English 597

Shakespeare: Text, Script, Performance, Performance History

Fall, 2006

519 Annenberg Center, 3-2659; cmazer@english.upenn.edu

Office Hours: Tu 1:30-3:00, Th 11:00-11:50, and by appointment

1. September 12: Introduction: Script, Performance, Text

2. September 19: Script, Performance, Text (continued):

W. B. Worthen, “Authority and Performance,” from Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance (bulkpack); Worthen, “Dramatic Performativity and the Force of Performance,” from Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (bulkpack).

3. September 26: Early-Modern Conventions of Performance:

Alan C. Dessen, “The problem, the evidence, and the language barrier,” “Lost in translation,” “Much virtue in As,” “The Vocabulary of ‘Place,’” from Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary (bulkpack).

(BRING A SCRIPT OF ROMEO AND JULIET TO CLASS.)

4. October 3: Early-Modern Performance, Text, and Publishing:

Robert Weimann, “Playing with a Difference: Revisiting ‘Pen’ and ‘Voice’ in Shakespeare’s Theater,” Shakespeare Quarterly. 50 (1999) 415-32 (electronic).

Scott McMillin, “The Othello Quarto and the ‘Foul-Papers’ Hypothesis,” Shakespeare Quarterly 51 (2000) 67-85 (electronic).

Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser, “Vile Arts: The Marketing of English Printed Drama, 1512-1660,” Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 39 (2000), pp. 77-109 (bulkpack).

Steven Urkowitz, “Five Women Eleven Ways: Changing Images of Shakespearean Characters in the Earliest Texts” (bulkpack).

5. October 10: Early-Modern Acting and Character:

Bert O. States. “The Anatomy of Dramatic Character,” Theatre Journal 37 (1985) 87-101 (electronic).

Harry Berger, Jr. “Text Against Performance: The Example of Macbeth” (bulkpack).

Joseph R. Roach, “Changeling Proteus,” from The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (bulkpack).

Alan Sinfield, “When is a Character Not a Character: Desdemona, Olivia, Lady Macbeth, and Subjectivity” from Faultlines (bulkpack).

Anthony B. Dawson, “Performance and Participation: Desdemona, Foucault, and the Actors’ Body,” in Bulman, Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance.

6. October 17: Early-Modern Performance and Ideology

Robert Weimann, “Bifold Authority in Shakespeare’s Theatre” (electronic).

Paul Yachnin, “The Populuxe Theatre,” from Anthony B. Dawson and Paul Yachnin, The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England: A Collaborative Debate (bulkpack).

Jean Howard, “Crossdressing, The Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England,” Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988), 418-440 (electronic).

[Fall Break]

7. October 31: Subsequent Performance: The Materials of Performance History; Reading Material Theatre:

Ric Knowles, “Part I (“Theory: Towards a Materialist Semiotics,” and “Practice: Conditions of Production and Reception,” in Reading the Material Theatre.

8. November 7: Subsequent Performance: Acting and Character:

(William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew)

Mary Cowden Clarke, “Katharina and Bianca: The Shrew and the Demure” from The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines (bulkpack).

George Henry Lewes, “Edmund Kean,” and “On Natural Acting,” from On Actors and the Art of Acting (bulkpack).

William Archer, “Introductory” (pp. 75-82), “Sunt Lacrymae Rerum” (pp. 101-130), “‘Autosuggestion’ and ‘Innervation’” (pp. 171-183), and “The Brownies of the Brain,” (pp. 184-200), from Masks or Faces? (bulkpack).

G. Bernard Shaw, two theatre reviews from The Saturday Review (bulkpack).

9. November 14: Subsequent Performance: Performance and Ideology:

Susan Bennett, “New Ways to Play Old Texts: Discourses of the Past,” from Performing Nostalgia: Shifting Shakespeare and the Contemporary Past (bulkpack)

W.B. Worthen, first part of “Performing History,” from Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (bulkpack) pp. 28-39.

Richard W. Schoch, “‘Solid Fragments’: The Poetics of performing History,’ and “‘The Homestead of History’: Medievalism and Nationhood on the Mid-Victorian Stage,” from Shakespere’s Victorian Stage: Performing History in the Theatre of Charles Kean (bulkpack).

10. November 21: Contemporary Performance: Acting and Character:

Richard Paul Knowles, “Shakespeare Voice, and Ideology: Interrogating the Natural Voice,” in Bulman, Shakespeare, Theory and Performance.

W.B. Worthen, “Shakespeare’s body: Acting and the Designs of Authority,” from Shakespeare an the Authority of Performance (bulkpack).

Sarah Werner, “Performing Shakespeare: Voice Training and the Feminist Actor,” with responses from Cicely Berry, Patsy Rodenburg, and Kristin Linklater, and follow up response from Sarah Werner (bulkpack).

W.B. Worthen, Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance, latter half of Chapter Two (“Shakespeare’s Auteurs”) (bulkpack).

11. November 28: Contemporary Performance: Performance and Ideology

Alan Sinfield, “Royal Shakespeare: Theatre and the Making of Ideology” (bulkpack).

Susan Bennett, “Production and Proliferation: Seventeen Lears,” from Performing Nostalgia: Shifting Shakespeare and the Contemporary Past (bulkpack).

W.B. Worthen, “Reconstructing the Globe, Constructing Ourselves” (bulkpack).

Carol Rutter, “Kate: Interpreting the Silence,” from Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare’s Women Today (bulkpack).

Penny Gay, “The Taming of the Shrew: Avoiding the Feminist Challenge,” in As She Likes It: Shakespeare’s Unruly Women (bulkpack).

Barbara Hodgdon, “Katherina Bound: or, Play(K)ating the Strictures of Everyday Life” (electronic).

12. December 6: Writing about Contemporary Performance:

Barbara Hodgdon, “Looking for Mr. Shakespeare After ‘The Revolution’: Robert Lepage’s Intercultural Dream Machine,” in Bulman, Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance.

Sarah Werner, “The Taming of the Shrew: A Case Study in Performance Criticism,” from Shakespeare and Feminist Performance: Ideology on Stage (bulkpack)

Ric Knowles, “The Stratford Festival,” and “The English Shakespeare Company,” in Reading the Material Theatre.

Books to be Purchased: The following books are available for purchase at the Penn Book Center, 34th and Sansom Sts.

James C. Bulman, Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance

Ric Knowles, Reading the Material Theatre.

The bulkpack can be purchased at the Campus Copy Center, 3900 block of Walnut St.

Reports and Papers: There will be, at the end of the semester, a single seminar paper, due at a date to be determined.

Recommended/Required Theatregoing: TBA.

The course listserv is ENGL597-401-06C@lists.upenn.edu

An electronic version of this syllabus is available on line at http://www.english.upenn.edu/

ÿcmazer/597f06.html. Make a bookmark for this site on your web browser. In addition, we will be using a “Blackboard” web site for this course. Set your browser to https://courseweb.library.upenn.edu/ and bookmark the site. You should be automatically subscribed to the site.