knight’s Tale" a Renaissance rewrite. Co-authored with rising star of the Jacobean stage, John Fletcher, this tragicomedy expands the scope of Chaucer’s female characters while hinting at a range of suppressed, taboo romantic desires. Blending the poignant and the absurd, the playwrights worried that their presumptuous "modern" rewrite would raise Chaucer's angry ghost!

In King of Shadows, Susan Cooper weaves together time travel, theatre, and history to create a powerful story about loss, belonging, and the transformative power of art. When young American actor Nat Field joins a troupe performing "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" at the newly rebuilt Globe Theatre, he is mysteriously transported to Elizabethan London, where he finds himself acting alongside none other than William Shakespeare. As Nat navigates the dangers and wonders of sixteenth-century England, he begins to discover what connects him—across time and grief—to the playwright and to the play itself.

Over the course of this month-long, eight-session class, we will read and discuss Cooper’s novel in depth, exploring its key themes of identity, friendship, healing, and the endurance of creativity. We will also consider the historical and theatrical context of Elizabethan London, Shakespeare’s world and works, and the way Cooper blends fantasy and realism to bridge centuries. Through guided discussions and close reading, we’ll reflect on how King of Shadows speaks to both the past and the present, and why the story continues to resonate with readers today.

One of the most crucial elements of education for millennia was teaching the ability to harness the potential of the memory. From the time of Homer until the 19th century, bards and bureaucrats both would have used established methods to organize and categorize their thoughts and remember crucial pieces of information. The legendary memories of men from Homer to Cicero to Shakespeare had less to do with their unique genius and more to do with their application of ancient methods of memorization, that can still be learned today. In this module, students will learn the ancient memorization techniques that allowed bards to recite thousands of lines of poetry and Shakespeare's actors to perform dozens of complicated monologues, and discover its applications to life in the 21st century.

"What art thou that counterfeit’st the person of a king?” This is the question asked (in more ways than one) by Shakespeare’s coming-of-age trilogy about England’s most popular medieval monarch—King Henry V. Beginning with his youth in King Henry IV, Part 1, we see the riotous Prince Hal grow from wastrel, drunkard, and companion of highway robbers into the royal figure his war-torn country needs. After relapsing in Part 2, to the great consternation of his dying father King Henry IV, we finally see Hal lead his subjects on the battlefields of France as the mature king in Henry V. Charting his course between the demands of his kingly father, the peculiar philosophy of his friend and mentor, the exuberant Sir John Falstaff, and the dangers posed by a series of political and military rivals, Prince Hal becomes King Henry V by learning what it means to “act” the part of a king in the ways that matter most.

While Shakespeare is famous for his plays, he also wrote more than 150 sonnets, which display his wit, his charm, his insight, and his unparalleled talent for turning a phrase and playing into double-entendres. Join us as we scan and analyze the whole compendium of Shakespeare's sonnets from beginning to end, exploring the nuances of each individual poem as well as the wide sweep of personal love and loss in his own life explained between the pages of Shakespeare's poetry.

To give each of the sonnets their due, this will be a non-sequential series in which each month, we will cover some of the sonnets, their structure, history and inspiration behind them. No previous knowledge of sonnets is required.

Note: Each module in the series will enrich the understanding of the overall sonnet project, but students will be able to enter into any of the modules of this series independent of each other without needing the context of the previous class.