Spring 2025
Prereq: Two subjects in Literature
Units: 3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-M; Can be repeated for credit
From Akira Kurosawa to Tom Stoppard, from Giuseppi Verdi to Julie Taymor and a legion of meme makers and gamers, creative artists around the world have remade Shakespeare’s plays in new media and cultural contexts: they are doing so right now. Why this enduring fascination? How have the stories been transformed by their movement across time and space? And why is Shakespeare’s fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe—the true wild child of the Elizabethan Renaissance—lurking in the background? We will study the texts and remaking of Shakespeare as modes of modern cultural and artistic collaboration—including our own! Working with old and new media, students will gain a deeper understanding of theatrical and screen performance, literary analysis, cross-media adaptation and online research tools—as well as the fun of “Shakeshifting.” Source texts to include Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Edward II, and The Massacre at Paris; Shakespeare’s Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest; plus a modern “field” that defies definition. [Pre-1900]