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Two families hating one another, a secret love affair and an even more secret marriage, a great deal of fighting on stage, a last kiss, poison, a suicide and then another suicide (and, of course, a lot of sighing and shouting): Romeo and Juliet has it all. This course will give you an opportunity to engage in a close reading of what many regard as the greatest love tragedy of all time. We shall consider historical and cultural contexts as well as questions relating to the staging of the play, both in Shakespeare’s time and today. We shall also look at cinematic and other adaptations (such as Leonard Bernstein´s musical West Side Story) and works of art inspired by this comedy.
Please buy this edition and none other: William Shakespeare (ed.: René Weis), Romeo and Juliet (The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series, Bloomsbury, ISBN: 9781903436912). Do not waste your money on texts without substantial annotations as these would be useless for the purposes of this course.
Requirements: thorough preparation for each session, active participation, and, if applicable, written work according to your particular Studienordnung. As always: think, enjoy (!), annotate, and look things up if necessary. |
