Texts to Buy (These are the only editions you will be allowed in the open book exam so it pays to get them now):

William Shakespeare, The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York and London: Norton and Co).

OR William Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare, ed. Wells and Taylor (Oxford: OUP).

AND Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus and Other Plays, eds David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (Oxford: OUP). 

AND Ben Jonson, The Alchemist and Other Plays, ed. Gordon Campbell (Oxford: OUP).

 

SYLLABUS

TERM 1 texts: Weeks 1-5: Hamlet, Dr Faustus, Love's Labours Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor; Week 7-10: Jew of Malta, Merchant of Venice, Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2  

TERM 2 texts: Bartholomew Fair, Epicoene, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest

Required Summer Reading:

The expectation is that you should read all of the set plays before you start your 3rd year. You will find it a real struggle to read plays for the first time during term, especially since seminar tutors will expect you to read other (secondary) material week-by-week. One of the most commonly expressed concerns of students on this course is how to ensure both breadth and depth of reading; only those who do the summer reading find they can balance the competing demands. So you have been warned!

Strongly recommended secondary texts for Summer Reading:

This course pays particularly close attention to Shakespeare plays as performance texts. If you don't know what that means, have a look at:

Simon Shepherd and Mick Wallis, Studying Plays (London, 2002)

Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage (Cambridge, 1992)

John Styan, Shakespeare's Stagecraft (Cambridge, 1967)

 

Also strongly recommended for free moments:

Eugene Giddens, How to Read a Shakespearean Play Text (Cambridge, 2011).

John Russell Brown, Studying Shakespeare in Performance (Palgrave, 2011)

Marvin Carlson, Performance: A Critical Introduction (2nd ed.; Routledge, 2004)