To be or not to be in this seminar – that is not the question if you are interested in drama and if you like Shakespeare. Murder and madness, passion and poison, an ex-widow and ex-Students from Wittenberg: Hamlet has it all. This course will give you an opportunity to engage in a close reading of this play. 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 adaptations and works of art (mainly paintings) inspired by Macbeth.
Please buy the current critical edition of Hamlet in the Arden Shakespeare series (edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor) and read the play before the beginning of the semester. 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. You should have read the whole of the play by the beginning of the semester. As always: think, enjoy (!), annotate, and look things up if necessary. |
