Last modified: 27 Feb 2018 11:10
This course begins by considering the theatre that gave us Marlowe and Shakespeare, among other major dramatists, as an institution actively engaged in the controversies of politics and religion of the age. Part 1 of the course focuses on the plays of Christopher Marlowe, whose controversial life is unusually well documented and whose plays starkly anticipate later tensions in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama . Part 2 considers how those tensions in politics and religion developed in later drama, giving particular attention to the genre of revenge tragedy.
| Study Type | Undergraduate | Level | 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Term | First Term | Credit Points | 30 credits (15 ECTS credits) |
| Campus | None. | Sustained Study | No |
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Course Aims: 1. To enhance critical familiarity with early modern theatre 2. To enhance critical familiarity with the place of early moder theatre regarding early modern controversy 3. To enhance critical familiarity with the plays of Christopher Marlowe 4. To enhance critical familiarity with revenge tragedy 5. To enhance critical reading skills Main Learning Outcomes: 1. Enhanced critical familiarity with early modern theatre 2. Enhanced critical familiarity with the place of early modern theatre regarding early modern controversy 3. Enhanced critical familiarity with the plays of Christopher Marlowe 4. Enhanced critical familiarity with revenge tragedy 5. Enhanced critical reading skills Content: Cast outside of London's walls, subject to censorship, Renaissance drama revelled in the controversies of its age, and no dramatist was more controversial than Christopher Marlowe. Taking in the place of the stage and its censorship-conditions, this course will begin by considering Marlowe's shocking treatments of ethics, politics, sexuality and religion on the English stage. It will then consider the development of these themes in authors such as Kyd and Shakespeare, in such influential works as The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet, and the dramatic heritage of revenge tragedy these plays gave rise to in the turbulent eras of Renaissance and Reformation. Hamlet said theatre can show 'the very age and body of the time his form and pressure'. This course will study the pressures of his time, through the medium of some of its most striking dramatic works.
Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.
1st Attempt: Essay 1: 45% (3000 words) Essay 2: 45% (3000 words) SAM: 10% Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.
Feedback through seminar discussions; feedback through the English Programme's standard essay-cover sheets; feedback through the English Programme's standard Seminar Assessment cover sheet.
Feedback will be available through the English Programme's standard cover-sheets attached to all student essays. It will also be available through the Seminar Assessment Mark form, and through verbal feedback in the course of seminars.
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