Department of English

The Shakespeare plays we will read in this course are not only about sex, politics, and deceit, but also about the relations among these three things. What happens when the city's most skilled general can be misled into believing that his wife is having an affair? What are the differences between men's and women's ambitions? When making decisions that affect the future of a state, should you depend on what a ghost or a witch tells you? We will read eight or nine plays by Shakespeare from a range of genres: tragedy Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, history Richard III, comedy Measure for Measure, and romance The Winter's Tale.