English 203: Jacobean Drama

We’ll immerse ourselves in the playgoing culture of London in the first two decades of the seventeenth century, when three of England’s greatest playwrights–Jonson, Shakespeare, and Middleton–rose to the heights of their powers. We’ll study how different venues and innovative techniques helped to shape audience engagement, and we’ll think particularly about the distribution of affect around the stage and throughout the playhouse. We’ll consider how the sensational and satirical extremities of our plays interact with the unprecedented growth of London as an urban fabric and a consumer culture. And we’ll think about how representation and consumption alike coordinate the global with the local as venues of discovery and mastery.