DVD playback in Lecture and Seminar rooms
OHP
Library
Internet
The Blackboard virtual learning environment will be available(where relevant) to support this module. Details will be supplied in the module handbook.

Contact hours will consist of weekly 2 hour workshops, to include screenings as appropriate.

Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (eds.), A Companion to Shakespeare's Works: The Tragedies (Blackwell, 2005)

Lois Potter, "Othello": Shakespeare in Performance (MUP 2002)

Emily C. Bartels, Speaking of the Moor: From "Alcazar" to "Othello"
(Pennsylvania U. P., 2008)

Jeffrey Kahan (ed.), King Lear: New Critical Essays (Routledge, 2008)

Alexander Leggatt, "King Lear": Shakespeare in Performance (MUP 2004)

Jennifer Wallace (ed.), The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy (CUP, 2007)

Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Wiley Blackwell, 2002)

An essay on one scene from either play, analysing it in relation to the play's dramatic and thematic structure, with reference to performance choices in at least one production.

This module will develop students' ability to respond imaginatively and intellectually to Shakespeare's tragedies, through the close reading of two plays. The emphasis throughout is on developing an awareness of the plays as texts for performance, and the skills of dramatic and performance analysis, of historical and critical contextualisation, which are needed to convey the multi-dimensionality of the play as theatrical event. Teaching and learning activities will be organised around workshops on key individual scenes from the two texts, in order to found the student's learning in the core skill of close dramatic analysis. Assessment for the module -which is by one essay (100%) - will give students the opportunity to continue this emphasis on close reading informed by a critical awareness of performance and critical/theoretical contexts.