Shakespeare at Sheffield

Tom Rutter

Who am I?

• Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama • Came to UoS 2012 • Books on work and play in Shakespearean Drama;

Christopher Marlowe • Currently working on book about Admiral’s Men

playing company • Teach/have taught on Studying Theatre (level 1),

Renaissance Literature (level 2), Genre (level 2), Christopher Marlowe (level 2), etc.

Studying Theatre (year 1)

• Studying Theatre: A History of Dramatic Text in Performance

• 2013-4: The Winter’s Tale (at Crucible) • Alongside (e.g.) Antigone, The Mysteries, The

Relapse, etc., up to Random (2008) • Emphasis on drama in performance: theatre

design, audiences, performance styles, etc.

Studying Theatre: teaching

• 2 lectures + 1 seminar per week • Students typically asked to prepare material in

advance of seminars, possibly on MOLE • Saw The Winter’s Tale in performance; Q&A

from Crucible actors and staff

Studying Theatre: Sample assignments 1. Imagine you have been asked to direct a production of The Winter’s Tale. Identify what you

believe to be a key theme of the play, then, choose a scene and discuss how you as a directorwould approach: working with actors, set designers, sound and lighting designers and costumemakers in order to produce an effective production that amplifies your chosen theme. Draw oncontextual and textual evidence to support your decisions.

2. Discuss the importance of scenes - or parts of scenes - when characters are on stage but notinvolved in the dialogue. Choose two or more examples from The Winter’s Tale and reflect onhow different ways of staging them might change the audience’s response to what is happening.

3. “The full text of the play, spoken with rare spontaneity, registered as fresh but, the performanceitself became the ground of authenticity and co-equal of the text.”Zarilli, P.B, et al. 2006. Theatre Histories: An Introduction. (Abbingdon and New York:Routledge) p.458. This assessment of Peter Brook's 1970 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream could equally apply to many outstanding modern productions of historical texts. Focusing on any of the plays studied, outline and analyse the ways in which two modern productions have been the 'co-equal' of the original text. Comment on the ways in which direction, design (set, lighting, costume, sound) and character interpretation have revealed new meanings or contemporary relevances.

4. Discuss the representation of morality in any two of the plays studied. In your answer draw onevidence from spoken text, given and imagined action, sound, costume and stage design, as wellas contextual information regarding the society out of which the plays were born.

Renaissance Literature (year 2) • ‘The early modern period (or “The Renaissance”) is one of the most exciting in

English literary history. Wide-reaching cultural changes – to education, religion, identity – are reflected in new genres and styles of writing; and it is the era which gave us some of best-known and best-loved authors, including John Donne, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. This module explores poetry, prose, and drama written c. 1530-1640, bringing canonical and non-canonical writers into dialogue with each other, and relating the texts we study to their cultural, social, and political contexts.’

• Concepts of subjectivity/selfhood • Literary contexts in which texts were produced: print vs. manuscript, what it

means to be an author • Wider contexts: religious change, nation, etc. • 2013-14: Richard II alongside poetry (including Astrophil and Stella, Hero and

Leander), drama (The Spanish Tragedy, Volpone), prose (Beware the Cat, women’s life writing)

• Using resources like ODNB, OED, EEBO…

Renaissance Literature: Teaching 1 seminar per week 2 lectures per week...

Renaissance Literature: Teaching BISHOP OF CARLISLE. The blood of English shall manure the ground

And future ages groan for this foul act. Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound. Disorder, horror, fear and mutiny Shall here inhabit and this land be called The field of Golgotha and dead men's skulls.

(4.1.135-45)

Edmund Hall’s Chronicle (1548)

‘The union of the two noble and illustre families of Lancaster and York, being long in continual dissention for the crown of this noble realm, … beginning at the time of king Henry the fourth, the first author of this division, and so successively proceeding to the reign of the high and prudent prince king Henry the eight, the undubitate flower and very heir of both the said lineages.’ (spelling modernised)

First Quarto (1598)

First Folio (1623)

Deposition scene follows

• How play offers sacramental view of monarchy:‘Not all the water in the rough rude sea / Canwash the balm off from an anointed king’

• How play presents monarchy as role-play:RICHARD. … within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps death his court, and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be feared and kill with looks …

Renaissance Literature: Assessment

• Asssignment 1: 2,000 word coursework essay on general topic, e.g.: 1. Discuss the ways in which early modern texts explore the

relationship between the living and the dead. 2. What has reading texts on EEBO – paying attention to issues such as

spelling, punctuation, or lay-out – brought to your understanding of early modern literature?

3. How, and to what effect, do early modern texts use drama as a metaphor?

4. How does early modern literature reflect the experience of religious Reformation and/or Counter-Reformation?

• Assignment 2: commentary (exam conditions)

Genre (year 2) • ‘This module gives you the opportunity to study

developments in two literary genres from classical antiquity to the present day.’

• 2012-13: Oedipus Rex, Menaechmi, The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, also novels (e.g. Jude the Obscure), modern drama (Phaedra’s Love)

• ‘to use genre as a means of drawing connections between periods’

• why genre is important • genre in history • mixing genres

Genre: Teaching

• Lectures on, e.g.– Shakespeare and Renaissance ideas of

tragedy/comedy– Mixing of genres in The Winter’s Tale

• Seminars• Students encouraged to make connections

between texts of different types, disparateperiods

• Film screenings

Genre: Assessment

• Students write 3,000 word essay on (at least) one text from the syllabus and one (of their own choosing) off it

• King Lear and The Royal Tennenbaums • The Comedy of Errors and The Big Lebowski

Shakespeare on Film (year 2)

• ‘This module deals with issues arising from the transposition of Shakespeare's plays to film. It will consider such issues as the relationship between text, staging and the cinematic adaptation.’

• Fidelity vs. rewriting • Viewing sessions + interactive seminars • 2 x 2,500-word essays

Performing Shakespeares (year 3)

• How Shakespearean texts have been performed/adapted

• Workshops, seminars, individual and practice-based research, film screenings, theatre visits

• Assessed by research essay + group performance

Summary

• All above modules optional except Renaissance Literature and Genre (both core for Eng Lit students).

• We teach Shakespeare in loads of different ways: as a text to be dramatised/adapted; in historical context; as a writer in specific genres…

• Above all: close reading; whole texts