English 203, section 4: Renaissance Drama

Shakespeare’s preeminence as a dramatist has often paradoxically excluded him from courses on English Renaissance drama.  We’ll be returning Shakespeare to the company of his fellow playwrights, reading (among other works) Twelfth Night with Lyly’s Gallathea, The Merchant of Venice with Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, and Hamlet with Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.  We will also be exploring Renaissance drama from a variety of other perspectives: its generic diversity and complexity; the social status of actors and playwrights; tensions between art and commerce; the representations of gender, class, and race in the plays; and important recent scholarship on these subjects.