Iyengar, Sujata
TR 12:45 PM
Park Hall 250
Did you know that debates about "canceling" Shakespeare -- removing certain plays from performance during a run, or not allowing them to be printed-- the technical meaning of "cancel" in printing-- began during his lifetime (1564-1616)?
Shakespeare's favorite co-writer John Fletcher found The Taming of the Shrew so objectionable that he wrote a sequel in which the "tamer," Petruchio, is himself "tamed" by his outspoken second wife -- who instigates all the women of the town to go on a sex-strike until their husbands agree to sign a contract for equality. This sequel, and an adapted version of Shakespeare's play, replaced Shrew on stage for much of the seventeenth century. (Fletcher's sequel was itself literally canceled by the English censor in 1633.) The same censor had canceled the deposition scene in Richard II from the printed (and possibly performed) text during Queen Elizabeth's lifetime and in the early years of King James I's reign.
During the English civil wars and Interregnum (1642-60), the Puritans canceled theater altogether, closing the theatres and prohibiting the printing of plays; an entire generation grew up without seeing live Shakespeare or reading a new edition. Shakespeare's King Lear, dubbed his greatest tragedy or his greatest work of all by critics and theatergoers in the twentieth century, remained unperformed for 300 years except as an adaptation with a happy ending -- because Restoration, Enlightenment and Victorian readers found the deaths of Lear and Cordelia too harrowing. After World War II (1939-1945) and the Holocaust, calls intensified to remove The Merchant of Venice from performance because of its potential for antisemitism. In 2010, the state of Arizona prohibited an entire curriculum in Ethnic Studies, removing books from classrooms and storing them in repositories; one of those banned books was Shakespeare's The Tempest. Post-Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter (1965, 2020), some dramaturgs have called for us no longer to teach Othello in our Shakespeare classes because of its potential race and stereotype threat. In 2017 Delta airlines canceled its support for Shakespeare in the Park's Julius Caesar, because the production parodied then-President Donald Trump.
We will read, watch, and discuss these most famous and most controversial plays; come with books and with an open mind. We operate under the principles of free speech and "good faith." We will not be "canceling" anyone (though we will still adhere to UGA's Non-Discrimination and Harassment guidelines).
This upper-division English class introduces you to some of Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, histories, and tragicomedies, to the environment that produced them, and to the performances that have -- despite the best efforts of Puritans of all eras -- kept Shakespeare alive on stages and among readers today.
Required Reading:
William Shakespeare:
I recommend single-volume Arden editions, 3rd series, for English majors:
Taming of the Shrew, ed. Barbara Hodgdon
Julius Caesar, ed. David Daniell
Richard II, ed. Charles Forker
Merchant of Venice, ed. John Drakakis
Othello, ed. Ayanna Thompson
King Lear, ed. R.A. Foakes
The Tempest, ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden Vaughan
If you are NOT an English major, or don't imagine you'll ever read Shakespeare again, you should feel free to use the Folger Library editions, ed. Paul Werstine and Barbara Mowat (New York: Simon and Schuster). In either case, used or ebook is absolutely fine.
Required Viewing or Listening: It's much easier to make sense of what's going on and who's who if you watch a performance or listen to a recording. There are many useful, accurate, free resources online, and I'll share some of these links via eLC.
Regular online reading quizzes (eLC); active discussion and group work; two take-home, open-book timed essays (topic announced in class: start them in class on Tuesday, bring finished item to class on Thursday); one revised essay (pick your favorite of the two you started in class); a couple of creative assignments.