Jacobson, Miriam
MWF 11:30 AM
Park Hall 0144
Shakespeare and Time
Jan Collaert II, "Truth is the Daughter of Time" c. 1600, Baltimore Museum of Art
Description
The poet and rival playwright Ben Jonson famously described the late departed Shakespeare in a memorial sonnet published in the 1623 first edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays, the First Folio as “Not of an age, but for all time.” But how have Shakespeare’s plays and poems survived the test of time? And how do his works engage with the complexities and conundrums of the passage and keeping of time? It might be said that early modern playwrights and poets were hyper-aware of time. In a period when human understanding and reckoning of the passage of time experienced radical changes, both in scientific and technological forms of measurement, and cultural shifts in time-keeping dependent on changes in religious and political experience; in an historical moment suddenly profoundly aware of its own historicity, of the ephemerality of the present, and vexed by its relationship to the near and distant past, works of drama and literature reflected, challenged, critiqued, cultural attitudes towards time while simultaneously desperately attempting to preserve their work from the ravages of time, to carve a space for themselves in the literary pantheon and chronicles of history.
From sonnets and narrative poems to comedies, tragedies, and everything in-between and far afield, this course will examine the question and role of time in Shakespeare's writings. We will also look at how contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare in various forms of media (everything from film, comics, and tv) comment on Shakespearean issues of timeliness, immortality, history, and brevity.
In addition to 2 or 3 writing assginments, over the course of the semester, you will work closely in a group of approximately six students to present your take on a scene or a play with specific attention to staging and performance. You may sign up to present a “treatment” of a production you would imagine staging, co-author and perform a new “missing” scene, or present an adaptation of a play in a new media format. How you present this project is up to you, but in the past students have performed in class, provided power-point presentations, and shown videos of performances. You might even choose to lead a discussion on performance while asking other class members to act out a scene according to your specifications. The important thing with this presentation is that it involves the entire class interactively and that you demonstrate that you have taken the time to research performance history and develop a clear concept regarding your interpretation of the play or scene.