Editions
Christopher Marlowe. Edward II. Stephen Guy-Bray (eds.). New Mermaids, 2015.
Shakespeare, William. King Richard III. James R. Siemon (ed.). The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. 2009.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series.
Beaumont, Francis and John Fletcher. A King and No King. Revels Plays Paperback. Manchester: UP, 2004.
Suggested Reading
Pfister, Manfred. Das Drama. UTB. Frankfurt/M.: Fink, 2001.
After the 100-Years‘-War, the Tudor dynasty turned out to be a most unsettling and unsettled rule. Yet paradoxically, the Tudor Myth was engendered despite Henry Owen’s papal exclusion to the throne, the English Reformation begun precipitously by his second son, Henry VIII, and Queen Elizabeth’s childless rule as a female monarch against the backdrop of assassination attempts and her execution of her cousin Mary Stuart. While the birth of English as a literary language resulted in a flourishing of dramatic art, for which Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are the best examples, there was no getting past their Tudor reality for these authors either. This course will analyse plays by these two playwrights that explicitly and implicitly address Tudor-specific agendas, be they political, economic, or religious. We will begin by reading Marlowe’s Edward II, to next consider Shakespeare’s Richard III and Hamlet, encountering what is undoubtedly some of the best playwriting in the English language to date. We will finish our study by a close analysis of Beaumont and Fletcher’s Stuart play, A King and No King, a tragicomedy that examines the consequences of a royal abuse of power and shows the long shadow of the Tudor agenda. In turn, we can consider to what extent the fusion of Tudor politics and English proto-nationalism propelled playwriting outside the overbearing shadows of both Classicism and medieval traditions into a genuine new form, finding its own poetic language. Students should have read Marlowe’s Edward II by the beginning of term; there will be tests on primary text knowledge. Be careful to obtain only the listed editions of the plays in question! Beaumont and Fletcher’s play will be made available by Stud-IP, should you not be able to afford it. We will discuss course requirements in the first session.
