J. Barton, Playing Shakespeare (Methuen, 1985)
J. Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador, 1997).
Susan Bennett, Performing Nostalgia: Shifting Shakespeare (Routledge, 1995)
Anthony Holden William Shakespeare (Little Brown & Co. 1999)
Baz Luhrmann (dir.) Romeo and Juliet (1997) [video]
A.M. Nagler, 'Elizabethan Acting', 'Edmund Kean's Richard III', 'In Praise of Macready's Macbeth', 'Pictorialised Shakespeare', in Sources of Theatrical History (Dover, 1952)
and the Contemporary Past (Routledge, 1996)
Carol Rutter, Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare's Women Today (The Women's Press, 1988)
Fiona Shaw & Cheek by Jowl, As You Like It (Methuen, 1996)

Theatre/Studio and workshop spaces
Recordings of Shakespeare plays (audio, VCR, DVD)
Library
IT software (e.g. word-processing)

Vocal warm-ups and improving key oral ability will prepare you for the module. Workshops will enable you to identify and explore the challenges of performing verse drama, and help you to develop verse-speaking skills. Rehearsals and a subsequent presentation will allow you to test your practical findings under performance conditions in front of an audience. Attendance at theatre presentations of Shakespeare's work will be encouraged.

This module is a practical exploration of the staging and performance of Shakespearian text. A wide range of scenes, speeches and sonnets will be utilised and explored within the broad historical context of Shakespeare's life and times. Attention will focus upon the questions that face the contemporary actor and director of Shakespeare's work and there will be comparison of different styles and techniques of speaking the verse and discussion about their interpretive effects.

Fulfilment of general assessment criteria for practical work (see Award Handbook)